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Madison Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl has been positioned on administrative go away at the least via the April 1 election, as metropolis and state officers proceed to analyze how she and her workers misplaced monitor of almost 200 ballots on Election Day final fall, town introduced Wednesday.
Mike Haas, Madison’s metropolis legal professional, will take over her duties within the interim. Municipalities usually favor to not make adjustments to election oversight so near an election, however Haas, a former administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Fee, is broadly thought of one of many state’s foremost specialists on election legislation. It’s not clear when — or whether or not — Witzel-Behl will return to her publish.
“Given the character of the problems being investigated, we felt this was a mandatory step to keep up public confidence within the operations of our clerk’s workplace,” Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway mentioned.
The scrutiny of Witzel-Behl follows a sequence of oversights that contributed to the mishandling of ballots through the 2024 election.
In its probe, the Wisconsin Elections Fee discovered that errors started nicely earlier than Election Day. One concerned the ballot books exhibiting the checklist of registered voters in every ward. For the 2 polling places the place 193 ballots went lacking, Witzel-Behl’s workplace printed the ballot books on Oct. 23, almost two weeks earlier than Election Day, regardless of fee steering urging election officers to print ballot books as near the election as potential.
If the ballot books had been printed later, they might have mechanically marked sure absentee voters’ ballots as having been returned, making it clearer to ballot staff on Election Day that some ballots had been acquired however not counted. As an alternative, ballot staff manually highlighted the ballot books to point returned ballots — a technique that Wisconsin Elections Fee workers warned might have made it much less clear to metropolis and county officers reviewing the election outcomes that some ballots have been nonetheless excellent.
“I’m genuinely troubled by the variety of profoundly dangerous choices which can be recited in these supplies main as much as Election Day,” fee Chair Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, mentioned in a gathering final week.
In that fee assembly, Jacobs additionally highlighted what she known as an “completely stunning set of dates post-election, the place each alternative to repair that is ignored.”
In a press release to Votebeat, Jacobs mentioned she wasn’t shocked by Witzel-Behl being positioned on go away.
“We can not have elections the place correctly forged ballots should not counted as a consequence of administrative errors,” she mentioned. “Metropolis Lawyer Michael Haas is to be recommended for stepping in to handle the upcoming April 1 election with lower than three weeks to organize … I’ve each confidence he’ll do every little thing he can to revive belief in Madison’s elections.”
Clerk’s workers discovered the primary batch of ballots — 68 in complete — in a beforehand unopened courier bag within the clerk’s workplace on Nov. 12, whereas Dane County was in the midst of certifying the election.
There are conflicting accounts of what occurred subsequent: An unidentified Madison election employee claimed that the county was knowledgeable concerning the ballots that day, however Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell has vehemently denied this. Both method, Witzel-Behl, who informed Votebeat she was on trip for a lot of the time following Election Day, didn’t observe up with the county, and people ballots have been by no means counted. She additionally failed to instantly notify state or metropolis officers exterior the clerk’s workplace.
A second batch of 125 ballots was found within the clerk’s workplace on Dec. 3. Nonetheless, workers didn’t relay that info to the Wisconsin Elections Fee till Dec. 18 — nicely after the state licensed the election. The fee then notified Haas concerning the error, and Haas relayed the information to the mayor’s workplace — which is when each realized of the issue for the primary time.
Whereas Witzel-Behl has sought to deal with among the points, her workplace stays below scrutiny from the Madison mayor’s workplace, the state and now a civil declare in search of damages for the ballots that went uncounted. She has proposed procedural adjustments, together with requiring clerk’s workers to confirm all election supplies acquired on Election Night time and guaranteeing that every polling place receives a listing of the absentee-ballot courier luggage it handles to stop any from being missed.
The April 1 election that Haas will oversee for Madison features a pair of high-profile contests: a race for a pivotal Wisconsin Supreme Courtroom seat and a poll query on whether or not the state’s picture ID requirement for voting must be enshrined within the structure. Supreme Courtroom elections usually draw a excessive turnout, particularly in Madison.
Haas mentioned he anticipated a clean election, regardless of the investigation.
“I’m fully assured within the potential of the extremely educated, extremely competent skilled workers on the Clerk’s Workplace to proceed the operations of the workplace with out interruption, together with conducting the upcoming spring main election,” Haas mentioned. “I look ahead to working with them to make sure a safe, clear, and protected election.”
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat primarily based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
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