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WEC Orders Madison to Change Election Operations
Madison’s city attorney is fighting any effort to change the city’s elections operations after the city’s old clerk failed to count nearly 200 absentee ballots.
City Attorney Michael Haas, who used to lead the Wisconsin Elections Commission, on Monday sent the commission a letter asking if they have the power to order Madison to make changes.
“The Commission’s authority does not extend to requiring the future implementation of specific procedures in excess of those required in the statutes,” Haas wrote in his letter. “The Commission’s Section 5.06 authority also is not a tool to simply punish a clerk or a jurisdiction for past conduct.”
The Election Commission ordered Madison to make several operational changes after former clerk Marybeth Witzel-Behl failed to count 193 absentee ballots last summer. An Elections Commission investigation found that not only did Witzel-Behl not count the votes on Election Day, investigators said she ignored them and went on vacation. It was another month before Witzel-Behl’s office reported the missing ballots to anyone.
Haas said the Election Commissions recommendations to count all of the ballots going forward are “concerning.”
"None of the actions described in the proposed orders are specifically required by the statutes...Rather, the proposed orders are ad hoc directives presumably aimed at improving the overall administration of elections,” Haas added.
He said the Elections Commission is looking to force Madison’s election office to do things that no other election office in the state would be required to do.
“While this idea may seem wise in theory, it is a broad mandate that clearly interferes with the authority of the municipal clerk,” Haas wrote.
The Elections Commission said in its report last month that the failures in Madison’s clerk’s office were “structural” and likely broke the law. While commissioners did not ask for criminal charges to be filed, they did ask for changes to be made.
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