Wisconsin

Wisconsin: Hundreds of towns fall short of cybersecurity best practices | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

Approximately one-third of municipal clerks in Wisconsin continue to rely on commercial email accounts such as Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail for official election operations, exposing small-town jurisdictions to heightened spoofing and phishing risks. A state analysis reveals a stark technological divide between well-funded, larger municipalities using secure government domains and rural towns of fewer than 5,000 residents operating on minimal IT budgets. While registering a official government domain is free, the recurring costs of hosting, technical management, and cybersecurity protections—often running thousands of dollars annually—pose a barrier for small jurisdictions as federal grant funding dwindles. Read Article

Wisconsin: Plans in place if servers falter on election night | Wisconsin Law Journal

Milwaukee wasn’t the only place in Wisconsin with election-night issues during the Aug. 11 primary that prolonged the reporting of unofficial results in an extremely close Democratic race for governor. Green and Winnebago counties experienced server issues that delayed the time the two county clerks were able to upload results to their websites, though the problems didn’t affect the accuracy of the results. A new report from the Wisconsin Elections Commission shows the bipartisan agency’s staff met after the election with officials in those two counties and Liberty Vote, the counties’ voting equipment vendor, about a “small number of equipment-related concerns” on Election Day. In a statement to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a spokesperson for Liberty Vote, formerly known as Dominion Voting Systems, said “no votes were lost, altered, or miscounted. The review identified a configuration setting governing the format in which unofficial results are transmitted from municipal locations to the county reporting system. The setting has been corrected in both counties. In Winnebago County, Liberty Vote separately identified a hardware fault in the county’s server and replaced the unit within two weeks of the primary,” the spokesperson said. . Read Article

Wisconsin; Milwaukee voting machine logs reveal nothing askew despite election conspiracy theories | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

It took mere minutes for conspiracy theorists to seize on a Milwaukee election error after the August primary, when officials initially forgot to extract election results from five of the city’s nine absentee ballot tabulators. They lobbed baseless accusations that election officials had switched votes or otherwise tampered with the results. But audit logs from those five tabulators show no evidence of tampering between the time officials initially left the facility and returned again to correctly extract results. “I don’t see a ‘there’ there,” said Duncan Buell, a chair emeritus of computer science and engineering at the University of South Carolina who has been analyzing election data and voting systems since 2010. Read Article

Wisconsin Elections Commission says new mail-in voting rule won’t apply to Wisconsin clerks | Molly Beck/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Wisconsin election clerks are not required to comply with the requirements of a new rule governing mail-in ballots that has been blocked by a federal judge under new guidance from the state's top election officials. Members of the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission voted unanimously during a meeting Monday to issue new guidance surrounding the legal battle over rules issued by the U.S. Postal Service that aim to restrict mail-in voting. President Trump's effort to place new restrictions on voting ahead of the 2026 midterm elections has been caught in a legal back-and-forth since he signed an executive order in March that would put mail-in voting under the Postal Service's oversight. Read Article

Wisconsin commissioners want answers on Milwaukee election night gaffe | Molly Beck and Jessie Opolen/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

State election commissioners are asking Milwaukee officials to explain how workers there failed to download election results in a timely manner, leading to lengthy delays in ballot counting during the Aug. 11 primary. Members of the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission plan to discuss sending a letter seeking additional information from Milwaukee election officials during the commission's Aug. 31 meeting. "Fair or unfair, the eyes of the nation are often on Milwaukee and providing transparency into the system, especially when a mistake occurs, is a critical service to the voters of our state," the letter reads. Read Article

Wisconsin’s Green and Winnebago counties faced election result system errors in the August midterm primaries | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

