Members of SEIU and Voces de la Frontera arrive at the Capitol Tuesday | Wisconsin Examiner photo
Online rumors warning of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) patrols around polling places in Milwaukee and Madison appear to be unfounded. The reports circulated on social media claiming that there would be “more than 5,000 ICE agents patrolling the areas” in the two cities, as voters went to the polls to cast ballots in the April 1 election for candidates running for Wisconsin Supreme Court, state superintendent, and referendum questions focusing on voter ID.
Anxieties about ICE activities have been heightened under the Trump Administration. Recent weeks have seen videos showing plain-clothes, masked ICE agents detaining people on the street. Some of the detainees had been arrested after participating in activist activities, such as protests calling for an end to the war in Gaza. Fears of ICE raids have increased in Milwaukee and Madison, as in other cities.
Spokespersons for Milwaukee and Madison city government told Wisconsin Examiner that they have not heard any reports, complaints, or notifications about ICE agents at polling places. A spokesperson for the ICE office in Milwaukee said, “due to our operational tempo and the increased interest in our agency, we are not able to research and respond to rumors or specifics of routine daily operations for ICE.”
Meanwhile, turnout in Milwaukee has been so high that local news outlets are reporting that polling sites across the city have run out of ballots. The city’s Election’s Commission is arranging for fresh ballots to be sent to polling stations. In Tuesday’s election Republican-backed Supreme Court candidate and former Wisconsin attorney general Brad Schimel is facing off against Dane County Judge Susan Crawford, who has the backing of state Democrats. In the state superintendent’s race, incumbent Jill Underly is facing challenger Brittany y Kinser. Wisconsinites will also get to decide whether the state’s constitution should be amended to codify a voter ID requirement.
Election officials in Madison are already facing a state and city investigation into the series of errors that resulted in nearly 200 absentee ballots not being counted in last fall’s election. Now officials there face a claim for compensation in an unusual case that aims to emphasize the importance of properly counting all ballots and set a monetary penalty for denying people their vote.
A liberal election law group called Law Forward served a $34 million claim this month against Madison and Dane County, seeking damages amounting to $175,000 for each Madison voter whose absentee ballot got misplaced. The filing is likely a precursor to a lawsuit, as the group is seeking out other disenfranchised voters to join its case.
“There is going to be a price to pay when you interfere with someone’s right to vote in Wisconsin,” said Scott Thompson, staff counsel for Law Forward.
Cases like this have a history that goes back to the voting rights fights of the late 1800s and 1900s, when officials intentionally sought to bar Black people from voting. But they’re highly unusual today — most voting rights cases seek only to have a challenged right restored, rather than damages — and experts say it’s unlikely that Law Forward’s claim in the Madison case will lead to any damages being paid out.
The threat of a financial cost for errors could add to the pressure on local clerk’s offices, which already deal with the challenges of new laws and court rulings, along with persistent scrutiny from election skeptics and lawmakers. (Madison’s city clerk has been placed on leave while the investigation into her office continues.) Some clerks around the state said they consider the errors in Madison serious, but questioned the move to assign liability.
Melissa Kono, the clerk in the small town of Burnside in western Wisconsin, said that instead of a payout to voters affected by an error, money would be better spent on developing a better system for clerks to manage the increasing number of absentee ballots, which have surged since the COVID-19 pandemic. The uncounted ballots in Madison were all absentee ballots.
Thompson acknowledged the potential impact of his group’s action on clerks. But he said it serves as a broader response to the steady stream of lawsuits filed by conservative groups since 2020 aimed at preventing officials from counting certain ballots because of the way they’re returned or the information they’re missing. In the context of these lawsuits, he said, it’s important to send a message that there should be a cost for disenfranchising people.
“Elections are about exercising the right to vote,” he said. “They’re not about finding ways to kick people off the voter rolls.”
Legal filing says Madison and Dane County violated constitution
In a statement, Madison spokesperson Dylan Brogan didn’t directly address the Law Forward claim but said every ballot should be counted accurately and that the city is cooperating with ongoing investigations while conducting its own.
Here’s what investigators have said about the case so far: In all, 193 absentee ballots that were sent to two polling places in the city for tabulation on Election Day went missing, and were not counted, even after they were found. For reasons still unknown, the election workers at those polling places never opened the courier bags containing those ballots. Those ballots then went to the city clerk’s office, but workers didn’t open one of the parcels until Nov. 12 and the other one until Dec. 3.
In the claim, the group cites two Wisconsin Supreme Court cases that it says allow it to sue for damages, even if what happened in Madison turns out to be a series of unintentional oversights.
One of those cases was a judgment from 1866, in which the court ruled that government officers can be found liable for their actions in denying Black Wisconsin residents the right to vote, even if those actions are done without malice. The other is a 1916 finding that because a group of voters was entitled to vote, people depriving them of that right can be held liable for their disenfranchisement.
Claims like these typically move to lawsuits if they’re not resolved, and the city and county are unlikely to accept or negotiate the requested amount, likely prompting Law Forward to file suit this summer.
When voters seek monetary damages
Why ask for money on behalf of the voters? Thompson said it’s because there’s nothing else to ask for besides money and a finding of the city’s wrongdoing. It was too late, he said, to give the voters back the right they had been deprived of: the right to vote and have their ballots counted in the November 2024 election.
Thompson said attorney-client privilege prevented him from disclosing how the group arrived at the $175,000 figure for each voter. Wisconsin law currently caps damages against government officials at $50,000. Thompson said a secondary goal of the forthcoming lawsuit is to have a court find that law unconstitutional and allow groups to seek larger damages.
Voter lawsuits seeking monetary damages were never very common, but there were instances in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, typically tied to racial discrimination, said Justin Levitt, an election law professor at Loyola Marymount University and a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s civil rights division.
The most prominent cases of this kind were in Texas, where between the 1920s and 1940s Black voters who were barred from voting in Democratic primaries because of their race sometimes sued for damages in court, Levitt said.
In those cases, Black voters were designed to be left out of the voting process. In Madison, by contrast, it appears at this point that a series of mistakes — not malice or intent — led to these ballots getting lost initially.
But Thompson cautioned against coming to conclusions about why the Madison ballots didn’t ultimately get counted.
“It is too early for anyone, I think, to say with certainty exactly what happened and why it happened here,” he said.
Lawsuits seeking damages against government officials face two significant challenges, said Richard Hasen, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA School of Law: First, courts usually look for something more egregious than negligence, such as malicious intent. Second, he said, a number of legal doctrines usually give government officials a raised level of immunity.
He said he couldn’t think of any cases of this kind, where voters deprived of their right to vote successfully sued election officials for damages, since the 1960s.
Clerks question monetary penalty for errors
If the city accepts the claim or a court does award damages, it could have a financial impact of millions of dollars and would send a signal across the state.
“It’s not normal for this quantity of ballots to go uncounted, and I think everybody recognizes that that’s not normal,” Levitt said. “If this case succeeded, it would substantially increase the stakes of an error like that.”
But Madison’s errors stand out as unusually serious, said Wood County Clerk Trent Miner, a Republican. He said he thinks that Law Forward’s claim proposes too high a penalty, but that it shouldn’t make clerks fear the prospect of penalties for the far less consequential errors that they encounter from time to time.
“Humans run elections, so errors will happen,” he said. “This, I think, pole vaults over a minor error.”
Kono, the Burnside clerk, pointed out that the initial error of not counting the ballots at the polling sites was at the hands of the poll workers at the Madison polling sites who never opened or processed the 193 ballots.
“If you’re relying on unpaid or low-paid, glorified volunteers, essentially, what is the liability?” she said.
Even if the court doesn’t ultimately award monetary damages, the discovery phase of the expected lawsuit — where the two sides must share evidence — could significantly increase transparency around Madison’s ballot-counting errors, Thompson said. This process would likely place additional pressure on Madison and Dane County to fully disclose information beyond what has already emerged from ongoing city and state investigations.
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
On Feb. 24, 2022, Katya Babych’s life changed in a moment. Russian jets flew overhead, tanks advanced and enemy troops slaughtered civilians in the suburbs surrounding her home city of Kyiv.
“When it happened, we just woke up, grabbed our kids, a couple suitcases and ran,” Babych said.
Babych and her husband, Yevhenii, have a daughter, Diana, who was 5 at the time, and a son, Nazar, who was 11. The decision to flee was simple, but not easy. She wanted to keep her children safe, but leaving their homeland still pains her three years later.
The Babych family, from Ukraine, pictured in their apartment in Stoughton. Clockwise from left are Katya, Nazar, Yevhenii and Diana. (Ruthie Hauge / The Cap Times)
The Babych family is among millions whose lives were upended by Russia’s invasion. The Cap Times met with some of those families in Ukraine in February, as well as loved ones and friends who now live in Wisconsin.
