GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — An open records request is shining more light into issues that sprung up in Green Bay during last month’s primary election.
FOX 11, our TV partner, put in an open records request to verify the city’s account of what happened. They received a response on Monday, about two weeks before voters will be back at the polls for a slew of local races on April 5th.
For the February 15th primary, Green Bay started counting absentee ballots right after the polls opened at 7 a.m., nine hours before 4 p.m., the time the city told the public the ballots would start being counted.
“Certainly there was a very regrettable clerical error that was made with the notice, but in terms of the process itself, it was held as it’s always been held or has been in recent history,” Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrih told FOX 11 on February 16th.
In a story posted on the Press Gazette’s website the night of the primary, Genrich’s chief of staff, Amaad Rivera-Wagner, was attributed with saying the city knew about the error before the polls opened.
However, the next morning, Green Bay City Attorney Joanne Bungert told FOX 11 the city wasn’t made aware of the error until about 11:21 a.m., more than four hours after the polls opened and ballots started being counted. Bungert denied Rivera-Wagner or any other city official knew about the error before the polls opened.
To verify that, FOX 11 submitted an open records request for election-related emails and text messages to or from Mayor Genrich, Rivera-Wagner, and City Clerk Celestine Jeffreys from the day of the primary and the five days leading up to it.
They received 33 pages of emails in response. None of them showed any indication the city knew about its notice error before the polls opened.
The first email alluding to the error was from City Attorney Bungert to Mayor Genrich and Rivera-Wagner at 12:16 p.m. on primary day. Bungert wrote she wanted to loop them in on the situation. She wrote while the law says notice “must be given 48 hours prior, but the language is silent as to specifying a time or any other requirements. The provision does state however that the canvassing cannot begin until the polls open.”
Most of the rest of the email is redacted, with Bungert telling FOX 11 those parts are protected under attorney-client privilege. The city did not redact a line saying the Wisconsin Elections Commission told Clerk Jeffreys that continuing counting is within her discretion.
Ballot counting did briefly stop at about 11:21 a.m., when the city says it became aware of the notice error. However, the city says it resumed at 12:24 p.m., eight minutes after Bungert sent the email to Genrich and Rivera-Wagner. Counting then stopped again at about 2:30 p.m., after the Republican Party of Wisconsin sent a cease-and-desist letter to the city to stop until the publicly noticed time of 4 p.m.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission has declined to weigh in whether it was legal for the city to start counting ballots ahead of the publicly noticed time or to keep counting ballots after becoming aware of the error.
A spokesperson for the elections commission says they normally don’t weigh in on legality questions in case a complaint is filed with the commission. So far, there are no public complaints on this matter.
FOX 11 also received a copy of a previous election notice that Clerk Jeffreys said she used for this year’s notice, which led to the error. The only difference between the two notices is the date was changed from “22nd Day of February, 2021” to “10th Day of February, 2022.” The time was 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. on both notices for when the public could view absentee ballot counting.
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