GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – Green Bay city leaders are looking for changes ahead of the upcoming August and November elections.
City Clerk Kris Teske says the state’s system for issuing absentee ballots needs to be upgraded.
The city wasn’t able to fill thousands of absentee requests before the Spring Election. However, similar sized cities say they were able to mail ballots to everyone who requested one.
Teske told the city council this week she believes one of the biggest factors to the city’s long in-person voting lines for the Spring Election was her office’s inability to mail absentee ballots to everyone who asked for one.
Teske said before the next election in August the state needs to upgrade its system for issuing absentee ballots and the city needs to certify more people to process absentee requests.
“Just to get a set of labels out for one person, it takes 18 clicks. That does not include putting the labels on the envelope or inserting the ballot and the instructions.”
Teske says one request takes five minutes to process. Other city clerks told FOX 11 the same thing.
Teske also says people can request absentee ballots an unlimited amount of times through multiple methods.
“We had one person request 11 times. We still have to print and touch that to make sure it’s in there. Nothing tells us this person did that already.”
Teske isn’t sure how many duplicate requests her office received, but she estimates there were more than 17,000 total. She says her office only filled 14,376.
For comparison, FOX 11 checked with other large cities in the state. Appleton’s clerk says they are still tabulating those numbers. Oshkosh reports it was able to mail a ballot to all 12,357 people who requested one. Kenosha says it was also able to fill all its requests, 15,672. And in Madison, the clerk’s office reports it mailed a ballot to all 87,890 people who asked for one.
“We were working nights, weekends,” said Teske.
Teske says Green Bay’s inability struggle wasn’t for a lack of effort. She says 86 city workers from other departments averaged about 19 hours each helping the clerk’s office. Those employees aren’t certified to process absentee ballot requests. They helped out in other ways like answering phones.
Teske says the five people in her office certified by the state to process absentee requests put in a combined 282 hours of overtime. By comparison, Oshkosh’s clerk says her office has four employees certified in processing requests.
“I asked the WEC could we be doing this any way quicker,” said Teske. “They said nope, what you’re doing is the best way possible.”
The Wisconsin Elections Commission admits its system, which debuted in 2016, wasn’t built to handle an election like this.
“It went from less than 10% of ballots were cast by mail to over 80% were cast by mail in this election,” said Meagan Wolfe, administrator for the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
Wolfe tells FOX 11 they made changes along the way and more will be coming before the August election.
“And working with clerks is going to be a really important part of that and understanding their new workflow.”
The state’s elections commission is receiving more than $7.3 million as part of the coronavirus stimulus package to improve elections. It wants to incorporate intelligent barcodes so you can better track where your ballot is.
It is recommended that voters request an absentee ballot as soon as possible. Teske says Green Bay voters are already doing that for the August and November elections.
