Elections clerks notified the Elections Commission of 127 instances of possible voter fraud or irregularities over the fall 2024 and spring 2025 elections, including bribery, a noncitizen registering and casting a ballot, and disrupting a drop box.
The report, prepared ahead of Tuesday’s commission meeting, is compiled from information submitted by municipal clerks for a required report to the Legislature. It notes the agency has no information on whether local prosecutors found enough evidence to file charges or if there was a conviction.
Racine County DA Tricia Hanson told WisPolitics the information in the referrals listed in the report are often so scant that prosecutors have little to work with.
The latest report, which covers referrals between Sept. 13, 2024, and Nov. 4, 2025, listed two referrals in Racine County. One was for voter impersonation in the 2025 spring primary and the other for double voting in the fall 2024 election.
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Hanson said she couldn’t recall either case without additional information. Still, she remembered one example in the past where a referral suggested someone had voted for her mother. Hanson said upon further review, the local clerk’s office acknowledged it had made a mistake in raising the suggestion.
“If WEC did an investigation, that would be great, but they don’t,” Hanson said. “They simply have the file and send it to us, and we’re supposed to figure out if we can do something with it. I try to whenever I can, but I have been doing this for 30 years and I can only remember a handful of cases where we actually made it to a criminal court with that information.”
The referrals represent a fraction of the nearly 7.6 million votes cast in Wisconsin over the fall 2024 and spring 2025 primaries and general elections.
The report listed incidents in 21 counties, with the bulk of them for double voting, which accounted for 60 of the referrals. There were another 31 cases of post cards or letters sent to those who registered on election day that were undeliverable.
Twenty of those undeliverable mailings were in Brown County. Green Bay Clerk Celestine Jeffreys said when the mailings come back, she refers them to local law enforcement. She didn’t know if any cases from the fall 2024 or spring 2025 elections had resulted in charges, and the Brown County DA’s office didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
The referral for a noncitizen registering and voting was in Dane County for the 2020 and 2022 general elections. The DA’s office didn’t respond to an email seeking details of that case.
Meanwhile, several DAs told WisPolitics they couldn’t look up referrals unless the request included a name or a case number, neither of which were included in the report.
Two referrals out of Marathon County referred to “disruption of drop box” and “continuing disruption of drop box/election.” Wausau Mayor Doug Diny has been under investigation after he moved a drop box in September 2024 away from the steps of City Hall and put it in his office. Fond du Lac County DA Eric Toney, a GOP candidate for state attorney general, was appointed special prosecutor in the case this fall.The Wausau Ethics Board last month unanimously found Diny had violated city policy.
The election bribery case out of Eau Claire County listed in the report involved a referral of Dem Rebecca Cooke, who ran unsuccessfully for the 3rd CD in 2024 and is seeking the office again.
The Eau Claire County DA’s office said the case referred to a social media post from Cooke in late October 2024 touting free pizza at a UW-Eau Claire early voting block party that offered students a bus ride to the City Hall from the dorms.
According to the DA’s office, the former clerk referred the case to Eau Claire Police, who looked into it. The case was then referred to the Barron County DA because Cooke was running to represent the community in Congress, and the prosecution there determined that there would be no criminal prosecution.
