A bipartisan committee has been appointed to look into at least 11 other voters’ complaints or concerns about the way the 2020 primary election was conducted in Brown County.
Brown County Election Board President Amy Kelso appointed the committee at the July 7 meeting.
Members are herself, Brown County Republican Party Chairman Mark Bowman, Brown County Democratic Party Chairman Rick Bond, and a League of Women Voters member who is also a Republican, so as to have a partisan balance on the committee. Kelso is a Democrat. She named Heather Nicholson as that League/Republican representative, but Nicholson was not at the meeting, so it was not certain whether she’d accept the appointment.
Kelso shared a 31-page packet of complaints and concerns received from 12 voters or groups of voters. One of those complaints, from Donna Lutes regarding a relative of hers receiving two absentee ballots in the mail on the same day, was dealt with at length during public meetings before the primary.
During an investigation into that duplicate ballot complaint, election board members Kelso and Mark Williams eventually found 123 ballots — including one sent to Lutes’ relative — that had initials on them which were not in election board members’ handwriting. Those ballots are now in the custody of law enforcement. No one has been charged in that investigation.
This new committee will look into the 11 other complaints submitted in writing, many of which were pages long and included multiple concerns per person.
Some of the topics those voters mentioned were:
- not being listed as a registered voter despite living here for years and voting in every election and/or being a candidate in a past election;
- four instances of not receiving an absentee ballot application or absentee ballot in the mail after calling the clerk’s office to request one;
- four instances of completed ballots being returned in the mail, but not marked received by the clerk’s office, causing two of those voters to go in to cast provisional ballots in person;
- multiple concerns about the handling of mail-in ballots which some voters decided to hand-deliver to polls on election day instead of put them in the mail;
- allowing approximately 30 nursing home residents to vote absentee using incorrect procedures;
- receiving an absentee voter information postcard in the mail after having already voted absentee by mail;
- problems with pollbooks, voting supplies being delivered, the depth of poll workers’ training on the new machines and ballot handling procedures on election day; among other concerns.
The committee plans to meet multiple times this month and produce a report before the August election board meeting with recommendations on how to correct these concerns before the fall election.
“It seemed to me that a lot of the confusion, a common thread, was the absentee voting: the timeliness of it, the process for requesting ballots, making an application, receiving them, so we know that we have work to do big time on our absentee voting process,” Kelso said.
Kelso and Williams said they wanted to see an absentee voter board put in place as soon as legally possible to handle requests for absentee ballots for the fall election, to avoid any bottlenecks in the process.
Brown County Clerk Kathy Smith said that ballot requests for the fall were already starting to arrive and be processed.
Smith protested the idea of bringing in the absentee voter board quickly, saying there was nothing much for them to do now, and wondering how they would be paid, as the board had spent more than it planned on those workers for the primary.
“I think, unfortunately, we have no choice but to, as quickly as possible, remove this activity from the clerk’s office. That’s the reality we’re dealing with,” Williams said.
Kelso agreed.
“So you’re telling me that you don’t want the clerk’s office involved in the election?” Smith asked.
Kelso said that they were going to consult the state election board about “what our options are in getting absentee ballot board and workers involved.” As for the cost, “some things are worth paying for, and we just simply must have the absentee voter workers in there as soon as possible.”
“It’s unfortunate that it has to be done, but it does,” Williams said.
After more discussion about funding, Smith broke into the conversation:
“If you feel like the clerk’s office should not be involved in the meeting at this point in time I will be leaving and I will notify you how in any way you can further continue a meeting without the clerk,” Smith said.
She then left the meeting, which was being conducted virtually.
Deputy Clerk Laura Wert acted as Smith’s proxy for voting and as the clerk’s office representative for the rest of the meeting.
“To be clear, the clerk is an integral part of the election process, but one of the three key issues that we have … No. 1 is the absentee voting process, and that was, in material part, created by the crush of absentee ballots,” Williams said. “And I submit that the primary is going to be a minor event compared to the absentee ballots coming for the general election.”
If a different process isn’t put in place to process them as they come along, “we’ll have the same problems that we’ve had in those complaints, only they’ll be on steroids,” Williams said.
Wert said she’d started to train the rest of the clerk’s office staff in how to handle election-related questions and requests from voters, which they had not been trained to handle before.
At the next regular meeting Aug. 4, the election board also plans to discuss multiple scenarios for in-person voting in November — among them going back to the normal 11 polling places spread around the county, consolidating to fewer polls in larger buildings like was done during the primary, and other options.