Systems used to transmit unofficial election-night results broke down in Green and Winnebago counties during Wisconsin’s August primary, causing problems processing and posting results. The issues had no bearing on the official results that counties across the state are still certifying. But those breakdowns come as national experts have encouraged a move away from transmitting results over modems and toward physically delivering them. Many other states and election jurisdictions have shifted away from transmitting results by modem, but it remains common in Wisconsin. Pam Smith, the president and CEO of Verified Voting, an elections technology organization, said election security is not only about preventing incorrect results or cyberattacks. It also means making sure the systems that election officials rely on are available and functioning when they need them. A breakdown in transmitting unofficial results may not change the outcome of an election, she said, but it can still disrupt election-night operations and consume significant staff time. “It matters because it’s a time suck for the county, and everybody trying to deal with it,” she said.Read Article

Wisconsin: Download error in Milwaukee delays results | Vanessa Swales/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Milwaukee County Clerk George Christenson announced shortly before midnight that issues had arisen during the downloading of absentee ballots at the City of Milwaukee's Central Count, further delaying the closely watched results of Wisconsin's Democratic primary for governor. Paulina Gutiérrez, executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission, identified the issue as "human error." Gutiérrez later clarified that the "wrong button was pressed." According to Gutiérrez, five of the nine USB sticks used to download the election results of tabulators did not contain the results and only had the audit logs before the absentee ballots were transported to the Milwaukee County Election Commission. She said were no issues with the machines, but the sticks used to download the information. Read Article

Wisconsin judge rules that paper absentee ballots violates rights of disabled people | Scott Bauer/Associated Press

Absentee voting in Wisconsin discriminates against disabled voters, a judge ruled Tuesday, siding with groups that are seeking to force election officials to allow for electronic casting of ballots. But Dane County Circuit Judge Everett Mitchell stopped short of ordering electronic voting, setting up a trial on that issue later. It almost certainly will not be resolved before the November election. Disability Rights Wisconsin, the League of Women Voters and four disabled voters brought the lawsuit in 2024. They argued that the lack of an electronic absentee voting option violated their right to independence and privacy and the protections of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The Republican-controlled Legislature is fighting the lawsuit. Read Article

Wisconsin judge rejects attempt to let absentee voters recast ballots | Rich Kremer/WPR

A last-minute attempt to let absentee voters change their ballots because their candidate has dropped out of the race has been rejected by a Dane County judge. For now, that means more than 112,000 absentee ballots returned in the chaotic Democratic primary for governor are locked in ahead of the August 11 election. A lawsuit filed last week by three Democratic voters sought to overturn recent guidance from the Wisconsin Elections Commission specifying that absentee voters cannot “spoil” their ballots and request new ones because they have changed their minds or their first-choice candidate dropped out of the race. The voters behind the suit cast absentee ballots for Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez before she dropped out of the race for the Democratic nomination following a campaign implosion. Read Article

Wisconsin guidance banning absentee ballot spoiling reignites legal battle | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

Wisconsin election officials have reignited a legal battle over absentee voting with July guidance stating that voters cannot void a returned absentee ballot and cast a new one, even if Election Day is weeks away or the candidate they supported has dropped out. Three Democratic residents in Dane County on Thursday sued the Wisconsin Elections Commission over the guidance, which was adopted by the commission on July 9, calling it an unconstitutional violation of the state’s absentee voting laws. All three plaintiffs voted for a gubernatorial candidate who have since dropped out of the primary, and under the commission guidance they cannot change their votes, even though those votes have not yet been counted. The legality of spoiling ballots just to change a vote has long been disputed. The lawsuit says WEC’s guidance means the plaintiffs “will all be disenfranchised from meaningfully participating in this August election unless this Court steps in.” Read Article

Wisconsin Democrats sue election commission to OK absentee ballot revotes | Molly Beck/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A trio of Dane County voters backed by the state Democratic Party is suing the Wisconsin Elections Commission over guidance the panel issued earlier this month that bars absentee voters who have returned their ballots from requesting a new one if their preferred candidate drops out. The lawsuit, filed in Dane County Circuit Court on July 23, asks the judge overseeing the case to block the commission from distributing the guidance and to instead tell local election clerks voters may request a new ballot in this scenario. The court action could upend election rules less than three weeks from the Aug. 11 primary election when voters are set to decide which Democratic candidate for governor they want to face Republican candidate Tom Tiffany in the general election. Read Article

