Imagine voting over the Internet, having ballots mailed to your home each election or going to the primary polls in August instead of September.

Those are some of the ideas the state elections agency is considering — with encouragement from federal officials — as part of a five-year, $17.3 million plan to modernize voting in Wisconsin.

Most of the potential changes to the voting process would need legislative approval.

“Right now we vote on a specific day on a specific machine, but we’re raising a whole generation of people that want to vote a different way and don’t realize why they can’t,” said Kevin Kennedy, executive director of the Government Accountability Board, which oversees elections in Wisconsin and voted Monday to continue pursuing the possible changes.

But some critics worry that creating more avenues for voting could create more opportunities for fraud.

“You’re losing all the integrity to our voting process,” Ardis Cerny, of Pewaukee and a member of the Wisconsin Federation of Republican Women, said of the ideas.

Accountability Board member Gordon Myse said the board’s goal should be to facilitate voting as much as possible while making sure the system is secure and that election results accurately reflect voter sentiment.

He said he’s not ready to approve Internet voting but is willing to study it.

Andrea Kaminski, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, said the ideas the board is considering should be explored.

The board’s vote Monday paved the way for the release this week of its draft report on a new election plan through 2014, which will also go to the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee for review. The board will discuss the plan again in August before submitting it to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, which asked the board to develop it in exchange for $3.9 million in federal election grants.

The board’s draft election plan suggests:

• Adopting early voting, which allows people to cast their ballots before an election, as a complement to absentee voting. Under both methods votes aren’t tabulated until the actual election, but early voting ballots are more secure because they are placed into the voting machine immediately while absentee voting ballots are kept by the county clerk, Kennedy said.

The board is considering offering early voting in selected areas in April 2010, with statewide early voting slated for fall 2010.

• Allowing absentee votes to be returned by electronic mail or fax.

• Letting voters submit a standing request for an absentee ballot for all elections.

• Allowing some elections to be conducted solely by mail.

• Voting by phone or Internet.

• Moving from September to August the date of the fall primary. That would give clerks more time to distribute absentee ballots for the general election and allow more time for post-election audits of primary results, Kennedy said.

EARLY VOTING MEETING

The Government Accountability Board wants your opinion on early voting. Its meeting next month in Fitchburg is the first of eight around the state on the subject.

Date: July 7

Where: Fitchburg Community Center, Oak Hall Room, 5510 Lacy Road

Time: 6-8 p.m.or more information go to elections.state.wi.us/.