One father, wounded in battle, hasn’t seen his wife and sons in more than three years. A mother works to comfort her daughters through nightly air raids. An aunt in Wisconsin fears for her nephew in Kyiv.
Their lives have taken different paths but their goal remains the same, to keep their families safe and someday see an end to the brutal war destroying their homeland.
The night of the invasion, Babych and her husband packed what belongings they could, buckled their children into the family car and began to drive toward Poland. The drive from Kyiv to the Polish border typically takes about seven hours. This time, as thousands of other Ukrainians also fled, the journey took two days.
They first crossed into Poland and then the Czech Republic, unsure how long the war would last.
“But in May (2022) we understood it would not be a short story, but a very long story,” Babych said of the ongoing war.
The story of the Russian invasion has lasted over 1,100 days, and the family now lives in Stoughton. Babych works as a nurse at Stoughton Hospital, and their two children attend public school.
In Poland and the Czech Republic, her kids thought the family was on a vacation. But after arriving in Wisconsin and realizing their displacement was more permanent, they began to miss home and friends.
At first, they cried every day.
“It’s really hard because we didn’t have a plan to move, to start a new life across the ocean,” Babych said.
At a cafe outside Madison, Babych sipped a cappuccino and gingerly held her pregnant belly as she recalled fleeing her Kyiv home. She and her husband are expecting their third child in April.
“We’re lucky, because around us are really kind, nice people and they really support us,” Babych said.
Her family received help from the Stoughton Resettlement Agency. The local nonprofit has helped more than a dozen immigrant families from Ukraine, Afghanistan and elsewhere who fled war-torn countries and arrived in the southeast Dane County city of 13,000.
Diana Babych practices gymnastics as her family gathers for tea and snacks in their apartment in Stoughton. The Babych family fled Ukraine nearly three years ago. (Ruthie Hauge / The Cap Times)
“For now, I have a job, my kids go to school. I mean, it’s kind of like normal life. Now my brother and sister-in-law and my parents are here,” Babych said.
Babych doesn’t know how long she and her family will be allowed to stay in Stoughton now that President Donald Trump has ended humanitarian parole — the immigration channel that tens of thousands of Ukrainians have used since the beginning of the invasion to flee to the United States.
“Every day you wake up and check like ‘OK, what about today,’” Babych said of the uncertainty. “Right now, I can’t imagine how we can go back to Ukraine.”
‘Because life stopped, our family got closer’
When Babych and her family fled the invasion, their apartment in Kyiv lay empty.
Meanwhile, in the village of Troieshchyna on the outskirts of Kyiv, Babych’s friend Marta Jarrell constantly feared for the safety of her family.
“We have four children. It was important for us to keep them safe, but we never wanted to panic,” Jarrell said, reflecting on why she and her husband chose not to evacuate Ukraine.
Marta Jarrell looks out of the window of a cafe in downtown Kyiv, Ukraine, on Feb. 20, 2025. (Erin McGroarty / The Cap Times)
Jarrell and her family moved back to the Kyiv area from the United States just six months before the invasion began. She and her husband met in America; they and their four daughters have dual citizenship. She wanted to bring her family back to Ukraine to show them her homeland. Then the war started.
Jarrell remembers the sounds of artillery shells as Russian troops surrounded the capital city.
“It was very loud,” she said. “We could hear gunshots. It was getting really close.”
Before the war, Babych and Jarrell worked together at a private Christian school in Kyiv. Babych offered for her friend to move her family into the empty apartment closer to the city, farther from the violence that ravaged suburbs like Irpin and Bucha.
In the beginning, Jarrell’s youngest daughter — who was 3 at the time — slept through the air alarms. Jarrell used fans at night to mask the noise of the war.
“She’s 7 now, she starts waking up from explosions. It’s really taking a toll on her,” Jarrell said.
After three years of war, your nervous system gets worn out. But Jarrell and her husband work to stay calm as an example for their daughters. They made the choice to stay, and even though daily life is hard and she is constantly afraid for her family’s safety, she doesn’t regret the choice to remain in Kyiv.
The war has been hard in so many ways, but Jarrell has tried to find unexpected benefits to stay positive.
“Because life stopped, our family got even closer,” she remembered.
In the early days of the invasion, Jarrell set her daily routine around what would help her daughters cope with the uncertainty and fear.
“We did what the girls wanted to do. We baked a lot because stores were closed; there wasn’t much food at first,” she said. “We colored. We read. We danced. We spent a lot of quality time together, and that’s really helped.”
The three-bedroom apartment is a tight fit, and the four girls have to share rooms.
“It’s challenging, but it’s cozy,” she said.
When asked how it feels to live in someone else’s home, Jarrell smiled softly.
“My home is where my husband and my kids are,” she said.
‘The flowers have already died’
Galyna Turchanova fled to Madison with her youngest son after her husband, Oleksandr, was conscripted into the Ukrainian army. The couple has not seen each other in three years. (Ruthie Hauge / The Cap Times)
Before the war, Oleksandr Turchanov and his wife, Galyna Turchanova, took family vacations with their two sons by the sea in Odesa and in the Carpathian Mountains in southwestern Ukraine.
They began to build a house in the countryside outside of their hometown of Kropyvnytskyi on family land that belonged to Oleksandr’s grandparents. Galyna planted trees and flowers and strawberries.
Now, it has been three years since the couple have seen each other. When asked what he misses most about his wife and sons, Oleksandr simply says being together.
“When there was a family, and everyone was together,” he said.
Galyna lives in Madison with their sons while her husband remains in Kropyvnytskyi. She works in the floral department of Metcalfe’s Market. Their younger son, Tymofii, is 15. He attends Memorial High School and plays volleyball.
Their 28-year-old son, Mykhailo, lived in Madison before the invasion began. He came here through a work study program with a university in Poland where he attended. In 2016, he became gravely ill with meningitis, and Galyna traveled to Madison to help him.
“For two years we were fighting for his life here,” she said. After his recovery, she returned home.
Mykhailo has since graduated from a software engineering program at Madison Area Technical College and works as a programmer for the Madison Metropolitan School District.
Oleksandr said he is proud of his sons for pursuing education and supporting their mother.
In Ukraine, Galyna worked as an insurance broker, but transferring professional licenses to the United States remains difficult, so she was unable to continue that work after settling in Madison. Working with plants at Metcalfe’s soothes her, though.
“I like flowers and plants, and in Ukraine we have a big garden, so for me, it’s also like relaxation maybe,” Galyna said.
These days Oleksandr lives in the countryside outside of Kropyvnytskyi with his elderly father, who suffers from dementia. Oleksandr said he is trying to keep his wife’s garden alive but it’s difficult on his own.
“The flowers have already died,” he said. “The ones that are alive, I somehow take care of them, chrysanthemums, I trim those. The ones that grow like weeds and do not need much care.”
Oleksandr Turchanov sits in the kitchen of his apartment in Kropyvnytskyi, Ukraine, on Feb. 18, 2025. (Erin McGroarty / The Cap Times)
Galyna Turchanova stays near her youngest son, Tymofii, while he makes a FaceTime call to his father, Oleksandr Turchanov, who lives in Ukraine. Galyna and Tymofii fled the war in Ukraine and now live on the west side of Madison. (Ruthie Hauge / The Cap Times)
Oleksandr is a serious man with clear blue eyes and a kind, but somber, demeanor. He sipped strong black coffee with sugar as he gazed out the kitchen window of an apartment he used to share with his family. In the living room, a bare wall held framed photos of his wife and sons when they were young boys. Boxed board games were stacked in the corner.
Before the invasion in 2022, he and his family were nearly ready to install gas and water lines for the home they were building on the property. But when Russia’s invasion forced Galyna and their younger son to flee the country, the project came to a heartbreaking halt.
“There is no longer a desire to build, just no desire,” Oleksandr said. Not without his family to share it with.
Oleksandr, a lawyer, was unable to flee with his family. The Ukrainian government banned men ages 18-60 from leaving the country in an effort to bolster its limited military reserves. On Feb. 26, 2022 — two days after the invasion began — Oleksandr drove to the conscription office to file his paperwork. On March 8, he was called to war.
In the early days of the war, Galyna and her son lived in the countryside with her father-in-law. They would hide in the root cellar during air raids.
“It was just terrible. And my son, he was 12 at this time. He cried and he asked, ‘Can we please leave?’ Because it was so scary,” she said.
They soon left with friends to Hungary — five people in one car with only enough space for one backpack each.
After suffering a shrapnel injury to his stomach while fighting, Oleksandr was released from the military. Galyna learned her husband had been injured as she and her youngest son awaited a plane to travel from Hungary to Wisconsin.