Wisconsin board says Elon Musk likely broke the law by promising voters $1 million payouts | Scott Bauer/Associated Press

Billionaire Elon Musk likely broke Wisconsin law when he promised to hand out $1 million checks to voters in the 2025 state Supreme Court election, a bipartisan panel has found. The Wisconsin Elections Commission last week referred two complaints to the Brown County district attorney’s office, which can choose to bring criminal charges over violating the state law against election bribery. Prosecutors have 40 days to report back to the commission. Musk, the founder of SpaceX and CEO of Tesla, was deeply involved in the effort to flip majority control of the highest court in battleground Wisconsin. The tech titan and groups he supported spent at least $20 million on the candidate backed by Republicans, Brad Schimel. However, he lost by 10 percentage points to Democratic-backed candidate Susan Crawford. Read Article

Wisconsin: Green Bay city clerk on leave after state calls for investigation into duplicate ballots | Joe Schulz/WPR

The Green Bay City Clerk is on administrative leave, pending an internal review from the city and a state investigation into how her office issued duplicate ballots in two elections this year. Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich issued a statement Thursday afternoon, saying City Clerk Celestine Jeffreys had been placed on leave. It came the same day the Wisconsin Elections Commission voted unanimously to investigate how Green Bay issued duplicate ballots in both the April election and the August primary. “Elections are a critical piece of the work we perform at the City,” Genrich stated. “While we have no concerns with the security or propriety of the electoral process, these errors in the Clerk’s Office are unacceptable.” Read Article

Wisconsin municipality disenfranchised voters using controversial absentee ballot policy | Alexander ShurVotebeat

For years, Mequon election workers employed an unusually strict standard for judging the validity of witness addresses on absentee ballot envelopes — a standard not apparently used elsewhere in Wisconsin and that the Wisconsin Elections Commission has now said is illegal. Under that standard, Mequon officials rejected absentee ballots if the witness address did not include a state or ZIP code and the municipality name was not unique nationwide. That’s despite the fact that Wisconsin’s absentee ballot envelope no longer specifically asks witnesses to provide the information Mequon treated as essential: a state or ZIP code. But a Votebeat review of hundreds of April 2026 absentee ballot envelopes, the dozens of ballots Mequon at least initially rejected since 2024, and scores of city records found that the city’s strict standard was applied unevenly — and, in some cases, resulted in the initial rejection of ballots that did not appear ambiguous at all. Read Article

Wisconsin elections chair wants state to speed destruction of Milwaukee’s 2020 ballots amid FBI probe | Rich Kremer/WPR

The chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission wants state Attorney General Josh Kaul to push for the destruction of what he says are more than quarter-million absentee ballots from Milwaukee’s 2020 election, after the FBI interviewed city officials and police. The call by Wisconsin Elections Commission Chair Don Millis, a Republican, comes after the FBI seized 2020 ballots in Georgia earlier this year amid President Donald Trump’s repeated false claims the election was stolen. During a Sunday appearance on WISN 12’s “UpFront,” Millis said FBI agents have been “offered up various conspiracy theories” about Milwaukee’s 2020 results that “certain grifters have put out there.” Millis said the agents have been professional and have been given information showing that “there was not any conspiracy or that the counting of the ballots in 2020 was wrong or done improperly.” Read Article

Wisconsin: Former Trump aides, attorneys plead not guilty to fake elector charges | Scott Bauer/Associated Press

President Donald Trump’s attorney for the 2020 campaign in Wisconsin and two former aides all pleaded not guilty Tuesday to felony forgery charges for their roles in a fake elector scheme designed to overturn Trump’s loss in the swing state. Jim Troupis, a former judge who was Trump’s Wisconsin campaign attorney, Mike Roman, Trump’s director of Election Day operations in 2020, and Ken Chesebro, a former Trump legal adviser, all entered the pleas in Dane County Circuit Court. Troupis, who lives in the Madison area, appeared in person. Roman and Chesebro appeared via Zoom. The Wisconsin fake electors case is moving forward even as others in the battleground states of Michigan and Georgia have faltered. A special prosecutor last year dropped a federal case alleging Trump conspired to overturn the 2020 election. Another case in Nevada is still alive. Read Article

