Elections commission considers how to handle Milwaukee, Green Bay election errors

The Wisconsin Elections Commission on Monday weighed how it should manage the response to election administration errors made by the cities of Milwaukee and Green Bay in recent months. 

During the August and April elections this year, Green Bay City Clerk Celestine Jeffreys mistakenly sent duplicate absentee ballots to some voters after the labels were printed twice. 

In Milwaukee, during the August primary, election results were delayed after officials mistakenly downloaded the wrong file, then had to return to the city’s central count location to retrieve the actual results. 

The errors in the two cities, in addition to the city of Madison misplacing nearly 200 absentee ballots during the 2024 election, triggered scrutiny of election administration in Wisconsin’s three largest cities as Republicans in the state and across the country have spent the last six years casting doubt on the security of the state’s election systems. 

While Republicans have not uncovered large-scale fraud or an effort to sway the results of any elections, the errors have given election skeptics a foothold for further criticism. 

At Monday’s meeting, commissioner Bob Spindell, the most right-wing member of the body and a frequent election critic, said that the commission needs to take action against Milwaukee because Republicans are skeptical and accused the Democrats on the committee and city election officials of conducting a “cover up” of what happened while allowing problems to “fester.” He also said he would bet $100 that the city will have a problem counting ballots during the November election. 

“I believe we are taking our responsibility extremely seriously by looking into this and what has turned into a national concern by many, at least Republicans, which make up a large portion of Wisconsin and the U.S. population,” Spindell said. 

After the mistake was made, the commission put a discussion of the error on the agenda for Monday’s meeting and agency staff wrote a draft letter to send to the city requesting an explanation of what occurred. Before the commission met or sent the letter, the city responded. 

On Monday, the commission was specifically debating if it should still send a letter to the city, and if so what it should say — ultimately voting to draft a second letter that thanks the city for its initial response and reasserts a request for the audit logs of the voting equipment. 

Mark Thomsen, a Democrat, said that the reporting of results gets delayed in other communities across the state without any problems, so the commission shouldn’t impugn Milwaukee’s election officials over this issue. 

“If it wasn’t Milwaukee, and if it wasn’t for this ongoing, I think unfair, attack on the city and county of Milwaukee, nobody would have even paid attention to an hour delay,” Thomsen said. 

In Green Bay, the city sending duplicate absentee ballots in two elections has already resulted in the resignation of Jeffreys, the city clerk. WEC Attorney Angela Sharpe said during the meeting that some outstanding questions about the issue are “unknowable” because it’s impossible to track down each duplicate ballot once it has been put in the mail. But, she said the WEC investigation into the matter has satisfactorily determined what happened and why the mistake was made. 

In the meeting, the commission was voting to determine if the staff should continue investigating or begin drafting a final determination of whether any laws were broken. 

“I think we have a good understanding of the factors that led to the April incident and the June incident, but like I said, it does seem clear, and especially since Clerk Jeffreys is no longer in the role of city clerk, that there are going to be some actions that we just can’t know, and that the city of Green Bay can’t know,” Sharpe said. “But I do think, based on my assessment, that Green Bay has provided a lot of information. I think the city has responded at least to everything that the commission wanted to know, and then they also responded to the couple of questions that I had just based on their first response. So I think we know what we can about the situation.”

Commissioner Ann Jacobs said that her main concern was that the error was repeated, but that given that Jeffreys is no longer the clerk and the city has changed its procedures — including changing where ballot mailing labels are printed — there’s nothing to gain from endlessly investigating. 

“I think our investigation part of this has concluded. I agree with Attorney Sharpe that we learned what happened. They’ve put new processes in place, which I think was our concern about it happening the second time,” Jacobs said.