“We were ready for the flight to Madison, but I couldn’t leave my son and help my husband,” she said.
Galyna feels welcome in Madison and said the Ukrainian community has become tightly knit during the war. She speaks with her husband on the phone as often as possible.
“I try to speak every day with my husband and my parents, and every morning I call them and I’m afraid if they will answer or not because every day I read the news from Ukraine,” Galyna said.
Oleksandr speaks with his sons on the weekends. He said he doesn’t want his calls to interrupt their school and work. The family does not know when they will be together next.
“In Ukraine, it’s still dangerous,” Galyna said. “Just the other day I was thinking, what country I can move to if, for example, (Trump) decided to deport all Ukrainians. I don’t know if I am ready for that. I just know that we can’t go back to Ukraine right now.”
‘Our new reality has become just war’
Ruslana Westerlund is pictured in her home office in Mazomanie, where she displays artwork made by her
nephew, Dmytro Komar, who is an artist in Kyiv, Ukraine. (Ruthie Hauge / The Cap Times)
Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Dmytro Komar spoke to his aunt at a frequency typical of relatives who live in different countries — on birthdays and holidays, like Christmas and Easter.
“From the beginning of the war, we started to text each other and call, I think, almost every day,” he said. “After every rocket or drone attack, she would check in.”
Komar, 33, lives in Kyiv. His aunt, Ruslana Westerlund, lives in Mazomanie, a small Wisconsin town about 23 miles west of Madison.
Westerlund is president of the nonprofit Friends of Ukraine, Madison, a group that works to help Ukrainians feel a sense of community and welcoming in Dane County.
The organization holds educational events, cultural workshops, gatherings with traditional Ukrainian food, informational sessions on immigration and, last month, a rally at the Capitol to mark the third anniversary of the invasion.
Beyond welcoming Ukrainians now living in the Madison area, Westerlund said the nonprofit educates Americans who may have misunderstandings about Ukraine’s culture and independence. The work helps her feel connected to her home.
“I hear so often ‘Oh, you must be Russian. Tell me about the Russian language.’ No, we speak Ukrainian and we have Ukrainian culture,” Westerlund said. “We’re not Russians or former Russians or former Soviets. We’re just Ukrainians.”
Westerlund was born in Buzhanka, in the Cherkasy region of central Ukraine. After graduating from Cherkasy State Pedagogical University, she moved to the United States. First to Minnesota and later to Wisconsin.
It has been many years since she has been able to visit her home. Travel in and out of Ukraine is dangerous and limited because of Russia’s invasion. Komar hasn’t seen his aunt since 2017.
Westerlund is the sister of Komar’s mother, who died when he was 9. His father died just three years ago. “So I’m his kind of second mom,” Westerlund said, fondly.
She is proud of her nephew but concerned for his safety. As a man in his 30s, he is not allowed to leave the country and could be conscripted into the army at any moment.This scares Westerlund. She affectionately calls him by his nickname, Dima. He is an artist and knows nothing of fighting, she worries.
“I have his art in my house,” Westerlund said.
Dmytro Komar, 33, poses with one of his paintings in his Kyiv apartment on Feb. 25, 2025. (Erin McGroarty / The Cap Times)
His paintings hang on the walls of her home as a stained glass Ukrainian flag glows from sunlight in the window nearby.
“She is my main buyer,” Komar joked back in Kyiv. His art hangs on the walls of his own living room also.
Komar’s apartment — where he lives with his girlfriend, Tetiana Vazhka, and their cat, Maya — is bright with large windows that look out over the rest of the apartment complex and a nearby park.
At the beginning of the war, the two rented a different flat in a nearby high-rise. It was through those windows the couple watched Russia attack their city.
“We were sleeping,” Komar said. As the assault began, he and Vazhka watched out the window, unsure of what to do.
“We saw people starting to run with their stuff, their pets, kids and cars,” Komar remembered.
Between bombings, the couple went to a supermarket to buy food.
Shelves were already beginning to empty. On the way home, another big explosion scared the couple, and they decided to flee to Zgurivka, where Vazhka’s mother lived. The village is closer to Russia but farther from main cities they thought would be the target of Russian attacks.
Instead, they lived for two and a half months through regular artillery shelling before returning to Kyiv that April.
While many others fled the country, the couple remained.
“Today, sometimes I regret it,” Komar said of their decision to stay.
Like many others, he thought the war would be over by now.
“I thought like, ‘OK, three days, a few weeks, maybe a month, and somehow it will end, and we will see a new reality,’” Komar said. “But our new reality has become just war.”
Before the invasion, Komar thought of war like it is depicted in movies — constant action, terrifying but predictable.
“But the reality is that is 1% of war, and the rest of time is just a silent time when you know that war is going on and you see the impact, but it’s so slow. It’s so, so slow. Like slowly dying.”
At least the first few months of the invasion, when Kyiv underwent more intense bombardment from Russia, the war felt real, he said.
“It was a period of real feeling of danger like in a movie,” Komar said. “But now for three years, it’s danger like cancer.”
Rep. Brent Jacobson (R-Mosinee) said extended supervision, probation and parole are tools that give people a second chance with the expectation that they will not commit other crimes. Screenshot via WisEye.
The Wisconsin Assembly passed a slate of criminal justice related bills Thursday, including a requirement to revoke probation or parole for people charged with crimes and implementing financial penalties if Milwaukee Public Schools doesn’t return police officers to school buildings.
Republican lawmakers said the bills were necessary to improve public safety in Wisconsin.
“Wisconsinites in almost every part of our state have seen that there are areas of our state that have sincere and real concerns,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) said during a press conference.
Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine) said during floor debate that lawmakers should be crafting “smart” legislation to ensure people are safe across the state, but that the bills fall short of that goal. She said lawmakers should be focused on investing in safety.
“We can use evidence based, data driven practices to lower recidivism, to save taxpayer dollars and invest in rehabilitation and treatment to keep our communities safe,” Neubauer said. “Democrats are serious about safety, but the majority of bills in front of us today are not.”
Rep. Ryan Clancy said in a statement after the session that lawmakers spent the day on “considering badly written, badly conceived bills that will harm people and waste public resources” and said Republicans were refusing to acknowledge that mass incarceration and prison overcrowding are problems for the state.
“It’s wildly irresponsible to even consider increasing penalties and interfering with the very few tools of leniency we have with a prison system holding 5,000 more people than intended,” Clancy said. “But here we are.”
A couple of the bills would implement stricter requirements for dealing with criminal charges for people released from prison.
AB 85 would require supervising corrections officials to recommend revoking extended supervision, parole or probation for formerly incarcerated people who are charged with a new crime after their release. It passed 53-43.
The Department of Corrections found in a fiscal estimate that the bill would result in approximately 6,280 additional revocation cases each year. It also found that there would be an increase in operations costs by $85 million in the first year of enactment and a permanent increased operations cost of about $245 million after the population is annualized in the second year.
Vos said that the bill should be simple. He said that people who are out on parole have been given the “privilege” of being released from prison.
“Do you stand with the victim and the public or do you stand with the criminal who has reoffended and given up the privilege that he was briefly granted?” Vos rhetorically asked. “I think the price is worth it — $300 million to keep the people safe.”
Jacobson said the bill is necessary to address the “revolving door” in the prison system and ensure criminals don’t have the opportunity to victimize people. He said that extended supervision, probation and parole are tools that give people a second chance with the expectation that they will not commit other crimes.
“In far too many cases, a person released under state supervision continues the behavior that resulted in them going to prison in the first place,” Jacobson said. “It seems like common sense that someone who’s been convicted of a crime, is released under state supervision and returns to committing crimes, should have their release revoked. Far too often that is not the case.”
Clancy said in his statement that Republicans were “openly misleading the public and their colleagues about the contents and impacts of those bills.” He noted that the bill would be “triggered when someone is merely charged with a crime” but not found guilty.
AB 66 would require prosecutors to get a court’s approval to dismiss certain criminal charges. It passed 53-44.
Rep. Alex Joers (D-Middleton) said the bill would “remove prosecutorial discretion” and impose limits on those trying to uphold the law.
Jacobson, who authored the bill, argued it would support law enforcement and protect Wisconsinites from being victimized. He noted that Wisconsin law allows prosecutors to dismiss or amend charges or enter into deferred prosecution agreements.
“In the Legislature, we can pass all the penalties we like. It won’t matter if the justice system won’t apply those penalties,” Jacobson said. The bill, he said, would add an additional layer of oversight and transparency by requiring prosecutors to get court approval to dismiss or amend charges in cases involving one of seven serious crimes. Those include sexual assault, crimes against a child, theft of an automobile, reckless driving resulting in great bodily harm and illegal possession of a firearm by a felon.
