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Green Bay Clerk Takes Leave of Absence
Green Bay’s election clerk may not be in charge of the city’s next election.
Green Bay’s mayor on Thursday announced that Clerk Cellestine Jeffreys has been placed on leave after she mailed duplicate ballots to some voters for the second straight election.
“While we have no concerns with the security or propriety of the electoral process, these errors in the Clerk’s Office are unacceptable,” a statement from the Green Bay mayor’s office said. “As we work to ensure these errors are never replicated, we welcome the input of the WEC and its staff.”
Jeffreys mailed 152 duplicate ballots ahead of the April election. She mailed an unknown number of duplicate ballots again ahead of August’s primary.
Wisconsin Elections Commission member Ann Jacobs said during a Thursday that that’s what bothers her the most.
“I'm really concerned that first of all it happened once, OK, but then for the exact same error to happen a second time weeks later is unconscionable,” Jacobs said. “What software are they using? How are they exporting it? Who is printing these labels? How do they not catch this?”
The Elections Commission investigation into the April duplicate ballots found that Jeffreys broke Wisconsin’s election law.
"The Commission finds that [Jeffreys], due to an error in processing certificate envelope labels, issued duplicate ballots to electors in violation of Wis. Stat. § 6.86(1)(ar)," WEC wrote earlier this month.
It is not clear when, or if, Jeffreys will return to her job.
Madison’s city clerk resigned from her job last year after an investigation showed that she ignored nearly 200 uncounted absentee ballots during the 2024 election. The Elections Commission said she violated the law in that case as well, but commissioners did not ask for formal charges.
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