The state Government Accountability Board is asking the Legislature to release $250,000 for a campaign to educate voters about the voter photo ID law.
The GAB’s Reid Magney said the agency has no funding for the campaign because the law was on hold in the courts when the current fiscal year budget was submitted in September of 2014. The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the law in March 2015, but the Legislature did not add the photo ID campaign funding before passing the budget last July.
Magney says, while most voters have the needed photo ID and understand the law, there are still some who don’t. The funding would pay for a campaign that would begin in July and run through the November election. It’s intended to reach voters in the summer months before the airwaves and online ad spaces fill up with political ads in the fall.
The GAB is proposing that final details of the campaign would be approved by the new Wisconsin Elections Commission, which takes over for the GAB on June 30.