Madison’s clerk failed to implement practices that could’ve found 193 absentee ballots the city failed to tally from Nov. 5, including a check of all carts and totes that had been used to store ballots before they were counted, state Elections Commission staff found.
In a report prepared for the commissioners, staff highlighted a series of policies that Madison Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl could’ve implemented that would’ve discovered the ballots. That includes a failure to include policies that would’ve prompted the municipal or county boards of canvass to see if election officials had missed anything or overlooked batches of absentee ballots.
“Again, it seems as if the existing policies are extensive with respect to checking what was completed, but were not designed to check what was completed against what should have been completed,” staff wrote in the report.
The existence of the 193 absentee ballots that weren’t included in the final canvass of the Nov. 5 results wasn’t publicly disclosed until late December. That prompted the Elections Commission to order an investigation into the Madison clerk to determine why the city failed to count 193 absentee ballots on Election Day.
That action included a review of whether Witzel-Behl failed to comply with the law or abused her discretion.
The staff noted in its report summarizing the findings of the investigation that it hadn’t concluded Witzel-Behl took any actions contrary to state law or had abused her discretion.
Witzel-Behl declined comment through a city spokesperson while reviewing the report.
The report included an overview of documents the clerk’s office shared with the commission, Witzel-Behl’s response to the probe, recommendations for further questions, recommendations for possible communications to the state’s clerks, and contributing factors as to why the ballots weren’t counted.
The commission will review the report at a March 7 meeting.
Some of those contributing factors include:
- Training election inspectors to fill out an absentee ballot log chart with each courier bag opened to create a “record of what was completed — but not of what was missed.” Staff suggested a ward-specific list of the total number of courier bags and envelopes containing ballots with unique identifiers. That would’ve helped inspectors realize they had missed the courier bags that included the 193 absentee ballots.
- Having poll workers fill in by hand on poll books voters who had returned absentee ballots. According to the report, Witzel-Behl printed out poll books Oct. 23 and then provided lists of voters who had returned absentee ballots. Poll workers then used orange highlighters to note which voters had returned absentee ballots. The report suggested having that information preprinted in the poll books would’ve made it easier to detect the ballots that hadn’t been counted.
- A failure to properly communicate to the county clerk and the commission once the first batch of uncounted absentee ballots was discovered.