“These crimes leave lasting impacts and it’s our job as officials to take these seriously,” Jacobson said.
Lawmakers also passed a couple of bills that would increase penalties for certain crimes.
AB 61, which would increase penalties for injuring or killing an animal used by police or firefighters, passed in a voice vote.
Specifically, the bill would increase injuring an animal to a Class H felony, which is punishable by a fine of up to $10,000 or imprisonment for up to six years. Killing an animal would be increased to a Class G felony, which is punishable by a fine of up to $25,000 or imprisonment for up to 10 years.
AB 86 passed in a voice vote. The bill would increase the penalty for child sex trafficking if the crime involved at least three victims who were children at the time the crime was committed from a Class C felony to a Class A felony. As a Class A felony, the crime could be punished with life imprisonment.
AB 89 would allow multiple acts of theft or retail theft committed by the same person to be prosecuted as a single crime, and the value of the thefts to be combined in determining the penalty. It passed 71-26, with 18 Democrats joining Republicans in support.
School resource officers in MPS
Lawmakers also passed AB 91, which would implement financial penalties for Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) and the city of Milwaukee if either stop complying with a state law that requires police officers in schools.
Wisconsin Act 12, which passed in 2023, provided increased state funding for local governments and also implemented requirements that MPS place 25 officers in its schools by Jan. 1, 2024. The district was late to begin following the law, and a judge recently ordered the district and city to comply with the state law and instructed the district and the city to split the cost for the officers evenly. The Milwaukee Common Council and MPS Board both approved an agreement to make this happen earlier this month.
The bill was introduced, its sponsors said, to ensure the district complies both now and in the future.
An amendment to the bill changed the cost-sharing from 25% for the city of Milwaukee and 75% for the district to an even split between the two entities.
If there is noncompliance, 10% of the city’s shared revenue payment will be withheld by the state and 25% of the school district’s state aid payments would be withheld.
MPS has not had officers in schools since 2016, and the district ended its contract with the Milwaukee Police Department in 2020 in response to student and community opposition to the practice, a point that Rep. Darrin Madison (D-Milwaukee) pointed out during floor debate.
Madison said that when he was a student at a school staffed with officers a friend of his had an encounter that left him in the hospital.
“Two students were fighting. School safety officers came in and de-escalated the situation. As a friend of mine went to go check on his sister, who had been involved in the incident, I got to see school resource officers grab him, lift him in the air and body-slam him on the concrete of our lunchroom floor,” Madison said. “His shoulder was dislocated and his lip was busted, and he had to undergo surgery to navigate that situation. That wasn’t the only time that this happened in our school, where students were harmed by school resource officers.”
Madison said police officers in schools are a “failed approach.”
“Thanks to Act 12, and thanks to this bill. We’ll continue to create harms for our students… Our schools shouldn’t look like prisons. They shouldn’t work like prisons, and we shouldn’t treat students like prisoners in a space of learning, creativity and exploration. This takes Milwaukee schools in a bad direction.”
Clancy pointed out that MPS is not the only school district without officers in schools. Some other districts are Madison Metropolitan School District, Sherwood, Nicolet, Glendale River Hills.
“This is an attack on Milwaukee, and this is an attack specifically on the Black, brown, and Indigenous young people,” Clancy said.
Bill author Rep. Bob Donovan (R-Greenfield) said that the bill is needed because Milwaukee schools continue to call the police to deal with incidents. He cited a recent Milwaukee Journal Sentinel report that found MPS averaged 3,700 police calls each year over 11 years.
“If MPS doesn’t want cops in their schools, why do they keep calling them?” Donovan said.
“Some say that this legislation or the penalties are not necessary. What is the alternative? The state just allow open defiance of state law? It took an MPS parent to sue the district before any movement was made,” Donovan said. “This legislation ensures this never happens again… There must be consequences for breaking the law, and how can we expect MPS to teach our children respect for authority and the rule of law when they apparently have none themselves.”
Other bills passed include
AB 75 to require the state Department of Justice to collect and report a list of facts about each criminal case filed in Wisconsin. It passed 54-43. Rep. Russell Goodwin (D-Milwaukee) joined the Republicans in voting for the bill.
AB 87 to require a person convicted of child trafficking to pay restitution immediately, and would authorize the seizure of their assets in lieu of payment. It also would require that anyone convicted of a felony must pay all outstanding financial obligations from their conviction before their right to vote is restored. It passed 53-44.
AB 74 to require public school boards, private school governing bodies and charter school operators to notify the parent or guardian of a student who is an alleged victim or target of a school employee’s sexual misconduct. It passed in a voice vote.
AB 78 to allow municipalities to impound a reckless driver’s vehicle whether or not it belongs to the driver. It also requires police to determine if the vehicle has been reported stolen, and if it has been, to release it to the original owner at no cost. It passed in a voice vote.
Madison Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl has been placed on administrative leave at least through the April 1 election, as city and state officials continue to investigate how she and her staff lost track of nearly 200 ballots on Election Day last fall, the city announced Wednesday.
Mike Haas, Madison’s city attorney, will take over her duties in the interim. Municipalities typically prefer not to make changes to election oversight so close to an election, but Haas, a former administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, is widely considered one of the state’s foremost experts on election law. It’s not clear when — or whether — Witzel-Behl will return to her post.
“Given the nature of the issues being investigated, we felt this was a necessary step to maintain public confidence in the operations of our clerk’s office,” Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said.
The scrutiny of Witzel-Behl follows a series of oversights that contributed to the mishandling of ballots during the 2024 election.
In its probe, the Wisconsin Elections Commission found that mistakes began well before Election Day. One involved the poll books showing the list of registered voters in each ward. For the two polling locations where 193 ballots went missing, Witzel-Behl’s office printed the poll books on Oct. 23, nearly two weeks before Election Day, despite commission guidance urging election officials to print poll books as close to the election as possible.
If the poll books had been printed later, they would have automatically marked certain absentee voters’ ballots as having been returned, making it clearer to poll workers on Election Day that some ballots had been received but not counted. Instead, poll workers manually highlighted the poll books to indicate returned ballots — a method that Wisconsin Elections Commission staff warned could have made it less clear to city and county officials reviewing the election results that some ballots were still outstanding.
“I am genuinely troubled by the number of profoundly bad decisions that are recited in these materials leading up to Election Day,” commission Chair Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, said in a meeting last week.
In that commission meeting, Jacobs also highlighted what she called an “absolutely shocking set of dates post-election, where every opportunity to fix this is ignored.”
In a statement to Votebeat, Jacobs said she wasn’t surprised by Witzel-Behl being placed on leave.
“We cannot have elections where properly cast ballots are not counted due to administrative errors,” she said. “City Attorney Michael Haas is to be commended for stepping in to manage the upcoming April 1 election with less than three weeks to prepare … I have every confidence he will do everything he can to restore trust in Madison’s elections.”
Clerk’s staff found the first batch of ballots — 68 in total — in a previously unopened courier bag in the clerk’s office on Nov. 12, while Dane County was in the middle of certifying the election.
There are conflicting accounts of what happened next: An unidentified Madison election worker claimed that the county was informed about the ballots that day, but Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell has vehemently denied this. Either way, Witzel-Behl, who told Votebeat she was on vacation for much of the time following Election Day, didn’t follow up with the county, and those ballots were never counted. She also failed to immediately notify state or city officials outside the clerk’s office.
A second batch of 125 ballots was discovered in the clerk’s office on Dec. 3. However, staff didn’t relay that information to the Wisconsin Elections Commission until Dec. 18 — well after the state certified the election. The commission then notified Haas about the error, and Haas relayed the news to the mayor’s office — which is when both learned of the problem for the first time.
While Witzel-Behl has sought to address some of the issues, her office remains under scrutiny from the Madison mayor’s office, the state and now a civil claim seeking damages for the ballots that went uncounted. She has proposed procedural changes, including requiring clerk’s staff to verify all election materials received on Election Night and ensuring that each polling place receives a list of the absentee-ballot courier bags it handles to prevent any from being overlooked.
The April 1 election that Haas will oversee for Madison includes a pair of high-profile contests: a race for a pivotal Wisconsin Supreme Court seat and a ballot question on whether the state’s photo ID requirement for voting should be enshrined in the constitution. Supreme Court elections typically draw a high turnout, especially in Madison.
Haas said he expected a smooth election, despite the investigation.
“I am completely confident in the ability of the highly trained, incredibly competent professional staff at the Clerk’s Office to continue the operations of the office without interruption, including conducting the upcoming spring primary election,” Haas said. “I look forward to working with them to ensure a secure, transparent, and safe election.”
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
Wisconsin election officials voted Friday to force Madison city workers to sit for depositions as they try to learn more about how nearly 200 absentee ballots in November’s election went uncounted.
