The state elections agency may ask local clerks to double-check all voter registrations since January 2006, under a recommendation the agency's board will consider today.

If approved, the action by the Government Accountability Board could neutralize a lawsuit against the agency by Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, who unsuccessfully argued the checks should have been done before the election.

"The first thing I did was laugh out loud," said Reince Priebus, chairman of the state Republican Party, which joined Van Hollen's lawsuit. "It's pretty amazing that we've been fighting this battle for four years and now they decide a week after the election they want to do retroactive (registration) checks. It's pretty frustrating, but we'll take it."

The checks — in which voter registration information is cross-referenced against state driver's license, death and felon records — are intended to prevent fraud and are required under the federal Help America Vote Act.

In August, the board decided it would only require clerks to conduct the checks on registrations received after Aug. 6, when the state's new voter registration system became effective.

But Van Hollen sued, saying clerks should conduct the checks on all registrations received since January 2006, when the HAVA law said the state's registration system was supposed to be working.

A Dane County judge dismissed the suit last month, days before the Nov. 4 election. But Van Hollen has filed notice that he will appeal.

Nathaniel Robinson, administrator of the accountability board's elections division, said it was the board's intent all along to have clerks conduct the checks dating to January 2006.

But the board decided in August not to have clerks conduct the retroactive checks because the clerks would be busy preparing for the election in September and October.

Priebus said the impending move by the board shows they recognize the need to do the checks.

The recommendation to be considered today would direct the accountability board's staff to develop guidelines for conducting the HAVA checks back to January 2006. It would reaffirm prior instruction to clerks to wait until receiving that guidance before conducting the checks.

Robinson said he wouldn't speculate as to what the accountability board would tell clerks to do when voter registration information doesn't match up with information in other state databases. In August they told clerks that a data mismatch shouldn't knock someone off the voter rolls.

Priebus said the procedure the board decides on could affect the ultimate outcome of the lawsuit.