Swing state Wisconsin’s most notorious elections clerk repeatedly failed to follow election integrity laws. Now, on the eve of Election Day, the state’s elections regulator is ordering Green Bay Clerk Celestine Jeffreys to comply.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission sent a letter to Jeffreys late last week after finally dealing with a complaint filed by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) on behalf of Green Bay residents.
According to the complaint, the clerk did not comply with procedures for auditing voters who registered to vote at their polling places on Election Day for 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 elections.
“In short, and as detailed further in the analysis below, the Commission finds that the Complaint did show probable cause to believe that a violation of law or abuse of discretion occurred with relation to Clerk Jeffreys’s procedural actions,” the WEC order states.
PILF filed the complaint in April, but the commission is just getting around to issuing its decision and order.
‘A Lack of Awareness’
So will Jeffreys face any discipline? Not so much.
The commission, just a few days before the election, ordered Jeffreys to take “affirmative steps” to comply with the law as well as the commission’s updated Election Day Registration postcard guidance issued in February 2023. She must also certify to the commission that she has completed the steps required under law “at the earliest time practicable after the November 5, 2024 election, but no later than Monday, February 3, 2025.”
As The Federalist has reported, Jeffreys earlier acknowledged that she failed to follow the law, but pled ignorance about the election law — as Green Bay’s top election official.
“Clerk Jeffreys admits that she has not been strictly adhering to the statutory requirements in Wis. Stat. § 6.56 during the elections alleged. She claims that her failure to do so was inadvertent and due to a lack of awareness of the statutory requirements, and not the result of any willful violation of state law,” the WEC document states.
Wisconsin is one of 20 states (along with the District of Columbia) that offers Election Day registration, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The law is clear. The Elections Commission after each election is required to mail postcards to voters who registered on Election Day as part of its post-election audit demanded under state statute. Undelivered postcards are sent back to the clerk’s office that sent the postcard.
Local elections officials must investigate if a postcard is returned undelivered or if they are informed that a voter resides at a different address than the one provided on Election Day. Ultimately, if the clerk’s office’s audit finds evidence beyond a “reasonable doubt” that a voter was ineligible to cast a ballot, she must inactivate the voter in the registration list and “provide the name of the elector to the district attorney for the county where the polling place is located and the elections commission,” according to statute.
In February 2023, WEC “updated guidance regarding the handling and processing of Election Day Registration postcards returned to a clerk’s office after an election,” confirming “the requirements are mandatory.” Jeffreys failed to do this part of her job at every turn, according to the complaint.
The complaint asserts that “between the August 2020 election and April 2023 election,” Jeffreys received more than 200 postcards returned “undeliverable,” but has “inactivated only two registrants and referred only one registrant to the district attorney.”
“They allege that in seven of the nine identified elections where Clerk Jeffreys received at least one postcard returned ‘undeliverable,’ that Clerk Jeffreys inactivated zero registrants and referred zero registrants to the district attorney,” the WEC report states.
‘A Win for the Rule of Law’
WEC ordered Jeffreys to follow election law, something she has had trouble doing over her controversial run as Green Bay city clerk.
As The Federalist has reported, the Elections Commission found Jeffreys violated election law on ballot harvesting in the 2022 spring election when she accepted multiple absentee ballots brought in on behalf of voters. Wisconsin law prohibits ballot harvesting.
Jeffreys also was at the center of Wisconsin’s “Zuckbucks” scandal. The Democrat-led city allowed leftist activists a central role in election administration, with one long-time Democrat operative given keys to a room where Green Bay’s absentee ballots were stored.
J. Christian Adams, president of PILF, said WEC’s latest order on Jeffreys’ failure to follow election statutes is a “win for the rule of law.”
“Following the election, PILF will conduct a full investigation to ensure election officials performed the mandatory audit of all addresses provided at the polls on Election Day and referred individuals who gave fake addresses to prosecutors,” he said in a statement. “Nobody should think they can use Election Day Registration to cast a fraudulent ballot and get away with it.”
PILF is sending a team of election lawyers to swing state Michigan to observe at the polls.
Lauren Bowman Bis, director of communications and engagement at PILF, says much has changed since the 2020 presidential election, when some elections officials and leftist groups used the fear of Covid to cover shenanigans and election law violations.
“This election has a lot more eyes on it. A lot more people care about election integrity, so it’s going to be a different story than 2020,” she told The Federalist in a phone interview.
For more election news and updates, visit electionbriefing.com.
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
