Madison’s election officials found 193 absentee votes well after Election Day. The public was not notified until seven weeks after the election.

Nearly 200 absentee votes slipped through the cracks on Election Day in Madison. The ballots were not processed or counted. The majority of them were not discovered until nearly a month after the fact.

Nobody seems to be able to pinpoint exactly what went wrong. Some city officials wonder why the mistake took so long to be discovered. The mystery is one that dozens of voters would like to solve in the capital city.

In Madison, 193 voters were disenfranchised on November 5 due to mistakes made at two polling places and a lack of comprehensive systems for poll workers that track if they have counted all absentee votes.

Madison Clerk Maribeth Witzel Behl reported that at a Ward 56 polling location, located just west of downtown Madison, election officials did not open two large envelopes used to transport absentee votes, which contained a total 125 ballots. Another site, in a slightly more westward neighborhood called Regent and Ward 65, did not open a carrier envelope containing 68 absentee votes, including one ballot that was supposed to be sent to another polling place.

Witzel Behl explained that, in most cases, workers at the polling station “triple-check” to make sure all absentee ballots have been processed, before running the results through the tabulator.

She said, “We don’t know why these envelopes were not noticed at the polls during Election Day.”

Seven weeks after the election, the oversight was made public. The Wisconsin Elections Commission and the Madison Mayor’s Office were unaware of the oversight until just over a month ago.

In separate statements, the mayor and clerk of Madison explained how ballots were delivered to two polling stations but left unopened.

Satya Rhodes-Conway, Madison’s mayor, said that while the unprocessed absentee votes did not affect the results of any referendum or election, an error of this magnitude was unacceptable. This oversight is a departure from the high standards our residents expect. It must be addressed in future elections.

These statements did not answer important questions: How and when exactly did the ballots disappear? Who was at fault? Why did the news come out more than seven weeks after Election Day

Rhodes-Conway for example, has made it clear that the delay is not her fault.

She said that “Unfortunately, Clerk’s Office Staff were apparently aware of this oversight for a considerable time before the Mayor’s Office received notification of the unprocessed votes until December 20,” in a written statement.

Witzel Behl did not alert the Mayor’s Office about the missing votes until after the fact. On December 18, the Wisconsin Elections Commission was notified by the clerk’s office. The office then informed the city attorney about the situation, who in turn told the mayor’s offices.

The commission learned about the missing ballots by following a procedure that clerks are required to follow when there is a discrepancy between the number voters and the number ballots at the polls. Witzel Behl stated that the clerk’s office informed the commission of the discrepancy just two days prior to the deadline set for reconciling these numbers. Witzel Behl had told Votebeat that she was out of office a lot before.

She said, “I was trying to burn up vacation time after the elections and wasn’t aware of the severity of this situation.” In retrospect, it would have been better to cut back on the number of workweeks after the election.

Madison decentralizes absentee processing

In Madison, absentee votes are not processed and counted in one location like in some Wisconsin cities. Instead, they are sent directly to the polling stations where voters will cast their ballots in person. Poll workers at these sites process absentee envelopes containing voter and witness information before counting the votes.

Each polling place has a system for identifying absentee voters. Witzel Behl explained that they use an orange highlighter for the names of voters who received an absentee vote in a city resident’s poll book, and a bright pink highlighter for those who have returned their ballots. She said that each polling station has a document stating the number of votes returned for counting as of Sunday before Election Day.

For security, each absentee envelope seal has a unique number. The clerk’s office did not provide a list for each carrier envelope delivered to the polling site in Madison, but they said that they would do so in the future. The clerk’s office only had a log of seal numbers that was handwritten.

Witzel Behl explained that despite the fact that the two polling locations had a high number of absentee votes on Election Day, they were not discovered until the Municipal Board of Canvassers gathered on November 8 to certify this election.

She said that by the time a batch of uncounted votes was discovered on November 12, “staff was under the impression it was too late to count these ballots, unless we did a recount.”

Madison voters cast more than 174,000 ballots during the November election.

What we know about missing ballots

No apparent problems were encountered in sorting or delivering correct ballots to the voting location near downtown. Witzel Behl, a hourly employee, said that after Election Day he noticed a large number of absentee votes.

She said that on Dec. 3 the employee went through materials brought back from this polling place during Election Day. She said that the employee discovered two sealed envelopes with absentee ballots. The envelopes contained 125 unprocessed absentee ballots.

In a sealed envelope, the 68 absentee ballots from the Regent neighborhood voting site were all contained, including one ballot that was sorted incorrectly and delivered to the wrong polling station.

The location of the carrier envelope on Election Day was not clear, but later election workers found it in a chamber inside a vote-tallying machine. This is where ballots are usually placed after they have been counted. Madison officials use this compartment to transport absentee votes to polling places.

Witzel Behl explained that at the end of the evening, the poll workers would place secure ballot bags, along with other materials, into the tabulators.

Madison Clerk and Mayor vow to prevent future mistakes

In a letter sent to the Election Commission, the Clerk’s Office outlined their plans to “debrief the incidents and implement improved processes” in order to ensure that all absentee envelopes are processed and accounted for on Election Day.

She also stated that she will review the city’s electoral policies. She also said that she would be reviewing the city’s election policies.