The uncounted ballots in the state’s capital city didn’t affect any results, but the Wisconsin Elections Commission still launched an investigation in January to determine whether Madison City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl violated state law or abused her discretion. She didn’t notify the elections commission of the uncounted ballots until December, almost a month and a half after the election and well after the results were certified on Nov. 29.
Commissioners astounded at failure to count ballots
The commission hasn’t made a decision yet on whether Witzel-Behl acted illegally or improperly, but commissioners appeared flabbergasted at the failure to count the ballots as they reviewed the investigation during a meeting Friday. Chair Ann Jacobs was particularly incensed with Witzel-Behl for not launching her own in-depth probe immediately.
“This feels like a complete lack of leadership and a refusal to be where the buck stops,” Jacobs said. “You don’t get to put your head in the sand for weeks. … I am genuinely shocked by this timeline.”
Don Millis said it was a “travesty” that the ballots were never counted. “You’re telling the world that these 193 people didn’t vote in what many thought was the most consequential election of our lifetime,” he said.
What did the commission decide to do?
The commission voted unanimously to authorize Jacobs and Millis to question Madison city employees in depositions — question-and-answer periods usually led by attorneys in which the subject gives sworn testimony. Jacobs said she would confer with Millis about who to question, but Witzel-Behl will likely be one of the subjects.
Madison city attorney Mike Haas, who was in the audience, told The Associated Press outside the meeting that he would not fight the depositions. “The city wants to get to the bottom of this as much as anyone else,” he said.
The commission also voted unanimously to send a message to clerks around the state informing them of the problems in Madison and warning them to scour polling places for any uncounted ballots during the upcoming April 1 election. Jacobs said she plans to call for more substantial changes to state election policy going into the 2026 elections after commissioners learn more about what happened in Madison.
The investigation’s findings so far
The city clerk’s office discovered 67 unprocessed absentee ballots in a courier bag that had been placed in a security cart on Nov. 12, the day election results were canvassed.
Witzel-Behl said she told two employees to notify the elections commission, but neither did. A third employee visited the Dane County Clerk’s Office in person to inform officials there of the discovery. That employee said he didn’t remember what the Dane County clerk said, but he recalled a “general sense” that the county would not want the ballots for the canvass.
The Dane County clerk, Scott McDonell, told the commission that he knew nothing of the uncounted ballots until they were reported in the media.
The clerk’s office discovered another 125 uncounted absentee ballots in a sealed courier bag in a supply tote on Dec. 2. Witzel-Behl said she didn’t inform county canvassers because the canvass was finished and, based on the county’s response to Nov. 12 discovery, she didn’t think the county would be interested.
The elections commission wasn’t notified of either discovery until Dec. 18. Witzel-Behl said the employees she asked to notify the commission waited until reconciliation was completed. Reconciliation is a routine process in which poll workers and elections officials ensure an election’s accuracy, including checking the number of ballots issued at the polls to the number of voters.
Holes in protocols
The investigators noted that Madison polling places’ absentee ballot logs didn’t list the number of courier bags for each ward, which would have told election inspectors how many bags to account for while processing ballots.
City election officials also had no procedures for confirming the number of absentee ballots received with the number counted. Witzel-Behl said that information was emailed to election inspectors the weekend before the election, but no documents provided the total number of ballots received.
If Witzel-Behl had looked through everything to check for courier bags and absentee ballot envelopes before the election was certified, the missing ballots could have been counted, investigators said.
Witzel-Behl also couldn’t explain why she didn’t contact the county or the state elections commission herself, investigators said.
Voters prep for lawsuit
Four Madison voters whose ballots weren’t counted filed claims Thursday for $175,000 each from the city and Dane County, the first step toward initiating a lawsuit.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
Four Wisconsin voters whose ballots were not counted in the November presidential election initiated a class-action lawsuit Thursday seeking $175,000 in damages each.
The voters were among 193 in Madison whose ballots were misplaced by the city clerk and not discovered until weeks after the election. Not counting the ballots didn’t affect the result of any races.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission investigated but did not determine whether Madison Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl failed to comply with state law or abused her discretion.
She didn’t notify the elections commission of the problem until December, almost a month and a half after the election and after the results were certified on Nov. 29.
The goal is to reinforce and strengthen the right to vote in Wisconsin, said attorney Jeff Mandell, who is general counsel of Law Forward, which filed claims against the city of Madison and Dane County on Thursday.
“When people’s votes are not counted, when the right to vote is violated, our democracy is diminished,” Mandell said during a news conference announcing the action.
The four affected voters are seeking $175,000 each from the city of Madison and Dane County. That is above the $50,000 maximum that can be sought in class-action lawsuits against municipalities.
The lawsuit will argue that the cap is unconstitutional, the notice of claim said.
The number of affected voters who could join the lawsuit might grow, Mandell said. All of the voters whose ballots were not counted are named in the notice made public Thursday.
Madison takes election integrity seriously, the city’s spokesperson, Dylan Brogan, said in reaction. He noted that the clerk’s office apologized for the error both publicly and to each affected voter.
The clerk’s office has also taken steps to ensure the such a mistake won’t happen again and looked forward to additional guidance from the state elections commission, Brogan said. He declined to comment specifically on the lawsuit.
The state elections commission is scheduled to discuss its investigation into the uncounted ballots on Friday.
According to a summary of its findings, the clerk didn’t explain what exactly happened at the polling places, how the uncounted ballots went unnoticed all day on Election Day or how they were misplaced.
She also hasn’t said whether she spoke to the chief inspectors in the affected wards to find out what happened, making it difficult to develop guidelines to help election clerks throughout the state avoid similar issues, investigators said.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
Madison city hall during the April 2020 spring election. (Henry Redman
The progressive voting rights-focused firm Law Forward filed a class action lawsuit against the city of Madison and Dane County Thursday over the 193 absentee ballots that city election workers lost and didn’t count during the 2024 election.
The ballots were found in sealed courier bags after the Nov. 5 election and not counted even though the bags were discovered for the ballots to be added to the final vote tally. Law Forward staff said the lawsuit was filed because voters were denied their constitutional right to vote.
“The goal of this lawsuit is to reinforce and strengthen the right to vote in Wisconsin law, the right to vote is absolutely fundamental in our democracy, the cornerstone of our entire system of governance,” Jeff Mandell, Law Forward’s general counsel, said at a news conference Thursday. “Law Forward exists to defend and advance democracy in Wisconsin, standing up for the right to vote, whenever and wherever it may be violated, is a key part of Law Forward’s mission. This lawsuit is not an attack on any individual municipality or election official. It is instead a necessary and important defense of the right to vote in Wisconsin.”
Since discovering the mistake, the city has notified the public about the error and participated in an investigation into how it occurred.
Dylan Brogan, spokesperson for Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway, said the city couldn’t comment on the pending litigation, but that city officials have worked to make sure the mistake isn’t repeated.
“The City of Madison takes election integrity extremely seriously,” Brogan said. “Our Clerk’s Office has issued a public apology and reached out to affected voters directly to apologize for the failure to count their absentee ballot. They have also taken a number of steps to ensure this never happens again. Ahead of the February primary, election officials were trained on new safeguards and procedures for handling absentee ballots. Internal review of the incident is still underway, and additional steps may be taken. The City is also looking forward to any additional guidance the Wisconsin Election Commission may offer to further strengthen our elections processes.”
For now, Law Forward is representing four of the voters whose ballots went uncounted, but Mandell said the remaining 189 voters would have the ability to join the lawsuit if a judge allows the class action to move forward. The suit requests that damages totalling $175,000 be paid to each affected voter — which exceeds the $50,000 limit under state law for claims against municipalities.
If all 193 voters participate and receive the full requested amount of damages, the city would be forced to pay more than $33.7 million for the error.
“The truth is the right to vote is valuable, and I think that we are in an ecosystem where standing up for the right to vote matters,” Law Forward staff counsel Scott Thompson said. “Across the country, there have been efforts to subvert the right to vote, and we believe that this litigation sends a message to anyone who might seek to do something like that. In Wisconsin, there’s going to be a price to pay.”
At a meeting on Friday, the Wisconsin Elections Commission is set to hear an update on its investigation into the issue and how the ballots were lost. Among the actions it may take, the commission could decide to issue a statement to municipal clerks across the state reminding them of the best practices when handling absentee ballots.
Of the nearly 200 uncounted ballots that Madison city clerk’s staff discovered after Election Day, about 70 might have gotten counted if the staff members had promptly alerted the county.
The clerk’s office staff didn’t find 125 of the uncounted ballots until Dec. 3 — after the state already certified the election. But the staff found 68 of them well before that, on Nov. 12, the same day Dane County certified the election. If the clerk’s office had reported the missing votes to the county within a few days, the county election board could have petitioned the Wisconsin Elections Commission to amend its results to include those ballots.
