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"Significant discrepancies" in Madison Clerk's Story
No one in the city of Madison’s investigation into the nearly 200 missing absentee ballots from last November’s election uses the word liar.
Instead, the report says there are dozens of "significant discrepancies" in what former Madison Clerk Maribth Witzel-Behl told investigators and what the other witnesses in the case said.
The city of Madison released the report on its investigation into the missing ballots Wednesday. It paints a picture of Witzel-Behl as disconnected, distracted, and unconcerned with how 193 absentee ballots were lost on Election Day, and never counted.
“While the mistake in getting the ballots counted on election night appears to have been primarily a process and training failure that could have been avoided, there were multiple opportunities for the ballots to have subsequently been counted after election day. The failure to do so was a dereliction of duties on the part of the City Clerk,” the report states.
Investigators say they didn’t find any evidence that Witzel-Behl broke any state laws, but the report also said the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s investigation could find differently.
Madison’s investigators spoke with 12 people in the clerk’s office, including Witzel-Behl. The report repeatedly stated that “there is significant evidence to support the contention that [Witzel-Behl’s] responses to questions given in interviews related to this investigation, her responses to WEC, information she provided to the Office of the City Attorney and information she provided to the Mayor’s Office deviated significantly from, and was inconsistent with, the recall of all other interviewees.”
Those inconsistencies include Witzel-Behl’s claim that she told WEC and the Dane County Clerk’s Office about the missing ballots. Witnesses said she did not. And her claim that she didn’t find out about the second batch of missing ballots til almost a month after Election Day. Witnesses told investigators that she knew about them a week after Election Day, and did nothing.
You can read the full report here.
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