Wisconsin: Proposed Postal Service rule could risk ballot delivery | Molly Beck/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The United States Postal Service is proposing a new rule that could require states to hand over some voter information to the Trump administration or risk losing delivery of mail-in ballots. The proposed requirement released earlier this month may have implications for Wisconsin, where state election officials have successfully blocked a Trump administration effort to obtain personal information about voters, such as names, dates of birth, residential addresses, drivers license numbers and the last four digits of Social Security numbers. The new proposed rule from the U.S. Postal Service requires states to provide the agency with the names and unique barcodes associated with each voter who is voting absentee. The Trump administration intends for the rule to be in place before the midterm election. "This provision will help determine adherence to federal law and facilitate law enforcement efforts," U.S.P.S. officials wrote in the proposed rule, which is not final until July and could change. Read Article

Wisconsin: Milwaukee Council OKs election legal counsel in wake of FBI inquiry | Vanessa Swales/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Is the Milwaukee City Attorney's Office gearing up for a possible legal storm tied to the 2020 election? The answer: most likely. With no public discussion, the city's Common Council unanimously voted June 2 in favor of authorizing the City Attorney to hire outside counsel for election-related needs. Late last month, the city's judiciary and legislation committee took up the substitute resolution authored by Alderman DiAndre Jackson. No public report was available and council members discussed the item in closed session, voting to approve its passage to full council. City Attorney Evan Goyke declined to comment on the basis for the request. The move comes after the Federal Bureau of Investigation has interviewed a high-ranking election official in recent weeks about the 2020 presidential election. Read Article

Wisconsin: Lawsuit seeks to require election officials to let absentee voters cure their ballots | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin is challenging the state’s law governing voters’ ability to fix missing information on their absentee ballots, alleging that the law violates the Wisconsin Constitution by giving clerks a vast amount of discretion over whether to reject ballots. The group is asking a Dane County judge to require all clerks to provide voters notice when an absentee ballot certificate is lacking necessary information — such as a signature or the address of a voter or the person who witnessed the ballot’s casting — and give them an opportunity to add that information before rejecting the ballot, a process known as “curing” the ballot. Right now, the law tells clerks that they “may” return incomplete absentee ballots to voters. That results in some municipal clerks sending voters prompt notice about faulty ballots, while other clerks put those ballots in the rejected pile without informing the voter at all, the lawsuit states. Municipalities also treat absentee ballots differently depending on when they receive them, the lawsuit alleges, and those that arrive closer to Election Day often have a lesser chance of getting cured. Read Article

Wisconsin: FBI sought to interview top Milwaukee County election official | Shaquille Brewster and Kyla Guilfoil/NBC

The FBI tried to interview one of the top elections officials in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, according to the county clerk’s office. An FBI agent visited the home of county Elections Director Michelle Hawley and left her business card, County Clerk George Christenson said in a statement Wednesday. “It is unfortunate that the FBI chose to visit the private residence of Milwaukee County’s Elections Director rather than contact the Election Commission’s office directly,” Christenson said. “No dedicated public servant should be subjected to that type of intrusion simply for carrying out her responsibilities with integrity and professionalism.” Christenson said the county will follow up to determine the nature of the visit but added that “the 2020 Presidential Election was fair and transparent, and its results are accurate. This has been proven repeatedly over the last six years by the post-election canvass, the Presidential Election Recount, State court-based challenge, Federal court-based challenge, the forensic audit by the Wisconsin’s Legislative Audit Bureau, and two additional independent audits,” he said. “Continuing to relitigate settled questions does not strengthen public confidence in elections but it undermines it.” Read Article

