Critics Call For Firing Of Incompetent Wisconsin Election Official

Right on cue, Green Bay city officials have changed course on an audit of the latest ballot debacle in the City Clerk’s office, opting to handle the matter in house. So much for an “independent review” of a disgraced election official with a long record of incompetence and failure to follow Wisconsin law. 

Meanwhile, the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), a Virginia-based nonpartisan, nonprofit, public-interest election law firm, on Monday sent a friendly letter to Green Bay’s far-left mayor and city council encouraging them to permanently relieve City Clerk Celestine Jeffreys of her duties. 

‘Unacceptable’ 

Jeffries was placed on administrative leave last week after her office sent an unspecified number of absentee ballots to voters in several Green Bay wards —  in advance of swing state Wisconsin’s August primary. Jeffreys’ office described the mistake as a “printing error,” according to the Green Bay Press Gazette. 

In a statement to The Federalist earlier this week, the city said Jeffreys would remain on leave pending the completion of an “ongoing internal review” and a separate investigation by the Wisconsin Elections Commission. 

But the city’s Protection and Policy Committee has ditched a planned independent audit of Green Bay’s suspect election administration processes and is instead directing city staff to complete a full report, according to WBAY. Staff members will present their findings at the Aug. 18 city council meeting, the news outlet reported. 

As The Federalist reported, the bungling clerk’s latest miscue occurred less than three months after the office issued duplicate absentee ballots “in at least 152 instances” before the city’s spring elections. The Republican Party of Wisconsin and Brown County GOP board member Theresa Sipes filed a complaint with the Wisconsin Elections Commission. 

At a meeting on Thursday, the Wisconsin Elections Commission moved to open an investigation into Green Bay’s top election official, who has repeatedly broken state election law and has continuously undercut voter confidence in Wisconsin’s third-largest city, as The Federalist reported.

In a statement issued last week, Mayor Eric Genrich called the errors “unacceptable,” but insisted the city has “no concerns with the security or propriety of the electoral process.” He said that the city is acting to make sure “these errors are never replicated.” 

But city officials said the same in April. 

“It’s not an ‘oops.’ There’s a long track record of this,” Doug Reich, chairman of the Republican Party of Brown County, told The Federalist on Sunday in a phone interview. “It’s up to the mayor’s office and the city council to remove her from that position and hold her accountable, and when that fails to happen, we’re supposed to have WEC do it.” 

‘Unaware’

As the Public Interest Legal Foundation’s Research Director Logan Churchwell wrote in the letter to city officials, the city clerk has yet again violated state election law and Wisconsin Elections Commission guidance. Will she be held accountable? She really hasn’t been yet. 

“Over the years, it seems Clerk Jeffreys relies on WEC violations for on-the-job training. Madison cannot fix this, but you can. Surely you want the situation to remedy,” Churchwell wrote. 

Indeed. 

Jeffreys has on multiple occasions failed to comply with procedures for auditing voters who have registered to vote at their polling places on Election Day. As The Federalist has reported, Jeffreys admitted that she didn’t comply with the law. Her defense? She wasn’t aware of the law. 

PILF brought that successful WEC complaint against Jeffreys. In the letter to Green Bay officials, Churchwell noted that a PILF representative interviewed the clerk in her office after getting “nowhere” with open records requests. 

“During the interview, Jeffreys said it was WEC’s responsibility to perform audits, not hers. After the WEC complaint was filed, the story drastically changed,” the letter notes. 

Green Bay’s city attorney was forced to explain to the Elections Commission that Genrich’s hand-picked clerk was “unaware that she was required to do each of these things, but plans to do so going forward, and is in the process of drafting written procedures for doing so.”

That’s been a common theme in Jeffreys’ nearly six-year tenure as Green Bay’s top election officer. In April, when her office sent out the first batch of duplicate ballots, the feckless Elections Commission ordered her to “conform her conduct to the law and put procedures in place” to avoid the debacle in the future. 

Now Jeffreys is being asked to come up with a plan to ensure voters who received duplicate ballots don’t cast more than one in the primary. And she must — again — create procedures to prevent the “errors” from happening in the future. How is Jeffreys to do all of that on administrative leave? That’s not clear. 

‘We Will Happily Travel to Green Bay’

Churchwell asserts the mayor and the city council can make sure Jeffreys doesn’t break another election law.

“Wisconsin law and Green Bay ordinance require cause for removal of an appointed principal municipal officer. Two sustained WEC complaints are cause,” the PILF official wrote. “Three complaints would be learned helplessness. Are your future re-election efforts worth the risk?

Churchwell pledged the foundation’s support for “any investigative or other deliberations” the city requires.

“We will happily travel to Green Bay to provide our files on her failures,” the research director wrote. 

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.