Important Wisconsin election news: voters can cross party lines on the same ballot for the recall elections…

…but only for the recall elections.

Fred Dooley reports:

There has been much conjecture about the rules for the partisan primary on May 8. I have confirmed you MAY cross party vote.

For example in Racine you may vote for Scott Walker on the Repulican ticket and vote for Tamra Varebrook on the Democrat primary for State Senate.

No offense to Fred, but when I read that I thought: nope, that’s wrong. So I checked and: yep, he’s right. In the May 8 recall primary, you can vote in the Republican primary in one race, and the Democrat primary in a different race.

Couple things to keep in mind:

• You can still only vote once per race. Cross-party voting does not mean voting for one Republican candidate for Governor and one Democrat candidate for Governor. Doing so will invalidate your ballot. You can only vote for one candidate for each position.

• Cross-party voting is not allowed in normal elections. We can do it during the recall elections, because each recall election is technically completely separate from every other recall election, even if they’re on the same ballot. Once we get back to normal elections, though, that won’t be the case. In the upcoming August primary, cross-voting the way Fred described above will result in an invalid ballot.

And finally:

• You cannot write in a name that is already on the ballot. I’ve heard talk of writing in “Scott Walker” and “Rebecca Kleefisch” in the Democrat primaries. Doing so will invalidate your ballot, so don’t.

Just a friendly public service announcement.