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Madison Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl has been placed on administrative leave at least through the April 1 election, as city and state officials continue to investigate how she and her staff lost track of nearly 200 ballots on Election Day last fall, the city announced Wednesday.
Mike Haas, Madison’s city attorney, will take over her duties in the interim. Municipalities typically prefer not to make changes to election oversight so close to an election, but Haas, a former administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, is widely considered one of the state’s foremost experts on election law. It’s not clear when — or whether — Witzel-Behl will return to her post.
“Given the nature of the issues being investigated, we felt this was a necessary step to maintain public confidence in the operations of our Clerk’s office,” Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said.
The scrutiny of Witzel-Behl follows a series of oversights that contributed to the mishandling of ballots during the 2024 election.
In its probe, the Wisconsin Elections Commission found that mistakes began well before Election Day. One involved the poll books showing the list of registered voters in each ward. For the two polling locations where 193 ballots went missing, Witzel-Behl’s office printed the poll books on Oct. 23, nearly two weeks before Election Day, despite commission guidance urging election officials to print poll books as close to the election as possible.
If the poll books had been printed later, they would have automatically marked certain absentee voters’ ballots as having been returned, making it clearer to poll workers on Election Day that some ballots had been received but not counted. Instead, poll workers manually highlighted the poll books to indicate returned ballots — a method that Wisconsin Elections Commission staff warned could have made it less clear to city and county officials reviewing the election results that some ballots were still outstanding.
“I am genuinely troubled by the number of profoundly bad decisions that are recited in these materials leading up to Election Day,” commission Chair Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, said in a meeting last week.
In that commission meeting, Jacobs also highlighted what she called an “absolutely shocking set of dates post-election, where every opportunity to fix this is ignored.”
In a statement to Votebeat, Jacobs said she wasn’t surprised by Witzel-Behl being placed on leave.
“We cannot have elections where properly-cast ballots are not counted due to administrative errors,” she said. “City Attorney Michael Haas is to be commended for stepping in to manage the upcoming April 1 election with less than 3 weeks to prepare … I have every confidence he will do everything he can to restore trust in Madison’s elections.”
Clerk’s staff found the first batch of ballots — 68 in total — in a previously unopened courier bag in the clerk’s office on Nov. 12, while Dane County was in the middle of certifying the election.
There are conflicting accounts of what happened next: An unidentified Madison election worker claimed that the county was informed about the ballots that day, but Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell has vehemently denied this. Either way, Witzel-Behl, who told Votebeat she was on vacation for much of the time following Election Day, didn’t follow up with the county, and those ballots were never counted. She also failed to immediately notify state or city officials outside the clerk’s office.
A second batch of 125 ballots was discovered in the clerk’s office on Dec. 3. However, staff didn’t relay that information to the Wisconsin Elections Commission until Dec. 18 — well after the state certified the election. The commission then notified Haas about the error, who relayed the news to the mayor’s office — which is when both learned of the problem for the first time.
While Witzel-Behl has sought to address some of the issues, her office remains under scrutiny from the Madison mayor’s office, the state, and now a civil claim seeking damages for the ballots that went uncounted. She has proposed procedural changes, including requiring clerk’s staff to verify all election materials received on Election Night and ensuring that each polling place receives a list of the absentee-ballot courier bags it handles to prevent any from being overlooked.
The April 1 election that Haas will oversee for Madison includes a pair of high-profile contests: a race for a pivotal Wisconsin Supreme Court seat and a ballot question on whether the state’s photo ID requirement for voting should be enshrined in the constitution. Although it’s an off-year, Supreme Court elections typically draw a high turnout, especially in Madison.
Haas said he expected a smooth election, despite the investigation.
“I am completely confident in the ability of the highly trained, incredibly competent professional staff at the Clerk’s Office to continue the operations of the office without interruption, including conducting the upcoming spring primary election,” Haas said. “I look forward to working with them to ensure a secure, transparent, and safe election.”
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.
