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No.

Twenty-one states, including Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia offered Election Day voter registration for the Nov. 5 election.

That meant eligible voters could both register and cast a ballot on Election Day.

North Dakota has no registration but requires proof of identification to vote.

Republican Eric Hovde claimed Feb. 12 that the number of states was six. He suggested fraud caused his Nov. 5 loss to U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis. 

The margin was nearly 29,000 votes (49.3% to 48.5%).

Hovde didn’t reply to a call for comment. 

He might have been alluding to the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, which exempted six states. Wisconsin was exempted because it had Election Day registration. 

Wisconsin requires proof of residency to register and photo identification to vote.

Its same-day registration can complicate verifying eligibility of certain voters.

Wisconsin’s spring election, featuring two candidates for Supreme Court, is April 1; the primary, featuring three candidates for state schools superintendent, is Feb. 18.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

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Tom Kertscher joined Wisconsin Watch as a full-time Milwaukee-based reporter in October 2024 after starting as a freelance Fact Briefs reporter in January 2023. In addition to contributing to Wisconsin Watch’s collaboration with The Gigafact Project to combat online misinformation, he reports on Wisconsin policy, labor, energy and the rapid expansion of data centers across the state. Kertscher is a former longtime reporter at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a contributing writer for Milwaukee Magazine and the author of two sports books, on Al McGuire and Brett Favre.