Nearly 200 ballots went uncounted in Wisconsin and officials want to know why
MADISON, Wis. — Nearly 200 absentee ballots somehow went uncounted in Wisconsin’s liberal capital after the election November 5 electionsprompting state election officials to launch an investigation Thursday into whether the city clerk broke the law.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission voted unanimously to investigate whether Madison City Clerk Maribeth Wetzel-Biehl failed to comply with state law or abused her discretion. Committee members said they were concerned that the clerk’s office did not notify them of the problem until late December, nearly a month and a half after the election. Committee chairman Ann Jacobs declared Wisconsin’s election results on November 29.
Wetzel-Biehl’s office said in a statement that the number of uncounted votes did not affect the outcome of any race or referendum on the ballots. But Jacobs said the oversight was “so egregious” that the commission must determine what happened and how to prevent it as the spring elections approach.
“We are the last candidates,” Jacobs said. “We are the final arbiters of votes in the state of Wisconsin and we need to know why those ballots are not included anywhere.”
Wetzel-Biehl said in an email to The Associated Press that her office looks forward to working with the commission to determine what happened and how to prevent the same problems in future elections.
It is another misstep for Wetzel-Biehl, who announced in September that she was leaving her office accidentally sent out up to 2,000 duplicate absentee ballots. She blamed a data processing error.
According to election commission documents, the commission learned of the uncounted ballots on Dec. 18, when Wetzel-Biehl staff told the commission that they had recorded more absentee ballots as received than ballots had been counted in three city precincts.
The committee asked Wetzel-Biehl for a detailed statement, which she did two days later. The memo stated that on Nov. 12, the clerk’s office discovered 67 unprocessed ballots for Ward 65 and one unprocessed ballot for Ward 68 in a messenger bag found in a vote tabulation machine.
The memo also said her office was reconciling ballots for Ward 56 on Dec. 3 when 125 unprocessed ballots were discovered in a sealed messenger bag. Reconciliation is a post-election process where officials are held accountable for every ballot cast. That work begins immediately after an election. Clerks have 45 days to complete it.
The memo offers no explanation, saying only that the clerk’s office planned to “debrief these incidents and implement better processes.”
The registry issued a statement on December 26 saying it had informed the election commission and would send a letter of apology to every affected voter.
Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway released her own statement the same day saying the clerk’s office had not informed its staff of the problem until Dec. 20. She said her office plans to review the city’s election procedures.
“While the discovery of these unprocessed absentee ballots did not impact the results of any election or referendum, a discrepancy of this magnitude is unacceptable,” the mayor said in the statement.
Wisconsin is a perennial battleground in presidential elections. Republican Donald Trump won the state last November on his way to regaining the White House, defeating Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris by about 29,000 votes.
Madison and surrounding Dane County are well-known liberal strongholds. Harris won 75% of the vote in the province in November.