Siri Tells Wisconsinites The Republican Primary Is April 3. That’s A Day After It’s Set To Take Place
Apple’s “Siri” is telling voters that Wisconsin’s Republican presidential primary takes place on April 3 — one day after the actual primary will occur.
When users (myself included) ask Siri when the Wisconsin Republican primary is, Siri incorrectly says April 3. Users are correctly told that the Democrat presidential primary is on April 2.
Jesse Garza, former district director for former Rep. Sean Duffy, first highlighted the issue in a post on X.
Wisconsin has an open primary, meaning voters can just choose one party and a preferred candidate on April 2 — not April 3.
Garza said the incident is concerning, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
“We rely more and more on technology to give us information,” Garza reportedly said. “The average person is not going to question it, especially if your brain is not focused on an election on this day.”
The Federalist reached out to Apple for more information but did not receive a response by press time.
This isn’t the first time Siri has given false information to voters about election dates, having told users in 2020 that the presidential election was going to be held on Nov. 8.
The 2020 election was held on Nov. 3.
Apple “fixed the issue,” according to TechCrunch.
But the “glitch” is dangerous: voters who rely on Siri to keep them informed about upcoming events would have perhaps shown up to the polls days after the election was conducted, disenfranchising them at the expense of a Big Tech “error.”
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Wisconsin voters have even more reason to give heightened scrutiny to the primary and general election considering 2020 was fraught with problems.
An audit by the state’s Legislative Audit Bureau showed more than 250,000 Wisconsin residents received an absentee ballot but never proved their identity because they claimed to be “indefinitely confined” due to Covid. Further review by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) found that “54,259 ballots were cast by individuals who have never shown a voter ID in any election. 3,718 were cast from addresses that were on the 2019 Mover’s List. 7,747 failed their DMV check when they registered.”
The Wisconsin Elections Commission usurped the authority of the legislative branch when it permitted election officials to “fix” absentee ballots that had errors or were missing information.
“Due to the partisan split in absentee voting, WILL estimates that if absentee ballot rejection rates were similar to the rates in 2016, the final election margin would have narrowed by 6,000 votes — making a very close election even closer,” WILL said in its report.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist.
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