State To Investigate How 193 Ballots Went Uncounted in Madison
Effort is proactive says Wisconsin Elections Commission, but revelation of ballots came more than a month after election.
Sign for the Wisconsin Elections Comission. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)
The Wisconsin Elections Commission voted Thursday to investigate how nearly 200 absentee ballots cast in Madison were overlooked and not counted on Election Night.
“This was such a serious oversight that I didn’t want to wait for a complaint,” the commission chair, Ann Jacobs, said at a special meeting the commission held Thursday.
The investigation findings will be summarized to commissioners, who will “provide further direction” at a future meeting.
The uncounted ballots didn’t affect the outcome of any state or local elections, according to the elections commission staff.
Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said Thursday that the city welcomed the investigation.
“I fully support this independent review, and look forward to WEC’s findings and recommendations, which will inform any changes we make to prevent a similar situation from occurring in the future,” Rhodes-Conway said in a statement.
The Madison City Clerk’s office told the elections commission in a memo Dec. 20 about the overlooked Nov. 5 ballots in two Madison wards. A bag containing 68 unprocessed absentee ballots from two wards was found Nov. 12 in a tabulator bin, the memo stated. During reconciliation of ballots on Dec. 3, clerk employees found two sealed envelopes contained a total of 125 unprocessed absentee ballots from another ward.
The mayor’s office announced the unprocessed ballots Dec. 26. In a public statement the same day, the clerk’s office said that in future elections, “every polling location will receive a list of absentee envelope seal numbers that will be verified as counted on Election Day.”
Wisconsin Elections Commission to investigate uncounted Madison absentee ballots was originally published by Wisconsin Examiner.
When municipalities are intentionally not given by Republican legislators the opportunity to count mail in ballots before Election Day, something like this is bound to happen in large cities. The WEC should find out what happened. I think this issue is overhyped by the media when there are questionable practices by governmental agencies that have not been looked at which should be investigated.