City Clerk Celestine Jeffreys is on administrative leave in Green Bay, Wisconsin, while state officials sort out how her office managed to send duplicate absentee ballots to voters twice in a row.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission voted unanimously to investigate after learning that 152 voters got extra ballots ahead of the April election, and roughly 244 more went out before August’s primary. The city has called it a printing error. WEC staff see it differently — their initial findings say Jeffreys likely violated state election law.
No one appears to have voted twice. Officials on both sides agree on that much. But a mistake that repeats itself, in back-to-back elections, is hard to wave off as a one-time glitch, and the commission clearly isn’t inclined to.
Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich announced the leave Thursday. Jeffreys now has two deadlines ahead of her: a written explanation of what went wrong, due July 31, and a plan to make sure it doesn’t happen a third time, due August 14.
Worth watching whether that plan actually holds up — or whether Green Bay is back here again next cycle.
Swansenreport 
Leave a comment