Wisconsin: FBI questions election official about 2020 presidential vote | Molly Beck/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A Federal Bureau of Investigation agent interviewed a high-ranking state election official in recent days about the 2020 presidential election, according to sources with knowledge of the conversation. The agent sat down with Wisconsin Elections Commission deputy administrator Robert Kehoe earlier this week and discussed with Kehoe how elections are carried out in Wisconsin and various election theories. Kehoe debunked false claims and clarified how elections work, according to the sources. One of the sources called the conversation "a professional interview by a career FBI agent." The interview comes at a time when Wisconsin and Milwaukee election officials are bracing for potential action from federal authorities over their administration of the 2020 election, which President Donald Trump falsely claims he won. Read Article

Wisconsin Elections Commission sued for telling Madison not to count late-arriving absentee ballots | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

The Wisconsin Elections Commission is facing criticism from local officials and a lawsuit filed Wednesday after it ordered Madison not to count 23 absentee ballots that arrived late to the polls in the state’s recent Supreme Court race, a delay city officials say was caused by election administrator error. City officials also say the commission initially offered little guidance but later faulted them for making the wrong decision. As Madison officials discussed what to do with the late-arriving ballots the day after Election Day, Madison City Attorney Mike Haas reached out to Wisconsin Elections Commission administrator Meagan Wolfe for advice. Wolfe sent the relevant statute the following day, and told Madison officials to “decide, within their statutory discretion” whether the 23 ballots should be counted. Madison decided to count them. Three weeks later, WEC’s commissioners decided Madison made the wrong choice, ordering them to remove the 23 affected ballots from the count. The commissioners didn’t mince words. Chair Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, said Madison committed an “absurd error,” and GOP commissioner Don Millis called it an “epic failure.” Read Article

Wisconsin orders Madison, Mequon to revise election tallies over disputed ballots | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

The Wisconsin Elections Commission on Thursday overruled controversial ballot-counting decisions in Mequon and Madison, ordering the cities to revise final tallies in their Wisconsin Supreme Court election results. Madison counted 23 late-arriving ballots that the commission voted should not have been included, while Mequon threw out five ballots the commission said should have been counted. The commission voted 6-0 to investigate both city clerks’ offices and ordered changes to the counts — voting 5-1 to require Madison and Dane County to exclude the 23 ballots, and 6-0 to require Mequon and Ozaukee County to count the five. The deadline for the state to certify the election is May 15, but some commissioners acknowledged the likelihood that lawsuits over today’s decisions could come before then. Read Article

Wisconsin: Judge rules against ex-Trump attorney in Wisconsin fake elector case | Molly Beck/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A state prosecution will proceed against a top architect of an effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election on felony charges related to a plan to gather signatures of Republicans falsely claiming to be electors for President Donald Trump. A Wisconsin judge on Thursday ruled against former Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro in his effort to keep statements he made to investigators in other battleground states about the fake elector plan from being introduced in the criminal filed by Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul against Chesebro and others over the scheme. Kaul in 2024 filed 11 counts of felony forgery charges against Chesebro, former Trump campaign attorney Jim Troupis and former Trump aide Mike Roman. The charges allege the three lied to the Wisconsin Republicans who signed paperwork falsely claiming to be electors for Trump in the lead-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, joint session of Congress to certify the 2020 election for former President Joe Biden. Read Article

Wisconsin: How Rock County got new clerks ready for Supreme Court election | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

Town of Lima Clerk Pam Hookstead’s election operation is a well-oiled machine. She comes to the polls at 6 a.m., a pot of cowboy beef stew in hand to warm up for her poll workers, and takes a backseat as she lets the town’s longtime staffers settle into their rhythm. Having run well over 100 elections, administering the Wisconsin Supreme Court race on April 7 in the 1,200-person town felt like second nature. Hookstead, now 65, has spent three decades in the role — a depth of experience many towns have lost since 2020. Twenty miles south sits Clinton, where 59-year old Town Clerk Shannon Roehl-Wickingson was administering her first election on her own. It will take years for her muscle memory to rival Hookstead’s. But, she may get there faster than many of her peers in Wisconsin — or across the country. Rock County has a support and training system that most new clerks can only dream of. Read Article

