MADISON – Two Madison voters whose ballots for last month’s spring election were marked for rejection after the city clerk’s office failed to ensure they arrived on time are suing the Wisconsin Elections Commission, which handed down the order to discard them.
A lawsuit filed May 6 in Dane County Circuit Court argues 23 Madison voters were “disenfranchised through no fault of their own” because the Madison City Clerk’s Office failed to ensure their ballots arrived at polling places on time. The legal challenge comes the day after the Dane County Board of Canvassers voted to appeal the commission’s order to reject the ballots.
The liberal firm Law Forward is representing two of the 23 voters whose absentee ballots arrived at polling places after they closed for the April 7 election. The ballots had arrived at Madison Clerk Lydia McComas’ office on April 6.
WEC chairwoman Ann Jacobs said in an April 30 special meeting she hoped the affected voters would appeal the bipartisan commission’s decision, noting commissioners must follow the law that forbids the ballots to be counted and cannot act as judges.
State law requires such ballots to be at polling locations before 8 p.m. on Election Day.
“I hope they pursue this with the judiciary. I hope that the sins of the clerk are not settled on the shoulders of the voter,” Jacobs said. “It’s astonishing that we have to do this again.”
The voters “did everything Wisconsin law asked of them, and the city and county properly counted their ballots,” Law Forward president and general counsel Jeff Mandell said in a statement.
The votes are being erased “from the record because of a clerical error these voters had absolutely no control over,” he said.
In the commission’s meeting last month, Jacobs and Republican Commissioner Don Millis called McComas’ failure to get the ballots to the voters’ polling places before the 8 p.m. deadline “an absurd error,” and an “epic failure,” respectively.
“This entire situation troubles me on so many levels. This was an absurd error, apparently committed by somebody who was involved in Madison’s previous absurd errors coming out of the November election,” Jacobs said, referring to Madison’s failure to count nearly 200 ballots during the 2024 presidential election. The incident triggered an investigation by the commission, the first in the body’s history.
McComas, in a statement after the commission’s April 30 meeting, said, “It’s disappointing that the Wisconsin Election Commission’s directive is to reject ballots that were properly cast by voters.”
“We also strongly urge the state Legislature to consider revising state statutes to ease the administrative burden on local clerks so that every eligible ballot is counted — particularly when a voter did nothing wrong,” McComas said.
Law Forward’s complaint asks the court to reinstate the original canvass totals, which include the 23 rejected votes, and compel WEC to count the votes before the state canvass deadline of May 15.
Just three of the late-arriving ballots were marked so they could be specifically removed from the total by the Madison Board of Canvassers; the remaining 20 were addressed by withdrawing ballots from the total at random.
“Failing to count these absentee votes will only erode trust in our elections and jeopardize access to voting in future elections. It’s critical that the court take urgent action to ensure these votes are counted,” Mandell said.
Jessie Opoien can be reached at jessie.opoien@jrn.com.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Lawsuit challenges order tossing 23 late absentee ballots in Madison
Reporting by Jessie Opoien, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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