Wisconsin is a swing state where a number of elections in recent years have been tainted by the misbehavior of elections officials, almost always to the benefit of leftists.
One prominent case just a year ago found a Milwaukee elections official charged with a felony and several misdemeanors for her failure to handle her responsibilities by the book.
The latest case involves a former clerk in Madison, Maribeth Witzel-Behl, who was put on leave and then resigned.
A report from a Fox affiliate explained the results of a city investigation have concluded she violated policy in neglecting to count nearly 200 absentee ballots in November’s election.
“The 193 missing ballots were across wards 56, 65 and 68. Those ballots were not enough to sway the outcome of any November race but led to an investigation by the city of Madison and the Wisconsin Elections Commission,” the report said.
A report at the Federalist said the investigation revealed she was “derelict” in her duties.
She violated not only city policies, but also the terms of her contract, the investigation confirmed.
“While the mistake in getting the ballots counted on Election Night appears to have been primarily a process of training failure that could have been avoided, there were multiple opportunities for the ballots to have subsequently been counted after Election Day,” charged the report from the city’s Human Resources director and the Parks superintendent.
“The failure to do so was a dereliction of duties on the part of the city clerk.”
The documentation reveals “all manner of election oversight negligence,” the report said of the former employee, a leftist who was praised by the city’s leftist mayor for her insistence on “inclusivity.”
The Federalist reported, “Documents show the former clerk spent portions of 19 days on vacation following the election, as her staff members discovered and attempted to deal with the uncounted ballots. Among other deficiencies, Witzel-Behl failed to ‘demonstrate attention, care, and efficiency in the performance of her duties related to the uncounted ballots to mitigate an unprecedented failure in the election process,’ according to the report.”
She quit her post when faced with a state investigation, the report said.
When the uncounted ballots were found, Witzel-Behl failed to notify state officials, the county clerk, the city attorney or “anyone” in the mayor’s office.
“By the time she got around to informing the powers that be, it was much too late — 193 voters in Wisconsin’s far-left capital city had been disenfranchised,” the Federalist reported.
The investigation also noted that Witzel-Behl’s claims about what happened “differed, sometimes dramatically, from those of staff and others.”
The report said the local investigation found no violations of state law, but said the state probe might.
The report noted Witzel-Behl was a prominent player in Wisconsin’s “Zuckbucks” scandal in 2020, when some 2,200 Madison voters that year got duplicate absentee ballots.
The fiasco raised election-integrity questions.
