Green Bay provides a look at updated process for mailing absentee ballots

Thursday was the deadline for clerks to mail the initial batch of ballots to voters for the November election.

The city gave a look at its process for mailing the ballots, which include updates to try to make sure past mistakes are not repeated.

Inside Green Bay’s clerk’s office, labels are being put on envelopes. Envelopes are being filled with ballots, instructions and a return envelope, and the clerk or deputy clerk is initialing each ballot and outer covering.

“We always have people doing a double check of everything,” said Stacy Menke, the city’s interim clerk. “This time we just had a separate check at the end comparing the name against a list in WisVote.”

An extra step to ensure what should go out is going out.

It’s one of the steps the Wisconsin Elections Commission agreed was necessary when it investigated the city to find out why duplicate absentee ballots were sent out for the April and August elections. The probe was also to determine what needs to change so those mistakes don’t happen again.

“I understand they [voters] need some additional reassurances with the last couple elections,” said Menke. “That can only be done with time. I can speak words, but they’re going to have to see the proof of that and trust our process that it was successful.”

Perhaps a bigger change for this election is Menke taking over as interim clerk.

Celestine Jeffreys resigned from the position after the city told the state elections commission she mistakenly printed absentee ballot labels twice. It led to 152 voters receiving two absentee ballots for April’s election and at least 244 for August.

Menke says she has no concern about extra labels being printed in this election.

“We reviewed that entire process,” said Menke. “If it was, if for whatever reason we would have felt we needed to go back into that file, it was going to take both me and the deputy clerk to sign off on that or someone from law to be like yeah we really do need to reprint, we are indeed missing this.”

The city told the commission Jeffreys previously made those decisions on her own.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission determined Jeffreys violated the law in sending out extra ballots. The city says only one ballot per voter was counted.

The amount of absentee ballot requests isn’t as high as the city had expected. In fact, for the first time they’re having a good number of people call in to cancel their absentee ballot request.

“There’s been a lot of coverage in the media about absentee ballots and mailing and what’s going to happen with the USPS decision federally,” said Menke.

For its initial batch, the city sent out just more than 5,600 ballots, according to Menke. Menke expects to average about 150 more requests per day leading up to Election Day.

The city encourages voters to send back ballots early as there have been recent delays with the mail.