GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – As the city of Green Bay has been in the spotlight and under fire for its 2020 elections, new issues are being raised about the central count operations in Tuesday’s spring primary.
When Matt Roeser, a Green Bay resident, showed up to city hall at about 8:30 Tuesday morning, a public notice sign was on the door stating the city’s central count of absentee ballots would be open to the public at 4 p.m.
“I almost turned around and didn’t come up, but I thought I’ll just check it out,” said Roeser.
When Roeser got to the fourth floor, where central count was taking place, he tells FOX 11 he was the only election observer there and ballots were already being counted.
“In anybody’s line of work, if you’re put on notice, you would think that you would double your efforts to make things better and today it just was poorly communicated.”
Roeser says the city was initially put on notice with him in April 2020. That’s when he says he couldn’t vote. The city went from 31 polling places, down to two, in response to the coronavirus pandemic, creating two to four hour waits to vote.
2020 is also when Roeser says he became a member of the Republican Party for the first time.
On Tuesday, the state party sent a cease-and-desist letter to Green Bay city officials after Roeser told a fellow Republican that ballots were being counted ahead of the publicly noticed time.
FOX 11 wanted to know what happened, so we went to city hall just before 4 pm.
First, we went spoke with Clerk Celestine Jeffries who told us all information had to come from the mayor’s office.
Mayor Eric Genrich wasn’t in his office, but his chief of staff, Amaad Rivera-Wagner, came out to speak with us briefly. He essentially said there was a typo in the public notice and when the city became aware of it, they agreed to stop counting ballots until the noticed time of 4 p.m.
“I think they were getting close to a thousand ballots that they had run through the machines,” said Roeser.
FOX 11 wanted to verify Roeser’s number with the city, and find out more about what happened. Rivera-Wagner had told us he’d try to make someone available if we had more questions. However, his phone appeared to be off when we tried reaching out to him throughout the night.
We also tried calling and texting Genrich, but never got a response.
Interim City Attorney Joanne Bungert emailed FOX 11 at 7:28 p.m. and stated she would be able to get us answers to our questions Wednesday morning.
“It’s a comedy of errors,” said Roeser. “Our city needs to get better. We need to communicate with our electorate better. We need to get more confidence in the process.”
FOX 11 also reached out to the Republican Party of Wisconsin. While it confirmed it requested the city to halt its absentee ballot count, it didn’t get back to us about an interview.
State Sen. Roger Roth, a Republican from Appleton, tells FOX 11 he is renewing his call for Genrich to resign.
“Already under scrutiny for the city’s handling of the 2020 elections by limiting polling places, turning the keys to the election over to a third party working with Mark Zuckerberg and now violating state law by counting ballots away from the view of the public, this has to be the last straw.”
State Assembly Republicans still have an open investigation into how the city handled the November 2020 election, after accepting outside help to administer the election.
There are resident complaints also being taken up with the city’s ethics board and an appeal in Brown County Circuit Court.
The city has maintained it did nothing wrong with that election.
Comments