(The Center Square) – The head of the Wisconsin Elections Commission says she thinks Madison’s former city clerk broke the law when she didn’t count nearly 200 absentee ballots last November.
But Ann Jacobs doesn’t want to see criminal charges in the case.
Jacobs was a guest on UpFront over the weekend, and blamed Madison’s former clerk, Marybeth Witzel-Behl, for ignoring her job and for weakening the faith in Wisconsin’s electoral system.
“First of all, she should have opened the bag to see if there were ballots inside. The minute she saw there were ballots inside, she needed to notify the county clerk because the county clerk was doing the county canvass, and she needed to notify her municipal board of canvassers, and they needed to take steps to count those ballots and ensure they were included,” Jacobs explained. “Then, after making sure that first set of ballots was included, she needed to take steps to make sure that the same mistake hadn’t occurred elsewhere, which we now know did.”
Jacobs wrote in her report on that case that she believes that Witzel-Behl broke the law in how she handled the case.
“We made findings of probable cause,” Jacobs told the hosts. “Commissioner Mills and I, we believe there was probable cause to believe that she violated multiple statutes.”
Jacobs added that only the full commission can decide whether Witzel-Behl broke the law.
But Jacobs said that’s as far as she’d like to see the case go. She told the UpFront hosts that she doesn’t want Dane County’s district attorney or the state attorney general to file formal charges.
“I’m not a big fan of that, but obviously it’s up to their discretion to do that,” Jacobs said. ‘I’m hesitant to start criminalizing the work of our clerks. A lot of things went wrong here, but I’m not sure that criminal charges are the way to prevent this in the future. I really do think that it’s a learning experience for our clerks across the state.”
Jacobs said Witzel-Behl’s performance after the lost ballots were found was “astonishing.” But she also said she is confident that Madison’s election office has corrected its mistakes, and she is hoping for better in the next election.