Kevin Kennedy, formerly the state election chief for over 30 years and a chief inspector at a Madison polling site not associated with the errors, said the county canvass, or official count, could have been reopened at that point if officials had known about the problem.
“From my perspective, you find the ballots, you tell the city attorney. The city attorney is going to advise you to tell the mayor and to reach out to the county board of canvassers,” Kennedy said. “That’s what should have happened once they were discovered.”
Informing the city attorney in this case could have been especially helpful: Madison’s city attorney, Mike Haas, was formerly the administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission and is regarded by some as one of the state’s top election lawyers.
In a letter to the state election commission, obtained by Votebeat, Madison Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl claimed she “believes” somebody from her office did, in fact, tell the Dane County Clerk’s Office about the ballots on Nov. 12.
On that day, Witzel-Behl said, an employee identified as “employee F” “believes he spoke to the Dane County Clerk in his office but cannot remember what the Dane County Clerk said,” though he was “certain” the conversation had taken place. The office was left with “a general sense that the County would not want” the ballots that had been discovered that day.
Witzel-Behl didn’t supply additional information substantiating that interaction and through a spokesperson said she had nothing to add to the information she shared with the elections commission.
But Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell said he “strongly disagrees” with the city’s claims.
“Prior to the information being released publicly, my office and the Dane County Board of Canvassers had no communication with the Madison City Clerk’s Office regarding the discovery of unopened absentee ballots,” he said.
“I find the claim that a conversation took place, without providing details about what was said, difficult to understand,” he continued. “If I had been told about 60 or more uncounted ballots, I would have advised that they talk to their city attorney, who is an election expert.”
“The frustrating part of this whole situation is that a fix allowing some of the ballots to be counted was pretty simple,” he said. “An error of this size is extremely unfortunate, and I worry it will make it difficult for voters to trust their ability to cast an absentee ballot in future elections. I will work to do whatever I can on my part to help ensure our municipal partners know what to do if a similar situation occurs in the future.”
State law outlines what Madison could have done
Under state law, if the Dane County Board of Canvassers — the entity that certifies elections on the county level — becomes aware of a mistake, it can ask the Wisconsin Elections Commission for permission to amend the county results. The window for such a correction stays open until the commission receives every other county’s certification, which in this case didn’t happen until Nov. 18, several days after Madison staff found the 68 ballots.
Other provisions may also allow the election commission to require the county to correct its canvass, said Bree Grossi Wilde, executive director of the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Wisconsin law appears to allow for the “ability to make a correction” if the county board of canvassers or the Wisconsin Elections Commission becomes aware of an error, she said.
Instead, the 68 Madison ballots went uncounted and unreported for weeks. City election staff were under the impression that the ballots couldn’t be counted unless there was a recount, Witzel-Behl said in December.
“They should have asked someone,” said Ann Jacobs, a Democratic member on the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
Staff in the city clerk’s office apparently didn’t report the ballot discovery to non-election city staff or any external election agency until Dec. 18, when they told the Wisconsin Elections Commission. The commission told city staff, and the mayor’s office soon after disclosed the oversight to the public. By that point, the window to make any of those ballots count toward the election had all but closed. The 193 ballots weren’t tallied until a Jan. 10 city election board meeting, though none of those ballots counted toward any official election results. Madison voters cast over 174,000 ballots in the November election, and the 193 votes wouldn’t have changed any election outcome.
At that meeting, Witzel-Behl addressed the lack of city processes that likely contributed to the ballots going missing on Election Day and said there would be new procedures for city election staff and poll workers to prevent a recurrence.
But at that meeting, Witzel-Behl didn’t explain why her office didn’t communicate with city staff or the county immediately after the ballots were discovered, or identify policies to communicate future errors quicker.
She told Votebeat on Jan. 14 that she’s still developing specific policies.
Kennedy, the former state election chief, said having clear instructions in place from the state would have made a difference. The election commission “needs to lay out some expectations so that everybody in the state, every municipal clerk and county clerk knows, ‘If you have a problem, this is what we expect you to do,” he said.
Lapse raises doubts for voters
Here’s what we know so far about what happened:
At a polling site in Ward 56, just west of downtown, election officials didn’t open two large carrier envelopes used to transport absentee ballots from the clerk’s office to polling sites, where they are tabulated. Those two envelopes contained a total of 125 ballots, which were discovered on Dec. 3.
At another site, poll workers at Ward 65 didn’t open a carrier envelope carrying 68 absentee ballots, including one ballot that should have been sent to a different polling place. That batch was found on Nov. 12, and it’s not clear what steps the clerk’s office took after the discovery.
There are two clear issues that arose from the uncounted ballots, Kennedy said. One is the matter of process and communications. Poll workers didn’t count the ballots, and city staff took a long time to find them, but still didn’t report having found them.
The other is the impact on the voters who cast these ballots. “It’s still personal to them” that their votes didn’t get counted, Kennedy said, even if they wouldn’t have changed any election outcomes.
Among those voters was Carol Troyer-Shank, who received an apology letter from the city about the error.
“It’s so funny, because I have been a reluctant early voter simply because I imagined such a thing happening,” she said. “It’s too bad this had to happen, but it’s not a big enough deal to lose sleep over. I’m glad the city is apologizing, and I’m glad the city is taking steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Troyer-Shank said she may still vote early in the future. But she added that there remain outstanding questions about what led to 193 ballots, including hers, going uncounted on Election Day.
“We still don’t know what went wrong,” she said. “We still don’t know why they were uncounted at the sites.”
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
On Election Day in Madison, nearly 200 absentee ballots slipped through the cracks. They weren’t processed or counted. Most of them weren’t even discovered until almost a month later.
And nobody seems to know exactly how the oversight occurred. Some city officials are questioning why it took so long for the error to come to light. It’s a mystery that the dozens of voters in the state capital would certainly like to see solved.
The critical disenfranchisement of 193 Madison voters on Nov. 5 resulted from mistakes at two different polling locations and the lack of a comprehensive system for poll workers to track whether they’ve counted every absentee ballot
At a polling site in Ward 56, just west of downtown, election officials didn’t open two large carrier envelopes, used to transport absentee ballots, that contained a total of 125 ballots, Madison Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl said. At another site in a neighborhood slightly further west called Regent, poll workers at Ward 65 didn’t open another carrier envelope, carrying 68 absentee ballots, including one that should have been sent to a different polling place.
Normally, Witzel-Behl said, poll workers at each location “triple check” that all absentee votes have been processed before running results on the tabulator.
“We do not know why these carrier envelopes were overlooked at the polls on Election Day,” she said.
The oversight became public seven weeks after the election. Until just over a week ago, neither the Wisconsin Elections Commission nor the Madison mayor’s office knew about it.
On Dec. 26, Madison’s mayor and clerk outlined in separate statements how the ballots made it to two polling places but were somehow left unopened.
“While the discovery of these unprocessed absentee ballots did not impact the results of any election or referendum, a discrepancy of this magnitude is unacceptable,” Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said. “This oversight is a significant departure from the high standard our residents expect and must be addressed and avoided in future elections.”
The statements left significant questions unanswered: Exactly how and when did the ballots go missing? Who was responsible for the error? Why was the news coming out over seven weeks after Election Day?
Rhodes-Conway, for one, made clear the long delay wasn’t on her account.
“Unfortunately, Clerk’s Office staff were apparently aware of the oversight for some time and the Mayor’s Office was not notified of the unprocessed ballots until December 20,” she said in a statement.
In fact, Witzel-Behl didn’t alert the mayor’s office first about the missing ballots. The clerk’s office told the Wisconsin Elections Commission about it on Dec. 18. The agency then relayed the news to the city attorney, who told the mayor’s office about it.
The commission found out about the missing ballots through a process that clerks must follow if there’s a discrepancy at the polls between the number of voters and number of ballots. The clerk’s office told the commission about the discrepancy two days before the deadline for reconciling those numbers, Witzel-Behl said. Prior to that, Witzel-Behl told Votebeat she was largely out of office.
“I personally was trying to burn through vacation time after the election, and was not aware of the magnitude of this situation,” she said. “In retrospect, I should have just cut back to standard work weeks after the election.”
Madison has decentralized absentee processing
Unlike some of Wisconsin’s bigger cities, where all absentee ballots are processed and counted at a single location, in Madison absentee ballots are sent to the polling sites corresponding to where the voters would cast in-person ballots. At those sites, poll workers typically process the absentee ballot envelopes, containing witness and voter information, before counting the ballots.
