Judge Rules 23 Madison Absentee Ballots Must Be Counted
Overturns ruling by Wisconsin Elections Commission.
Chief Inspector Megan Williamson processes absentee ballots at the Hawthorne Library on Madison’s East Side during the November 2022 election. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)
The Wisconsin Elections Commission should not have ordered the city of Madison to remove 23 late-arriving absentee ballots from its April 7 election count, a Dane County judge ruled.
The ruling, issued last week, was forced by a lawsuit from two of the voters whose ballots were affected. The lawsuit was brought by the voting rights-focused firm Law Forward.
During the April 7 election, the voters returned their ballots on time, but due to what city officials called an election administrator’s error, they were not delivered to the proper polling location until after polls closed at 8 p.m. State law requires that ballots be “delivered to the polling place no later than 8 p.m.”
At a May 6 meeting WEC decided to follow the exact letter of the law and found that the city must exclude the ballots. But the lawsuit argued that voters shouldn’t be punished because of an error outside of their control.
“Voters who comply with every element that is required for them to vote a special absentee vote, and then not being allowed to have the votes count, is contrary to what good law in Wisconsin has been,” Dane County Judge Everett Mitchell said in court.
WEC Chair Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, voted not to count the ballots, but expressed her hope during the commission discussions that a court would overturn the ruling.
“As I have indicated previously, as an administrative agency we are bound by the language of the state statutes which precluded counting those ballots,” Jacobs said in a statement after the ruling. “That said, it has been my firm belief that voters should not be penalized by the actions of a clerk as these 23 voters were. The right to vote should not be predicated on a clerk failing to deliver properly and timely submitted ballots.”
Judge rules 23 Madison absentee ballots must be counted was originally published by Wisconsin Examiner.
