GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – A formal complaint about how Green Bay conducted the November election is being filed with the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
Conservatives allege emails released by the city following an open records request show the mayor’s office allowed outside groups to take over election decisions from the city clerk’s office.
“You have a private corporation coming into your city, Green Bay, and proposing to the common council conditions on the federal election. That violates this…The principal problem is that the common council voted for these conditions, and these conditions violate the federal constitution and state law,” said Special Counsel, Erick Kardaal. “That’s the key document. To understand the case, you have to understand that document. And trust me. in these thousands of emails, there is plenty of private corporate engagement in election administration.”
Kardaal was joined during a press conference at the Brown County Courthouse on Thursday by a handful of Green Bay citizens, including Brown County Republican Party Chair, James Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald tried to reach out to the mayor’s office with concerns of third-party tampering just days before the election, and says he still hasn’t received a response.
“The solution is simple: Whenever private corporations place conditions on a municipality’s election with common council approval, those conditions must be presented to the Wisconsin Elections Commission for approval, which can only be granted if the private corporate conditions on federal elections comply with state and federal law,” Fitzgerald argued. “The mayor’s office has tried to deflect responsibility, and its private partners have not been forthcoming about their role in Green Bay’s elections.”
Fitzgerald argues the involvement of the outside party broke the chain of election process, as implemented by the U.S. Constitution, by not having municipal clerks fully supervise the election within the city.
Retired Brown County Clerk Sandy Juno, a registered Republican, also signed on to the complaint.
“My appearance today is not about who won the presidential election. It is about my concern for election security,” Juno said. “It is about [the Center for Technology and Civic Life] and its partners buying access to administer, manage, and bring third-party influence ‘with strings attached’ to affect Wisconsin elections.”
The CTCL provided money to assist the city’s efforts in expanding voting options and availability last year.
Former Brown County Clerk Sandy Juno speaks about a formal complaint being filed with the Wisconsin Elections Commission regarding the November 2020 election process in Green Bay. (PHOTO/WTAQ News)
Juno says she showed up at the KI Convention Center on November 3rd to observe the central counting of absentee ballots. She expressed ‘genuinely concerned’ about the role of Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein, an outside party who didn’t work for the city. She also raised questions about the room layout and security, poll worker training and staffing, the procedures to process ballots, and timely completion of ballot tabulation. Juno says she saw Spitzer-Rubenstein involved with managing the count location, handling absentee ballots, working directly with poll workers, and having free access to tabulation equipment and ballots. She adds that he was provided a table for his computer and printer, and was freely moving around the room and using a cell phone while she was there.
Juno says election officials have statutory duties to uphold, administer, and manage elections – and that only those that are certified, trained, and have knowledge of election statutes and policies should be performing those duties.
“No on else has statutory authority to administer Wisconsin elections, including a mayor, his staff, or third-party interlopers who are willing to ‘pay to play’,” Juno said. “Free money is never free money. In November, our liberties for fair and unbiased elections were up for sale. We can’t have this for future elections.”
“It’s pretty simple. Just don’t let the private corporations engage in placing conditions on the elections and don’t let them engage in election administration,” Kardaal said.
Now, the group says the goal is to regain public trust and transparency in the election process. But that effort will take more work than simply filing a lawsuit.
“We hope to find a way to resolve this with the city amicably, but as you know, the most recent positions are basically that it was impeccably run or it was fine or nothing to see here. We can’t accept that, because we don’t want it to happen again,” Kardaal said. “I want to praise Green Bay, because once the documents started coming out there was complete disclosure. I honor the mayor and Celestine Jeffreys and all them for the complete disclosure. If it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t be getting to this point.”
Kardaal says everyone wants Wisconsin to work – and moving forward together with city officials to address the issue at hand is important.
“I think we got to set aside the partisan labels, the ideology, set aside rivalries, whatever – and just work with your neighbors to understand [that] we’ve got to get this right because of these are the sort of things that can really split a community,” Kardaal said. “So a way to mend it is to say ‘let’s fix it.’ Like if something were to burn down, we’d say ‘let’s get together and fix it,’ well, your election administration system is kinda burned down and you need to fix it.”
Kardaal used a similar tone to Juno, explaining that the point of the complaint isn’t about the actual results of the election. It’s about the principle of free and fair elections.
“If anyone can draw an ideological conclusion from this, tell me. Because I think it’s so practical – elections have to be runs fairly and transparently, otherwise we won’t accept it. That can’t be described by left right up or down,” Kardaal said. “No one’s going to jail for that. It’s just a point of we don’t want it to happen again. Why? Because we want people to accept election results, and that requires fair and transparent elections.”
Based on the type of complaint, the city has 15 days to respond. The complainants then have 10 days to respond back.
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