Workers at each polling location have a process for checking which voters submitted absentee ballots. They typically use an orange highlighter to mark names of voters in a poll book of city residents who were issued an absentee ballot, Witzel-Behl said, and a pink highlighter to mark those who returned their ballots. Each polling place has documents outlining the number of ballots that were returned to be counted as of the Sunday prior to Election Day, she said.
Each absentee carrier envelope has a unique identification number on the seal closing it for security reasons. Madison polling sites didn’t receive a list of seal numbers for each carrier envelope that was transported to them, but the clerk’s office stated they would provide such a list in the future. There was only a handwritten log of the seal numbers in the clerk’s office.
Despite the two polling places having a large number of absentee ballots outstanding on Election Day, the missing votes weren’t discovered until after the Municipal Board of Canvassers met on Nov. 8 to certify the election, Witzel-Behl said.
By the time one batch of uncounted ballots was discovered on Nov. 12, she said, “Staff was under the impression that it was too late for these ballots to be counted, unless we had a recount.”
Madison voters cast over 174,000 ballots in the November election.
What we know about the missing ballots
There weren’t any apparent issues with sorting or delivering the correct ballots to the polling location near downtown. But at some point after Election Day, Witzel-Behl said, an hourly employee noticed there were a lot of outstanding absentee ballots.
On Dec. 3, she said, the employee looked through materials returned from that polling location on Election Day, she said. The employee found two sealed carrier envelopes containing absentee ballots. They contained 125 unprocessed ballots.
The 68 ballots at the Regent neighborhood polling site, including the one ballot sorted and delivered to the wrong station, were contained in a sealed carrier envelope of absentee ballots.
It’s not entirely clear where that carrier envelope was throughout Election Day, but election workers later discovered it inside of a chamber of a vote tabulating machine where ballots typically go after they’re counted. Madison election officials often use that compartment to transport absentee ballots to polling sites.
At the end of the night, poll workers put secure ballot bags and other materials into the tabulators, Witzel-Behl said.
Madison clerk, mayor vow to prevent future oversights
In its letter to the election commission, the clerk’s office outlined its plans to “debrief these incidents and implement better processes” to make sure all absentee carrier envelopes are accounted for and processed on Election Day.
Rhodes-Conway also said she plans to conduct a review of the city’s election policies. Additionally, she said, the city will send letters to the affected voters to notify them of the error and apologize.
“My office is committed to taking whatever corrective action is necessary to maintain a high standard of election integrity in Madison, and to provide ongoing transparency into that process,” she said.
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
The school shooting this week at Abundant Life Christian in Madison, Wisconsin, is tragic and senseless, but it’s not at all shocking. Deliberately planned school shootings happen multiple times every school year, mostly in smaller rural and suburban communities. The perpetrators of these attacks are almost always actively suicidal current or former students at the school they target.
Back in April, I wrote an article for the 25th anniversary of the Columbine school shooting. This trend line turned out to be sadly accurate. With the shooting at Abundant Life Christian, there have been five pre-planned attacks at schools this year.
(David Riedman)
Regardless of how you measure school shootings — guns fired, wounded, killed, active shooter, planned attacks, or near misses — the trend line is going up. While these planned school shootings have taken place since the 1960s, the frequency of the attacks is steadily increasing.
Like the other planned attacks this year in Perry, Iowa; Mount Horeb, Wisconsin; Apalachee, Georgia; and Palermo, California, these incidents have common patterns and connections to prior school shootings. The number of “near misses” where a school shooting almost happens are also going up.
Columbine connection
The father of the 15-year-old Madison, Wisconsin, school shooter posted a Facebook photo of his daughter at a shooting range in August. His cover photo shows Natalie Rupnow, who went by the name Samantha.
Natalie can be seen wearing a black shirt with the name of the band KMFDM. The German industrial rock band’s lyrics were thrust into the dark subculture of school shooters by the students who carried out the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School.
In the Columbine “basement tapes,” Dylan Klebold can be seen wearing the same shirt. It’s critical for parents to study prior school shooters, know their names and faces, and recognize symbols like KMFDM that represent idolization of prior attacks.
The Madison shooting follows the common patterns with planned attacks at schools. The perpetrator was a student (insider), committed a surprise attack during morning classes and died by suicide before police arrived.
(David Riedman)
Most school shootings are committed by current or former students who are “insiders” at the school and know the security plan/procedures.
(David Riedman)
Since an insider is someone who is allowed to be inside the school, most of these attacks are committed by current students.
“The public’s attention often focuses on the gender of the perpetrators. After the March 2023 mass shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, the shooter’s transgender identity was much discussed. After other school shootings, “toxic masculinity” has been highlighted, along with the well-documented fact that the majority of mass shootings are perpetrated by men and boys.
In our recently released K-12 school homicide database, which details 349 homicides committed at K-12 schools since 2020, only 12 (3%) of the perpetrators were female. There have been some notable cases involving female school shooters. In 1988, a female babysitter walked into a second-grade classroom in Winnetka, Illinois, and told the students she was there to teach them about guns; she opened fire, killing an 8-year-old boy and wounding five other students.
In Rigby, Idaho, in 2021, a 12-year-old girl plotted to kill 20 to 30 classmates. Armed with two handguns, she walked out of a bathroom and began firing in the hallway, wounding two students and the custodian. A teacher heard the shots, left the classroom and hugged the shooter to disarm her.
The earliest case in our records was in 1979, when a 16-year-old girl opened fire at Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, killing two and injuring nine. This was when the American public was first introduced to a female school shooter. Her infamous explanation for her actions — “I just don’t like Mondays” — is etched in pop culture. But it was less about a flippant attitude and more about despair. At a parole hearing years later, the shooter admitted the truth: “I wanted to die.” She saw her attack as a way to be killed by police.
Her story reflects what we now know: Most school shooters are suicidal, in crisis and driven by a mix of hopelessness and rage.
With each school shooting, we tend to concentrate on details: the rare female shooter, the high-profile massacre, the immediate response of authorities. But if we step back, we tend to see the same story repeated again and again. A student insider. In crisis. Suicidal.”
Inside during morning classes
Pre-planned school shootings usually take place during morning classes or at the start of the school day when the building is open before classes start.
(David Riedman)
Just like the shooting in Wisconsin this week, the most common outcome is the teenage student shooter commits suicide, surrenders or is subdued by students or staff before police intervene.
(David Riedman)
Begins and ends in the same room
While “active shooter training” videos produced by the Department of Homeland Security and ads by security tech vendors portray assailants roaming throughout a building while searching for every possible victim, most school shootings begin and end in the same room.
There isn’t much use for a ballistic chalkboard, drop bar lock on the door or panic button when the victims are all in close proximity to an armed assailant who is inside the same room with them.
(David Riedman)
Following this pattern, the shooting at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, took place in a classroom during study hall, and the victims were in the same age group. The teenage shooter didn’t roam the building looking for the elementary school kids; she killed herself before police arrived.
(David Riedman)
Police usually don’t stop these single shooter insider attacks because they are very short duration incidents that are usually over within the first two minutes.
During just these deliberately planned attacks over the last 60 years (these victim counts in the chart do not represent all shootings on school property), there have been roughly twice as many victims killed or wounded with handguns versus rifles.
This doesn’t mean that rifles aren’t as dangerous. At Apalachee High, a student committed an insider attack by sneaking an AR-15 into the building inside a posterboard. Until the last decade, AR-15s weren’t cheap and easily accessible. As there continue to be more school shootings involving rifles, this chart will likely even out over time (unless we take meaningful action to stop these attacks).
Preventing the next school shooting
I spoke to NBC 5 Investigates on Monday afternoon right after the school shooting. I said that this shooting at Abundant Life Christian School followed a common pattern in that it was carried out by an “insider” — a student familiar with the school grounds.
“We need to understand the actual nature of this problem and apply solutions towards identifying the student who has a grievance, identifying a student who is talking about students and realizing that these are rarely random acts. All the opportunities to prevent it happen before they ever come to campus with a gun,” Riedman told NBC 5 Investigates.
Riedman said the focus should not be on fortifying schools with additional weapons detectors or metal detectors but focusing on the students’ behaviors that may help foretell a future incident — adding that there is a need to “dispel the myth that these school shootings are committed by scary outsiders,” when data shows that they are often committed by those who are familiar with the school and have a grievance that ends in violence.
“We will probably hear in the coming days about a series of missed warning signs, social media posts, a manifesto and so on,” he said.
David Riedman is the creator of the K-12 School Shooting Database, chief data officer at a global risk management firm and a tenure-track professor at Idaho State University. He originally published this story on his Substack: School Shooting Data Analysis and Reports.
Wisconsin Watch spoke with Bethany Highman, age 29, mother of a student who was unharmed in the shooting. She talked about how she heard about the incident, what she is feeling, and where she finds hope and comfort.
