Audit Bureau Does Hatchet Job on Elections Commission

The Legislative Audit Bureau’s report on the November 2021 elections is a hatchet job on the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

But let’s be clear at the outset: The report found nothing to demonstrate, and did not conclude, that the results of the elections were invalid. It presented no evidence of sweeping improprieties or calculated partisan maneuvers that distorted the outcome of the elections. None of that is in this report. Nothing of that kind.

Instead, the report found discrepancies that are typical of most elections. A total of “four individuals may have voted twice,” it noted, and “eleven individual who died before November 3” but had already cast their absentee ballots likely had their votes counted, and “eight individuals with ongoing felony sentences may have voted.”

That’s 23 out of a total of 3,241,050 voters. That’s 0.0007 percent!

Instead of finding massive illegal voting, the LAB went after the Wisconsin Elections Commission in a biased, one-sided, and unprecedented way.

Contrary to past practice, the LAB did not share its findings with the agency it was investigating ahead of time. It admitted as much, with a pathetic excuse.

“Although we typically allow an audited entity the opportunity to review our draft audit report and respond in writing to it, we did not do so for this report,” the LAB wrote. “To preserve the statutorily required confidentiality of our audit until its completion, we did not provide WEC with an opportunity to review a confidential draft audit report and respond in writing to this report prior to its release.”

There can always be leaks when the LAB shares a draft with the agency it’s investigating. There was no reason to change policy for the Wisconsin Elections Commission, and the fact that the LAB did so this time undermines the validity of the report itself.

The LAB scolded the Wisconsin Elections Commission for the way it operated the elections and the advice it gave to clerks in response to the COVID pandemic – a pandemic that the LAB seemed remarkably clueless and callous about.

For instance, the LAB rapped the knuckles of the Elections Commission staff for not complying with the statutes when, in March of 2020, at the height of the pandemic, they waived off special voting deputies from going to retirement facilities and long-term care facilities in the middle of the pandemic and instead mailed out absentee ballots to the residents.

Not only was this the prudent thing to do. The staff was in a legal bind, as even the LAB admitted: “WEC’s staff did so based on WEC’s interpretation that the deputies were ‘non-essential’ individuals prohibited from visiting facilities and homes as a result of Executive Order 72 and DHS directives pertaining to the public health emergency.”

Still, they were criticized for this.

There was virtually no acknowledgment of the extraordinary circumstances that the Wisconsin Elections Commission was facing with the pandemic and with the surge of absentee ballot requests. Rather, there was a lot of nitpicking by the LAB.

Substantively, on the question of drop boxes, the report noted that Wisconsin statutes are silent on whether they can be used or not. It did not find that they were used illegally.

Same with “Democracy in the Park” in Madison and efforts by clerks in other municipalities to gather absentee ballots outside of the clerk’s office.

Nor did the report find that the use of consultants by some municipalities was a big issue.

So the red herrings that we’ve been hearing about for so many months now actually did not amount to anything.

Matt Rothschild is the executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.