Wisconsin ballot error highlights pressures on election officials ahead of November

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Everything had been going just fine on the morning of election day in Summit, Wisconsin, when a voter walked up to an election official and asked why Chanz Green wasn’t on the ballot as a state Assembly candidate. 

A few checks, a couple calls, and then panic set in: It was an election official’s worst nightmare. 

The Douglas County clerk, who’s relatively new to leading the office, assigned the wrong Assembly race to the small northern Wisconsin town. Summit’s town clerk, who’s also somewhat new, didn’t catch it. Neither did the candidates. Only a voter did, on the last day of a 47-day voting period. 

The error didn’t alter the outcome of the election. The Assembly primary race that Summit voters were supposed to have had on their ballot was decided by a margin larger than the number of registered voters in the town.

But it did deprive the 188 people who cast a ballot the opportunity to vote in the correct Assembly race. Election officials take seriously any error in which a voter is disenfranchised, no matter the effect on the outcome. In many ways the goal of every aspect of their work — and their ability to earn voters’ trust — is based on avoiding this very situation.

And three months ahead of the November election, it raised alarms across the state. Some Wisconsin residents said it shook their trust in elections. The losing candidate in the Assembly primary race called for a new election — and for the resignation of Douglas County Clerk Kaci Jo Lundgren.

Speaking to Votebeat, Lundgren, a Democrat, took full blame for the error but also highlighted an issue that she said almost certainly factored into it: inexperienced election officials.

“I should have had additional review done on the ballots by more people,” Lundgren said. “I have new staff. I have new clerks. So unfortunately, it was missed.”

The error — along with its causes and aftermath — provides a view into the challenges of election administration in Wisconsin today. County and municipal clerks, hundreds of whom are new to the job at any given point, not only have to learn how to administer elections but must also adjust their operations quickly as rapid-fire litigation changes the rules sometimes just months or weeks before an election.

Just this year, clerks and their municipal boards have had to decide whether and how to implement drop boxes amid new guidelines and rhetoric that could foster increased third-party monitoring. They’re adjusting now to a recent ruling requiring clerks to implement technology to send markable electronic ballots to voters with disabilities in November. They’ve also had to adjust to two new constitutional amendments passed in April that limit clerks’ ability to receive outside money and assistance.

They’re doing all this in an environment of increased scrutiny and sometimes unbounded conspiracy theories. Beyond the demand for her to resign, Lundgren’s significant mistake led to calls to get rid of voting machines and the Wisconsin Elections Commission — neither of which factored heavily into the error — and an allegation that county clerks are “ushers of the communist stolen elections.”

Such rhetoric has gotten “so constant,” said Paul Gronke, a political science professor at Reed College who studies election administration. It has led some clerks to avoid discussing their work with community members, he said, or to leave the field entirely, often for lower-profile government jobs. Changing election laws add additional pressure, Gronke said.

“We have heard that a lot, that things are changing so quickly it’s just hard to keep up,” Gronke said. “That’s going to make errors more frequent.”

New maps compound difficulty for inexperienced officials

County clerks have also had to adjust to new legislative boundaries after a lawsuit earlier this year led to new maps in the middle of what’s usually a 10-year redistricting cycle. That’s the change that led to the election day mistake in Summit, and potentially to another ballot error in Racine County that was caught early enough to fix.

To Lundgren, the Douglas County clerk, the error was a lapse that the new staff and clerks in the county also didn’t catch. Neither did Dan Corbin, the town clerk in Summit, who didn’t return several calls to Votebeat. 

After a voter caught it on election day, Lundgren called the Wisconsin Elections Commission, seeking its direction to try to resolve the issue. There was no clear fix. The problem appeared unprecedented, Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe said, and there didn’t seem to be any Wisconsin court decision or law outlining specific next steps. 

Initially, the prospect of a do-over election was on the table. That was an option Scott Harbridge, the losing candidate in the Assembly race mistakenly left off the Summit ballot, supported. 

But on Aug. 20, the Douglas County board of canvassers certified the election. The county disqualified the votes that Summit voters cast for the Assembly race mistakenly put on their ballots. 

