The WEC and the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) recommend that municipal and county government emails, especially those used for election related information, should be easily identifiable as government entities. WEC and the Wisconsin Department of Administration, Division of Enterprise Technology are assisting municipalities in obtaining wi.gov and .gov email domains to increase election security and trust in their official election communications.
Obtaining a Trusted Domain for Your Municipality
Wisconsin governmental jurisdictions may use either a wi.gov or .gov email address. The .gov domain is administered at the federal level, while the wi.gov domain is administered at the state level. In both cases, the actual email accounts are managed by private email providers for a fee.
These two different levels of administration each require different sign-up processes, but both provide the trusted .gov domain. Directions for obtaining the wi.gov and .gov domain are in the Election Security .gov Domain Process document linked below. Additional information about common email providers are included in this document.
Note: The process to request a wi.gov domain has changed. Municipalities will work directly with the Wisconsin Department of Administration, Division of Enterprise Technology to authorize their domain name and establish DNS records. More information on the new process can be found in the Election Security .gov Domain Process document.