Wisconsin updates election certification law; Evers vetoes HAVA complaint bill | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers on Wednesday signed a bill bringing Wisconsin in line with a federal law seeking to prevent the kind of post-election chaos that President Donald Trump and his allies sowed after the 2020 election. The Democrat also vetoed a Republican-authored bill that would have required the state election commission to hear administrative complaints against itself alleging violations of the federal Help America Vote Act, in line with a U.S. Justice Department demand for the state. That vetoed bill also would have required the state’s Legislative Audit Bureau to conduct audits for potential noncitizen voters. The bill Evers signed updates Wisconsin’s deadlines for certifying presidential election results and casting electoral votes to match federal timelines set by Congress in 2022, after President Donald Trump claimed to have won the 2020 election and hundreds of individuals stormed the U.S. Capitol to prevent certification of President Joe Biden’s victory. Read Articlea>

Wisconsin: Madison voters disenfranchised in 2024 are are split on city’s response, lawsuit | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

Months before becoming one of the nearly 200 Madison voters in 2024 whose absentee ballots were never counted, Nathan Haimowitz did what he thought he was supposed to do. As a journalist living in Spain and out of the habit of voting, the 26-year-old former poll worker said he wanted the 2024 presidential election to “be the thing that would spur me to vote more consistently.” To make sure everything was in order, he emailed Madison officials to confirm they had received his absentee ballot application. They told him they had, so he filled out his ballot, sent it in, and assumed his vote would be counted. It wasn’t. The mistake that disenfranchised Haimowitz and nearly 200 other voters set off a chain of consequences: the longtime city clerk resigned, state and local officials launched investigations, a lawsuit was filed, and the city began overhauling its voting procedures. Haimowitz hasn’t cast a ballot since. Read Article

Wisconsin: FBI action could reveal how Milwaukeeans voted in the 2020 election | Molly Beck/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

How nearly 180,000 Milwaukee residents voted in the 2020 presidential election could be at risk of becoming public if the FBI compels election officials to hand over voting data here in its pursuit to relitigate President Donald Trump's election loss in key battleground states. State and local election officials in the Badger State were on alert Monday after the FBI issued a grand jury subpoena for voting information in Maricopa County, Arizona − the second battleground state where federal authorities have compelled the release of records related to the 2020 election. There has not been any movement in Wisconsin, but if federal authorities expanded their probe to include the pursuit of voting data in Milwaukee, where Trump has leveled baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 election, poll books and around 176,000 absentee ballots with an attached ID number could be turned over. Read Article

Wisconsin Senate lags on election bills without dedicated committee | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

When this legislative session began, Wisconsin Senate leaders made the unusual decision not to create a committee dedicated to election policy for the first time in nearly two decades. That choice has had a measurable consequence: The Senate has taken up far fewer election bills than the Assembly, and several measures that cleared the lower chamber are now stalled with no clear path forward. Of the 19 election bills that Votebeat has tracked this legislative session, 18 have gotten at least a public committee hearing in the Assembly, compared with nine in the Senate. Fourteen of those bills passed the Assembly, compared with six in the Senate. Even in a session when the Senate has generally moved more slowly than the Assembly on many issues — as of Feb. 25, the Assembly has passed 439 bills since the start of the current two-year session, while the Senate has passed 276 — the disparity is especially stark on elections. Read Article

Wisconsin: Who will run the next election in small-town Wisconsin? No one knows. | Alexander Shur |Votebeat

Inside the mostly empty town hall on County Road Z last week, a handful of voters cast ballots in wooden booths for a school board race. The biggest question on the minds of local election officials wasn’t who would win — it was who would run elections next year. After two clerks left within a year, longtime town supervisor Sharon Hunter stepped in because no one else would. Hunter’s term ends next April. Nomination papers for a potential successor are due in January 2027, but local officials still don’t know who comes next. “Sharon’s not going to do 29 years,” Deputy Clerk Amy Meyer said, referring to the long tenure of the clerk who resigned in late 2024, setting off the cascade of brief replacements. Hunter, 72, laughed. “I’d be over 100 years old,” she said. “I don’t think you want me here with my walker.” Read Article