The top election oversight body in the battleground state of Wisconsin kicked off 2025 by launching a bipartisan investigation of uncounted ballots in the state’s capital city.
Election integrity advocates say that’s a good first step.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission—equally split with Republicans and Democrats—voted 6-0 on Thursday to investigate why the city of Madison certified the 2024 election while leaving 193 absentee ballots uncounted and whether election officials complied with state law.
“What I’m really concerned about is having confidence in elections. These problems have come up in Madison, Milwaukee, and Green Bay, so people are already skeptical,” Annette Olson, the CEO of the MacIver Institute for Public Policy, a Wisconsin think tank, told The Daily Signal on Friday. “We need to ensure voters that all legal votes are counted, and counted on time.”
Olson added that a unanimous vote by the Wisconsin Elections Commission is significant, because its members “tend to argue a lot.” She added the commission’s staff needs to demonstrate it’s serious in the probe.
“It could be significant that the commission understands there is enough of a public outcry. But we want to know whether they will do their job, or just go through the motions,” Olson added.
The commission staff will conduct what is reportedly the first such probe in its eight-year history.
The 193 uncounted absentee ballots—out of 174,132 ballots cast in the city—reportedly would not have changed any election results. Still, state officials were concerned about the lack of transparency from city officials, who discovered the first set of uncounted ballots a week after the Nov. 5 election, but did not report the matter to the public or state officials until mid-December.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission’s chairwoman, Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, commented in a thread on X about the matter.
“On 12/26, I directed our legal team to prepare a memo on what authority the WEC had to further investigate the matter,” Jacobs wrote in one of the posts. “That memo indicated that the WEC did have the power to investigate, and I asked that a meeting be scheduled so that the WEC could vote to investigate.”
In the concluding post, she said: “It is our hope to have the necessary answers and a full understanding of what went wrong in the next two weeks. The [commission] will then meet to discuss what our next steps should be to both address what has already happened and to prevent it from happening in the future!”
At the national level, the Election Integrity Network, a national coalition of state and local groups, endorsed the investigation.
“Every ballot matters, because every voter matters, and concerns about vote-count irregularities in Madison must be addressed on behalf of all its voters and indeed, on behalf of all Wisconsin voters,” Kerri Toloczko, executive vice president of the Election Integrity Network, said in a public statement. “At EIN, we are encouraged that WEC has taken this issue so seriously, and expect the commission will address any abnormalities with both the seriousness and transparency that the issue demands.”
The Wisconsin Elections Commission sent a nine-page records request, which both the mayor and city clerk responded they would cooperate with.
The office of Madison City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl did not respond to an inquiry from The Daily Signal by publication time. However, Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway issued a public statement Thursday after the commission’s vote.
“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,” the mayor said.
Rhodes-Conway also sent a message to the Wisconsin Elections Commission pledging to cooperate and “provide all requested and relevant documents.”
“As I have stated, this oversight, and the time it took to bring it to the attention of other city officials and the WEC, is a significant departure from the high standard our residents expect and must be addressed and avoided in future elections,” the mayor added. “I agree with the WEC staff memorandum, which states that an investigation can help provide transparency and accountability, as well as, hopefully, provide lessons that all Wisconsin clerks can learn to prevent similar errors in the future.”
On Dec. 26, the day after Christmas, the mayor’s office provided a timeline to the public.
The timeline says on Nov. 12, a week after the election, personnel in the city clerk’s office discovered 68 unprocessed absentee ballots. On Nov. 29, the Wisconsin Elections Commission certified the Nov. 5 election for the state. On Dec. 3, the clerk’s office found an additional 125 unprocessed absentee ballots.
On Dec. 18, the Madison clerk’s office notified the Wisconsin Elections Commission about unprocessed ballots. The WEC staff contacted Madison City Attorney Michael Haas about the matter, and it was the first time he heard of the uncounted ballots, according to the mayor’s timeline.
An “explanation of events” from the city clerk’s office on Dec. 20 said: “The city of Madison clerk’s office staff plans to debrief these incidents and implement better processes to ensure all delivered carrier envelopes are accounted for and processed on election night.”
The McIver Institute’s Olson noted some of the skepticism comes from the 2024 Senate race. Democratic incumbent Sen. Tammy Baldwin—who appeared to be losing early on election night—won by almost 29,000 votes, after Milwaukee reported more absentee ballots.
Republican former President Donald Trump, running for reelection, carried the state against Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris by almost 30,000 votes. Four years earlier, Joe Biden carried the state, and Trump won it in 2016.