A 15-year-old student killed a teacher and another teenager with a handgun Monday at a Christian school in Wisconsin, terrifying classmates. A second-grade teacher made the 911 call that sent dozens of police officers rushing to the small school just a week before its Christmas break.
The female student, who was identified at a press conference Monday night, also wounded six others at a study hall at Abundant Life Christian School, including two students who were in critical condition, Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes said. A teacher and three students had been taken to a hospital with less serious injuries, and two of them had been released by Monday evening.
Emergency vehicles are parked outside the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wis., following a shooting, Monday, Dec. 16, 2024. (Morry Gash / Associated Press)
“Every child, every person in that building is a victim and will be a victim forever. … We need to figure out and try to piece together what exactly happened,” Barnes said.
Barbara Wiers, director of elementary and school relations for Abundant Life Christian School, said students “handled themselves magnificently.”
She said when the school practices safety routines, which it had done just before the school year, leaders always announce that it is a drill. That didn’t happen Monday.
“When they heard, ‘Lockdown, lockdown,’ they knew it was real,” she said.
Police said the shooter, identified as Natalie Rupnow, was found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound when officers arrived and died en route to a hospital. Barnes declined to offer additional details about the shooter, partly out of respect for the family.
Families leave SSM Health, set up as a reunification center, following a shooting on Dec. 16, 2024, in Madison, Wis. (Morry Gash / Associated Press)
A family leaves SSM Health, set up as a reunification center, following a shooting on Dec. 16, 2024, in Madison, Wis. (Morry Gash / Associated Press)
He also warned people against sharing unconfirmed reports on social media about the shooter’s identity.
“What that does is it helps erode the trust in this process,” he said.
Abundant Life is a nondenominational Christian school — prekindergarten through high school — with approximately 420 students in Madison, the state capital.
Wiers said the school does not have metal detectors but uses other security measures including cameras.
Children and families were reunited at a medical building about a mile away. Parents pressed children against their chests while others squeezed hands and shoulders as they walked side by side. One girl was comforted with an adult-size coat around her shoulders as she moved to a parking lot teeming with police vehicles.
Students board a bus as they leave the shelter following a shooting at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wis., on Dec. 16, 2024. (Morry Gash / Associated Press)
A motive for the shooting was not immediately known, but Barnes said they’re talking with the parents of the suspected shooter and they are cooperating. He also said he didn’t know if the people shot had been targeted.
“I don’t know why, and I feel like if we did know why, we could stop these things from happening,” he told reporters.
A search warrant had been issued Monday to a Madison home, he said.
Barnes said Tuesday the first 911 call to report an active shooter came in shortly before 11 a.m. from a second-grade teacher — not a second-grade student as he reported publicly Monday.
First responders who were in training just 3 miles away dashed to the school for an actual emergency, Barnes said. They arrived 3 minutes after the initial call and went into the building immediately.
A child is embraced at SSM Health, set up as a reunification center, following a shooting, Monday, Dec. 16, 2024, in Madison, Wis. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)
Classes had been taking place when the shooting happened, Barnes said.
Investigators believe the shooter used a 9mm pistol, a law enforcement official told the AP. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation.
Police blocked off roads around the school, and federal agents were at the scene to assist local law enforcement. No shots were fired by police.
Abundant Life asked for prayers in a brief Facebook post.
Wiers said the school’s goal is to have staff get together early in the week and have community opportunities for students to reconnect before the winter break, but it’s still to be decided whether they will resume classes this week.
Husband and wife Bethany Highman, left, and Reynaldo LeBaron are shown near the scene of a shooting that left three dead at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wis., on Dec. 16, 2024. LeBaron says his daughter, along with six nieces and nephews, attended the school. The incident showed “this can happen anywhere,” he says. (Brad Horn for Wisconsin Watch)
Bethany Highman, the mother of a student, rushed to the school and learned over FaceTime that her daughter was OK.
“As soon as it happened, your world stops for a minute. Nothing else matters,” Highman said. “There’s nobody around you. You just bolt for the door and try to do everything you can as a parent to be with your kids.”
In a statement, President Joe Biden cited the tragedy in calling on Congress to pass universal background checks, a national red flag law and certain gun restrictions.
Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes speaks during a press conference at Fire Station 14 in Madison, Wis., following a shooting at Abundant Life Christian School on Dec. 16, 2024. Barnes says three people, including the teenage shooter, a teacher and another student, were killed. (Brad Horn for Wisconsin Watch)
Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway speaks during a press conference at Fire Station 14 in Madison, Wis., following a shooting at Abundant Life Christian School on Dec. 16, 2024. She says it is important to meet the mental health needs for those affected by the violence. (Brad Horn for Wisconsin Watch)
“We can never accept senseless violence that traumatizes children, their families, and tears entire communities apart,” Biden said. He spoke with Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway and offered his support.
Evers said it’s “unthinkable” that a child or teacher would go to school and never return home.
The episode was the 323rd shooting at a K-12 school campus thus far in 2024, according to researcher David Riedman, founder of the K-12 School Shooting Database. The database uses a broad definition of shooting that includes when a gun is brandished, fired or a bullet hits school property.
“This shooting follows the common patterns with planned attacks at schools. The perpetrator was a student (insider), committed a surprise attack during morning classes, and died by suicide before police arrived,” Riedman wrote Monday on his website.
Police stand outside of SSM Health, which served as the reunification area for families and students of Abundant Life Christian School following a shooting that left three dead at the Madison, Wis., school on Dec. 16, 2024. (Brad Horn for Wisconsin Watch)
The shootings have set off fervent debates about gun control and frayed the nerves of parents whose children are growing up accustomed to doing active shooter drills in their classrooms. But school shootings have done little to move the needle on national gun laws.
Firearms were the leading cause of death among children in 2020 and 2021, according to KFF, a nonprofit that researches health care issues.
Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said the country needs to do more to prevent gun violence.
“I hoped that this day would never come to Madison,” she said.
Wisconsin Watch contributed information to this story.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
As rays of setting sun striped the hill at Madison’s James Madison Park, Arthur Kohl-Riggs practiced handstands on his favorite tree.
“I never really planned on handstanding but it’s proven very meditative,” he said.
Kohl-Riggs, 36, a native of Madison’s west side, said he initially started exercising at the park to regain strength in his shoulder following an injury. Now it’s his “third space” — a familiar spot to connect with others.
“The idea of being a regular at a park is nice,” he said. “There’s no cost, you don’t have to buy a drink an hour, it’s just a free space to be.”
As fellow park-goers walked by, some stopped to watch as Kohl-Riggs wrapped his hands around the old oak’s branch, brought his feet near his hands, hooked the branch with his feet, then dropped his arms to the ground, dangling upside down.
Arthur Kohl-Riggs watches the sunset and practices handstands on an oak tree in this double exposure photograph on Nov. 12, 2024, at James Madison Park in Madison, Wis. Kohl-Riggs has lived an eclectic life that includes running in the 2012 Republican gubernatorial primary as a protest candidate against Scott Walker. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
“I’ve been trying to find ways to reintegrate intentionally into the community,” Kohl-Riggs said.
Routines developed earlier in the pandemic kept him cooped inside for months at a time, he said. But now, between using his friend’s laundry machine in exchange for handyman work and attending karaoke nights at the Gamma Ray Bar just off the Capitol Square, Kohl-Riggs said he’s forcing himself into community — resisting the forces of complacency to avoid reisolation.
Kohl-Riggs has lived eclectically.
As an activist and citizen journalist in 2012, he ran a protest campaign against Scott Walker in the Republican primary for governor, touting the values of Republicans like Robert La Follette and Abraham Lincoln and growing a Lincoln-like beard. He received nearly 20,000 votes, 3% of the tally, despite spending less than $2,000. Over the next five years, he and a friend produced a tongue-in-cheek YouTube travel series about Dane County called Dane & Dash. He said he now works as a legal investigator for a private law firm that works on public defense overflow cases, helping to “ease the congested public defender rolls,” he said.
Arthur Kohl-Riggs hangs upside down while practicing handstands on his favorite tree on Nov. 12, 2024, at James Madison Park in Madison, Wis. “The idea of being a regular at a park is nice,” he says. “There’s no cost, you don’t have to buy a drink an hour, it’s just a free space to be.” (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Kohl-Riggs said he feels optimistic about the state’s future, despite a range of challenges people face — from housing and financial instability to a lack of health care.
“Despair only hinders progress,” he said. “We’re more capable now than we were before of seeing more of the faults in a lot of the systems that have always existed. It’s harder to be complacent when everything’s obviously not working how it’s supposed to work.”
“People are motivated to make their communities better and to protect from potential threats to the people in their communities and around them,” Kohl-Riggs added. “That energy is contagious… we can build strong, resilient local strategies to combat national threats.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
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