MADISON, Wis. — Nearly 200 absentee ballots somehow went uncounted in Wisconsin’s liberal capital after the Nov. 5 election, prompting 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. Commission members said they were concerned the clerk’s office didn’t inform them of the problem until late December, almost a month and a half after the election. Commission Chair Ann Jacobs certified Wisconsin’s election results on Nov. 29.
Wetzel-Biehl’s office said in a statement that the number of uncounted votes didn’t 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 it can be prevented as spring elections approach.
“We are the final canvassers,” Jacobs said. “We are the final arbiters of votes in the state of Wisconsin and we need to know why those ballots weren’t 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 issues in future elections.
It’s another misstep for Wetzel-Biehl, who announced in September that her office mistakenly sent out up to 2,000 duplicate absentee ballots. She blamed it on a data processing error.
According to election commission documents, the commission learned of the uncounted ballots on Dec. 18, when Wetzel-Biehl’s staff told the commission that they recorded more absentee ballots as received than ballots counted in three city wards.
The commission asked Wetzel-Biehl to provide 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 courier bag found in a vote tabulating machine.
The memo also stated that her office was reconciling ballots for Ward 56 on Dec. 3 when 125 unprocessed ballots were discovered in a sealed courier bag. Reconciliation is a post-election process in which officials account for every ballot created. That work begins immediately after an election. Clerks have 45 days to complete it.
The memo does not offer any explanation, saying only that the clerk’s office planned “to debrief these incidents and implement better processes.”
The clerk’s office issued a statement on Dec. 26 saying it had informed the elections commission and would send an apology letter to each affected voter.
Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway released her own statement the same day saying the clerk’s office didn’t tell her staff about 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 state in presidential elections. Republican Donald Trump won the state this past November on his way to reclaiming the White House, beating 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 county in November.