“Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here . MEQUON, Wisc. — The Mequon canvassing board on Tuesday complied with a Wisconsin Elections Commission order to count five absentee ballots from the April state Supreme Court election that City Clerk Caroline Fochs had initially rejected using an unusually strict standard for assessing the validity of a witness address. But City Attorney Brian Sajdak stopped short of committing to abiding by the commission’s additional order to stop employing that standard in the future, saying the city was still considering its options. The city’s decision to count the ballots that the commission said were “improperly rejected” came one day after the Ozaukee County Board of Canvassers on Monday ordered the city to revise its totals, and several days after the commission said Fochs’ standard for judging the validity of absentee ballots was illegal. A Wisconsin court ruled in 2024 that a witness address is valid so long as the clerk can reasonably assess where the witness lives. Fochs previously told Votebeat that she thinks the courts need to revisit the ruling. WEC has instructed clerks to count ballots even if the witness address lists only street name, number, and municipality. The envelope that a witness fills out and signs does not specifically designate spaces for state or zip code. Despite that, Fochs has for several elections applied a standard of not counting ballots that didn’t include the state or ZIP code unless the municipality was uniquely named nationwide — a policy that the election commission said is not legal. The commission told Fochs that if she applies requirements beyond the normal standard of accepting ballots that provide only a street name, number, and municipality, she must evaluate the validity of the address based on the full address, not just whether the municipality is unique. The street name and number in three of the rejected ballots were unique to just one of the municipalities with the same name, a Votebeat analysis found. The other two were from Fox Point, which is a uniquely named municipality despite Mequon election officials’ claims otherwise. In Tuesday’s meeting, Fochs continued to describe Fox Point as not uniquely named, despite Votebeat reporting that it is . During the Board of Canvassers meeting on Tuesday, one of the three board members appeared confused by absentee rules, asking whether out-of-state residents could serve as witnesses. Fochs confirmed that they can. The question arose over a ballot whose witness listed a Baltimore address. Though there are a few Baltimores across the country, the street name and number are unique to the one in Maryland. City still weighing options for future elections, attorney says Although the city canvassing board decided to count the five disputed ballots in this instance, Sajdak, the city attorney, said the city won’t necessarily follow the more lenient standard suggested by WEC in future elections. At the same time, he said it’s “not likely” that the city will appeal the current WEC order in court. The battle over what constitutes a proper witness address has been playing out in courts for years. State law requires witnesses to include an address on the absentee form but doesn’t clarify the details Republicans have argued in court that an address must include a street name, number, municipality, ZIP code, and state, but that argument was rejected by the court in 2024. The current standard allows a witness address to be considered valid if the clerk can reasonably assess where the witness lives. In the past, Fochs told Votebeat that standard leads to different outcomes in different places. Sajdak reiterated that concern on Tuesday, saying “the problem” was that every community can weigh ballots differently. “It should be a consistent standard for everybody,” he said. “All of this rigmarole and hassle could be easily solved by the Legislature or WEC adopting an administrative rule or changing the statute.” Sajdak added that while Mequon complied with WEC this time, “Whether we continue to do that in future elections, we’re still weighing what that looks like and how that’s going to play out.” Ann Jacobs, the Democratic chair of the elections commission, said that if the city disagrees with the order, they should appeal it rather than ignore it. If they appeal it, she said, “then we’ve got to sue them, and I don’t know that the taxpayers of Mequon want to pay to defend a lawsuit that tells them to conform their conduct to applicable law.” Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org .
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