Green Bay and Racine election clerks receive cease and desist letters over the returning of absentee ballots

MADISON – Green Bay election officials have stopped returning absentee ballots to voters when witnesses forget to include any portions of their full addresses, a practice prompted by a recent court ruling and halted after a union representing state workers alleged the city clerk was misapplying the judge's decision. 

Clerks began sending absentee ballots to voters in September and as of Tuesday, more than 183,000 ballots had been submitted ahead of the Nov. 8 midterm election. But as voting continues, a court battle over whether ballots missing address information should be counted is underway. 

An attorney representing the Service Employees International Union sent the city attorneys of Green Bay and Racine cease and desist letters in recent days, alleging election officials were returning ballots because of missing state and/or ZIP code information in the witnesses' address.

SEIU attorney Tamara Packard alleged Green Bay officials were returning 15% to 20% of absentee ballots at one point because of missing address information.

Green Bay Clerk Celestine Jeffreys said Tuesday that early estimates from the clerk's office have turned out to be much lower and difficult to pinpoint because of daily fluctuations.

"It's not 15%-20% overall but something lower than that and it fluctuates day to day," she said. 

Green Bay City Attorney Joanne Bungert said in a response letter to SEIU that clerk staff were returning ballots to voters if any part of the witness address was missing. On Friday, the clerk modified their policy to accepting ballots if the witness address contains a street number, the street name, the city and either the state or ZIP code.

In response, Packard said SEIU is considering "legal options" to stop the practice. Packard said city officials "cannot and should not be deviating from past practice and accepted interpretation of State law. Doing so will almost certainly result in the disenfranchisement of numerous fully qualified voters, which is why we wrote to the City and will continue to work to make sure that no qualified voter loses their opportunity to vote."

Racine officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

The union alleged in its letter that the city misapplied a September court ruling and in its letter points out the city's instructions for absentee ballot witnesses require just a street number, street name, and city, and that the instructions do not warn voters their ballots may not be counted if the addresses don't include states and ZIP codes. 

"The return of these ballots is likely to result in the disenfranchisement of multiple fully qualified voters: at least some of the voters who receive back their completed ballots will not return them for a second time, after adding the witness's state and/or ZIP code to the certification," SEIU attorney Tamara Packard wrote in the letter to Bungert. 

"While it is true that other information also provided to the voter with their absentee ballot asks for the witness's state and ZIP code as well, there is no warning that failing to include that information will result in return or rejection of the ballot. Yet that is exactly what is happening."

Packard said the union has an interest in this practice because it is helping voters submit absentee ballots as part of a get-out-the-vote effort ahead of the November election. 

Bungert said because there are other cities with the name Green Bay in the country, a state or ZIP code must be included. 

Whether election clerks must accept absentee ballots with missing address information has been under debate since September when a Waukesha County judge ruled state law does not allow election clerks to fill in missing address information on absentee ballots. But the judge did not define what an address is, and did not say whether his ruling required clerks to return or reject ballots if such information was missing.

Two lawsuits have been filed since to clarify the matter. 

In Milwaukee, absentee voters receive with their ballots instructions that explicitly tell voters to include the state and ZIP code with their addresses. 

Alison Dirr of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel contributed to this report.

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Contact Molly Beck at molly.beck@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter at @MollyBeck.