Trent Miner, the clerk in Wood County in central Wisconsin, said an error like the one in Douglas County could have occurred anywhere, even with a more experienced clerk, especially because of new legislative district lines.

“You live in mortal fear that you’re going to miss something,” said Miner, a Republican. “This is Kaci’s first presidential election — certainly not the first election she’s administered — but this is probably the first one since those new districts went into effect.”

A similar mistake happened elsewhere, too, ahead of the Aug. 13 election.

In the village of Caledonia in Racine County, absentee voters assigned to a polling place that serves two Assembly districts initially received ballots with the wrong Assembly race on them. 

County Clerk Wendy Christensen had put in wrong information when she was preparing ballots, and nobody caught it until after the ballots first went out.

“I have a slightly bigger team here than some of the counties up north, so we have even more sets of eyes on things,” said Christensen, a Republican. “We proof in teams of two, and then we give it to two other people and (do) multiple rounds of it. But even with more people and more sets of eyes, again, it can be missed.”

A voter caught the mistake about 10 days after the first round of ballots went out, giving election officials enough time to issue corrected ballots to absentee voters, Caledonia Village Clerk Jennifer Olsen said. All in-person voters got the correct ballots, she said.

Christensen said late rule changes, like the new maps, leave less time to look over things.

“Just when you sort of think you got it figured out, sometimes the rules change, or the maps change, or something else changes,” Christensen said.

Pressure on clerks increasing as November election approaches

On social media, some Wisconsin residents said mistakes like Lundgren’s perpetuate distrust in elections. One person said “county clerks are a big part of the problem,” adding, “F ‘em.”

“There’s a lot of people that don’t have faith that our elections are fair,” Harbridge told Votebeat on election day. “And, you know, I don’t want this just to be another thing that puts that dagger in our elections because we need to have everybody confident that our elections are fair.”

Harbridge said he had little confidence in Wolfe, the elections commission administrator. He also criticized outside vendors preparing ballots and said he supports eliminating voting machines in favor of hand-counted paper ballots. He later posted on social media that clerks should print their ballots locally, something many county clerks aren’t equipped to do. 

“The rhetoric isn’t productive,” Miner said. “Kaci made a mistake. She owned up to it. She admitted as soon as she found out. Kaci’s a great clerk. She is, and I know that because she’s taking this incredibly hard.”

For her part, Lundgren, who had spent 10 years working in the county clerk’s office before taking it over, was forthright with voters and the press. She took blame for the mistake, alerted the candidates once she found out about it, and said she’d examine how the error occurred to make sure it never happens again. County clerks and local officials contacted her with words of support and ideas for preventing similar issues in the future.

Still, she made a crucial mistake that amounted to a town not having the right race on the ballot.

What’s the best way to address that error?

For Angie Sapik, a Republican state representative and Douglas County Board member, there is no clear answer except avoiding the same mistake in the future.

“It was just an honest error on her part,” she said. “It doesn’t take away from the severity of the error because I think it is an enormous, enormous problem. But it is just a mistake, and I think it’s a mistake that is probably easy to make with how many changes there have been. She’s a great lady. She works really hard.”

For Harbridge, the solution is Lundgren’s resignation. But Gronke said such a step would be counterproductive.

“The immediate assumption that the best solution here is to get rid of the person because that person was new and not as experienced as they should be, and then you bring another new and inexperienced person, is certainly not the best way to do it,” he said. “The way to do it is to figure out what kind of protections can be put in place to ensure that this doesn’t happen in the future.”

The Wisconsin Elections Commission was slated to consider sending clerks a document on procedures to proofread ballots, which would go out to clerks if commissioners sign off on it at an upcoming meeting, agency spokesperson Joel DeSpain said.

Lundgren said she’s determined to stay in her job despite the criticism following her error. 

“I love what I do,” she said. “I love serving the public. I love my community and the people that I’m with. The political side of things can be difficult because of the heated nature that politics is in right now, and that’s what is difficult for me, but I know that I’m in the right spot for my community and to serve them.”

About Harbridge’s call for her to resign, she said, “If he is concerned about one error, getting a brand new clerk in this position, especially before a presidential election, that would be a huge disservice to Douglas County residents.” 

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.

This article first appeared on Wisconsin Watch and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.