{"id":14618,"date":"2025-01-06T22:03:15","date_gmt":"2025-01-06T23:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=14618"},"modified":"2025-01-06T23:58:27","modified_gmt":"2025-01-06T23:58:27","slug":"wisconsin-to-probe-how-193-absentee-ballots-went-uncounted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=14618","title":{"rendered":"Wisconsin to Probe How 193 Absentee Ballots Went Uncounted"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/wisconsindailystar.com\/news\/wisconsin-to-probe-how-193-absentee-ballots-went-uncounted\/dsignal\/2025\/01\/06\/<\/a><\/p>\n

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by Fred Lucas<\/h5>\n

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The top election oversight body in the battleground state of\u00a0Wisconsin<\/a>\u00a0kicked off 2025 by launching a bipartisan investigation of uncounted ballots in the state\u2019s capital city.<\/p>\n

Election integrity<\/a>\u00a0advocates say that\u2019s a good first step.<\/p>\n

The Wisconsin Elections Commission\u2014equally split with Republicans and Democrats\u2014voted 6-0 on Thursday to investigate why the\u00a0city of Madison<\/a>\u00a0certified the\u00a02024 election<\/a>\u00a0while leaving 193 absentee ballots uncounted and whether election officials complied with state law.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I\u2019m really concerned about is having confidence in elections. These problems have come up in Madison, Milwaukee, and Green Bay, so people are already skeptical,\u201d Annette Olson, the CEO of the\u00a0MacIver Institute for Public Policy<\/a>, a Wisconsin think tank, told The Daily Signal on Friday. \u201cWe need to ensure voters that all legal votes are counted, and counted on time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Olson added that a unanimous vote by the Wisconsin Elections Commission is significant, because its members \u201ctend to argue a lot.\u201d She added the commission\u2019s staff needs to demonstrate it\u2019s serious in the probe.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt could be significant that the commission understands there is enough of a public outcry. But we want to know whether they will do their job, or just go through the motions,\u201d Olson added.<\/p>\n

The commission staff will conduct what is\u00a0reportedly the first<\/a>\u00a0such probe in its eight-year history.<\/p>\n

The 193 uncounted absentee ballots\u2014out of\u00a0174,132 ballots cast<\/a>\u00a0in the city\u2014reportedly would\u00a0not have changed<\/a>\u00a0any election results. Still, state officials were concerned about the lack of transparency from city officials, who discovered the first set of uncounted ballots a week after the Nov. 5 election, but did not report the matter to the public or state officials until mid-December.<\/p>\n

The Wisconsin Elections Commission\u2019s chairwoman, Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, commented in a thread on X about the matter.<\/p>\n

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Wisconsin voting: A brief update on the 193 City of Madison absentee ballots that were not counted. The WI Elections Commission (WEC) did not learn about these ballots until 12\/18\/24, long after the election had been certified (on 11\/29\/24). 1\/6<\/p>\n

\u2014 Ann Jacobs (@AnnJacobsMKE) January 3, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cOn 12\/26, I directed our legal team to prepare a memo on what authority the WEC had to further investigate the matter,\u201d Jacobs wrote in one of the posts. \u201cThat memo indicated that the WEC did have the power to investigate, and I asked that a meeting be scheduled so that the WEC could vote to investigate.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the concluding post, she said: \u201cIt is our hope to have the necessary answers and a full understanding of what went wrong in the next two weeks. The [commission] will then meet to discuss what our next steps should be to both address what has already happened and to prevent it from happening in the future!\u201d<\/p>\n

At the national level, the Election Integrity Network, a national coalition of state and local groups, endorsed the investigation.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery ballot matters, because every voter matters, and concerns about vote-count irregularities in Madison must be addressed on behalf of all its voters and indeed, on behalf of all Wisconsin voters,\u201d Kerri Toloczko, executive vice president of the Election Integrity Network, said in a public statement. \u201cAt EIN, we are encouraged that WEC has taken this issue so seriously, and expect the commission will address any abnormalities with both the seriousness and transparency that the issue demands.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Wisconsin Elections Commission sent a nine-page records request, which both the mayor and city clerk responded they would cooperate with.<\/p>\n

The office of Madison City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl did not respond to an inquiry from The Daily Signal by publication time. However, Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway issued a public statement Thursday after the commission\u2019s vote.<\/p>\n

\u201cI fully support this independent review, and look forward to WEC\u2019s findings and recommendations, which will inform any changes we make to prevent a similar situation from occurring in the future,\u201d the\u00a0mayor said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rhodes-Conway also sent a message to the Wisconsin Elections Commission pledging to cooperate and \u201cprovide all requested and relevant documents.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I have stated, this oversight, and the time it took to bring it to the attention of other city officials and the WEC, is a significant departure from the high standard our residents expect and must be addressed and avoided in future elections,\u201d the mayor added. \u201cI agree with the WEC staff memorandum, which states that an investigation can help provide transparency and accountability, as well as, hopefully, provide lessons that all Wisconsin clerks can learn to prevent similar errors in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Dec. 26, the day after Christmas, the mayor\u2019s office\u00a0provided a timeline<\/a>\u00a0to the public.<\/p>\n

The timeline says on Nov. 12, a week after the election, personnel in the city clerk\u2019s office discovered 68 unprocessed absentee ballots. On Nov. 29, the Wisconsin Elections Commission certified the Nov. 5 election for the state. On Dec. 3, the clerk\u2019s office found an additional 125 unprocessed absentee ballots.<\/p>\n

On Dec. 18, the Madison clerk\u2019s office notified the Wisconsin Elections Commission about unprocessed ballots. The WEC staff contacted Madison City Attorney Michael Haas about the matter, and it was the first time he heard of the uncounted ballots, according to the mayor\u2019s timeline.<\/p>\n

An \u201cexplanation of events<\/a>\u201d from the city clerk\u2019s office on Dec. 20 said: \u201cThe city of Madison clerk\u2019s office staff plans to debrief these incidents and implement better processes to ensure all delivered carrier envelopes are accounted for and processed on election night.\u201d<\/p>\n

The McIver Institute\u2019s Olson noted some of the skepticism comes from the 2024 Senate race. Democratic incumbent Sen. Tammy Baldwin\u2014who appeared to be losing early on election night\u2014won by almost 29,000 votes, after Milwaukee reported more absentee ballots.<\/p>\n

Republican former President\u00a0Donald Trump<\/a>, running for reelection, carried the state against Democratic Vice President\u00a0Kamala Harris<\/a>\u00a0by almost 30,000 votes. Four years earlier, Joe Biden carried the state, and Trump won it in 2016.<\/p>\n

\u2013 \u2013 \u2013<\/p>\n

Fred Lucas is chief news correspondent and manager of the Investigative Reporting Project for The Daily Signal. He is the author of \u201cThe Myth of Voter Suppression: The Left\u2019s Assault on Clean Elections.<\/a>\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

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Appeared at and reprinted from DailySignal.com<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
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The post Wisconsin to Probe How 193 Absentee Ballots Went Uncounted<\/a> appeared first on The Wisconsin Daily Star<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/wisconsindailystar.com\/news\/wisconsin-to-probe-how-193-absentee-ballots-went-uncounted\/dsignal\/2025\/01\/06\/ by Fred Lucas \u00a0 The top election oversight body…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":138,"featured_media":3495,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wi-daily-star"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/138"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14618"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14619,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14618\/revisions\/14619"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}