Outagamie County has a ballot problem

The Wisconsin Elections Commission is currently holding a special teleconference meeting to deal with several issues before the election. One of these is a problem with ballots in Outagamie County. It is believed that this affects at least 5500 ballots that were sent out in the county that are faulty and cannot be read by the vote tabulating machines. They are missing a single timing mark on the border of the ballot. The commission is currently deciding if they can give permission to the county to hand-modify the ballots by using a marker to add the missing timing mark in. The alternative is to hand-count all of the ballots, which would be very time-consuming. 

The ballots cannot legally be opened before election day, so the ballots cannot be fixed before the opening of the ballots on election day.

Meagan Wolfe has suggested that fixing the timing marks on the ballots may be difficult for smaller communities in the county that do not have enough staff and will have trouble finding enough staff to do this.

The commission is considering sending an email supporting the possibility of fixing the ballots, but have tabled that for later consideration.

You can watch the proceedings here thanks to Wiseye.org.

The rest of the agenda (this will be a long call).

A.    Call to Order

B.    Administrator’s Report of Appropriate Meeting Notice 

C.    Discussion of Outagamie County Ballot Matter

D.    Discussion of Election Night Results and End of Night Procedures Guidance

E.    Potential Action Relating to the Use or Expenditure of Remaining CARES Act Funds

F.    Scheduling Meetings for Early 2021

G.    Consideration of Whether to Take Exception to the Delegation of Authority with Regard to the Complaint of Farmer v. MEC

1.    Litigation Update - §19.85(1)(g) – The Commission may confer with legal counsel concerning litigation strategy. 

H.    Adjourn