The Elections Commission voted unanimously to open an investigation into the Madison clerk to determine why the city failed to count 193 absentee ballots on Election Day.
Chair Ann Jacobs during yesterday’s meeting called the oversight “egregious” and said she initiated the effort to launch an investigation to quickly determine what went wrong.
Still, Marge Bostelmann, a former clerk and a GOP appointee, stressed the effort wasn’t about looking to “assign blame or punishment.” Instead, she said it should be focused on determining what happened so the commission can provide guidance to clerks to ensure something similar doesn’t happen again.
“I look at it as a solution, not an investigation to find wrongdoing,” Bostelmann said.
Madison shared a message that Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl sent to the commission after the vote stating her office “intends to cooperate with any inquiries or investigation by WEC staff. To that end, we will provide documents needed by the Commission without requiring a formal public records request.”
According to materials agency staff prepared for yesterday’s meeting, the Madison clerk’s office first discovered an unopened courier bag of absentee ballots on Nov. 12, one week after the election. Another was found Dec. 3. But the clerk’s office didn’t notify the commission until Dec. 18 as it sought assistance on how to officially record its absentee ballot numbers in the state system, not to flag the uncounted ballots as a problem. City and Elections Commission staff met Dec. 20, and Madison then announced Dec. 26 that it had discovered the 193 uncounted absentee ballots in three wards that were discovered during the reconciliation process.
Jacobs then directed the staff to prepare an outline of what steps the commission could take through an investigation.
Under the motion approved yesterday 6-0, the commission authorized an investigation into whether Witzel-Behl failed to comply with the law or abused her discretion. Jacobs and GOP appointee Don Millis, the previous commission chair, put together a list of questions for Witzel-Behl. That includes who discovered the absentee ballots, where they had been and if she had contacted the Elections Commission prior to Nov. 29, when the statewide canvass was approved. If no one contacted the commission ahead of that, the agency wants to know who made that decision and when that determination was made.
Ahead of the vote, GOP appointee Bob Spindell sought unsuccessfully to amend the motion to also direct the commission to open an investigation into the delayed reporting of results from Milwaukee’s central count on Election Day. City election officials noticed that a panel on tabulators hadn’t been properly locked. They then decided to restart the process of counting some 31,000 absentee ballots that had already been fed through the machines. Final results were not reported until after 4 a.m. the following morning.
Spindell said the issue drew international attention and concerns from President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign.
“If we do one, then we need to do both,” Spindell argued.
But Jacobs called it a “ridiculous and bizarre conspiracy theory,” noting Milwaukee officials publicly discussed the issue on Election Day and correctly predicted that it would delay the reporting of final results. She also noted the commission hasn’t received any complaints from the public about the issue.
“That’s a waste of our time and energy,” she said.
