Madison failed to count nearly 200 ballots in the 2024 election

Campus wards were affected by the negligence, which spawned an investigation and newfound distrust in election integrity

The Madison Clerk’s Office announced on December 26– more than a month after Election Day– that 193 absentee ballots went unprocessed for the 2024 election. Some of the affected wards contain large UW-Madison student populations.

This prompted the bipartisan Wisconsin Election Commission to launch an investigation into the Madison Clerk’s Office and determine whether City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl failed to “comply with the law or abused the discretion vested in him or her by law or proposes to do so.”

This comes after Witzel-Behl presided over another mishap in September that caused roughly 2,000 duplicate absentee ballots to be sent out to Madison voters.

While the City Clerk’s Office said it “was not enough to affect the outcome of any race or referendum on the ballot,” voters and officials alike are outraged over the reckless handling of their ballots.

Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said in a statement on December 26 that a “discrepancy of this magnitude is unacceptable.”

“This oversight is a significant departure from the high standard our residents expect and must be addressed and avoided in future elections” Rhodes-Conway said.

In another statement on January 2, she said that she agrees with the Wisconsin Election Commission's decision to investigate the matter and hopes that it will “provide transparency and accountability” and “provide lessons that all Wisconsin clerks can learn to prevent similar errors in the future.”

Representative Tom Tiffany, who is mulling a run for governor in 2026, said, “Wisconsinites deserve confidence in our elections. Yet under Madison’s mismanagement – from issuing duplicate ballots to failing to count votes – it’s clear that accountability is needed.”

This leaves voters asking: How is it that so many ballots went unaccounted for in an election this important?

In Wards 65 and 57, the clerk’s office found one sealed courier bag that was left in a tabulator bin. The sealed envelope contained 69 unprocessed absentee ballots.

Then, a second set of unprocessed absentee ballots was found when the Clerk’s Office was reconciling voter participation for Ward 56. Reconciling voter participation is the mandatory process by which workers in the Clerk’s Office compare all vote counts and assign voter participation in WisVote.

During this process, the Clerk’s Office personnel “found two sealed absentee carrier envelopes containing a total of 125 unprocessed absentee ballots.”

The Madison Clerk’s Office stated that their main goal is to ensure that “each eligible voter will be able to cast a ballot and have that ballot counted,” and they fell short of this goal during the 2024 election.

Both the Madison Clerk’s Office and Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway have issued apologies and vowed to ensure that it will never happen again.

“We plan to conduct a thorough review of the City’s election policies and procedures to ensure this kind of oversight does not recur. My office is committed to taking whatever corrective action is necessary to maintain a high standard of election integrity in Madison” Rhodes-Conway said.

If you were a voter whose absentee ballot was counted, you will be individually notified by the Clerk’s Office and issued an apology letter.