Since-deleted tweet claimed email ballots remain an option. Not true

Amid the pandemonium of an off-again, on-again Wisconsin election in the middle of a pandemic, claims have been circulating online that voters can have a ballot emailed to them instead of waiting in line.

Posts across Facebook and Twitter echoed this claim. 

Perhaps most notably, so did a tweet from Ben Wikler, chairman of the state Democratic Party. Here’s what he sent out Monday, April 6, 2020:

"If you have requested an absentee ballot and it hasn’t arrived yet — like thousands of other Wisconsinites — then you call your clerk and as for a ballot to be emailed to you. You then find a safe way to print it out, fill it in and drop it off. Clerk then copies it to official paper."

That’s not true. And Wikler has since deleted the tweet.

Here are the details:

Wisconsin Elections Commission spokesman Reid Magney said the deadline for emailed ballots was Friday, April 3, 2020 — four days before the election.

Until that cut-off date, voters could request a mail or email ballot by email, fax or through the commission’s website.

The only way for residents to get a ballot after that — even those who requested an absentee ballot but didn’t receive it — is by going to their local polling place in person on Election Day, April 7, 2020.

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Derrick Van Orden

stated on April 1, 2024 in X, formerly Twitter

You can vote in-person absentee at your clerk’s office on Monday before Election Day.

Wikler did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Magney said the commission was aware of the tweet.

"He was wrong," Magney said.

And later in the day, so was state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, who made a nearly identical claim to a reporter while working as an election inspector.

His staff later admitted the error. Spokeswoman Kit Beyer confirmed Vos was mistaken, saying the elections commission "had guidance recently on that fact, which staff hadn’t briefed him on."

Wikler, like many others on social media, claimed voters could get a ballot sent to them by email right up to Election Day.

State officials say that is not the case — the deadline passed the week before. And Wikler has since deleted his tweet.

We rate this claim False.