Wisconsin’s Division of Motor Vehicles has begun retraining workers, since it came under fire recently for failing, in some cases to give correct information to people seeking an ID to vote.
U.S District Court Judge James Peterson ordered the stateshow by Friday that it can meet the needs of people seeking identification for voting. The rush is on, but it’s not enough to satisfy some legislators.
With about five weeks left until the presidential election, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, or DOT, says it is implementing new training measures to ensure all DMV workers know the law.
DOT secretary Mark Gottleib says training includes one-on-one conversations between supervisors and every DMV employee as well as an online test.
“The learning management system is the way that we provide training to our employees in all the different divisions of the department. So today, we’ve instituted a new training module on the IDPP process. We’re requiring all staff working this week to participate in that module by Friday, October 7. As we always do, we’ll be tracking participation and we will be following up with any employees that don’t complete that training,” he says.
Gottlieb says there is also now a hotline in place to answer calls from people dissatisfied with their service at the DMV. For instance, the agency is supposed to provide receipts to people who begin the process of applying for a photo ID for voting.
However, some workers reportedly told potential voters that temporary voting credentials were not available, that getting an ID without a birth certificate could take weeks and that there was no guarantee they would receive a photo ID in time for the November election.
Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel has said everyone who applies for a Wisconsin ID will have it within six days leading up until the week of the election. At that point, the DOT would overnight identification cards to people who need them to vote.
However on Tuesday, Democrats who serve on the Joint Committee for the Review of Administrative Rules recommended Wisconsin scrap its photo ID law because of the problems.
“Judge Peterson called this process a wretched failure in July, everything we’ve heard today and from the recent news reports seems to indicate that it is still a wretched failure. Rather than trying to fix it five weeks before an election, let’s repeal it,” Rep. Mark Spreitzer from Beloit says.
The motion failed.
Andrea Kaminsky, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, says voters should expect accurate and concise information when visiting the DMV, and she hopes the retraining is successful.
“I feel optimistic that the DMV now will offer the service that voters need in order to be ready to vote in this very important election,” she says.
Still, Kaminsky says, she’s even more concerned about the possibility that quite a few Wisconsin adults don’t yet know that they will need a photo ID in order to cast a ballot.
