State elections official: Milwaukee County must address 2020 ballots amid privacy concerns
MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- A top Wisconsin elections official is calling for Milwaukee County to either destroy absentee ballots, poll books and other materials related to the 2020 election or get a court order protecting them.
Don Millis, a GOP appointee to the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC), said Wednesday maintaining those records could allow outside entities to determine how Milwaukee County residents voted on their absentee ballots.
Milwaukee County Clerk George Christenson said he shares those concerns, noting about 267,000 county voters are at risk of having their voting choices exposed.
Millis' call comes as federal investigators have moved this year to obtain 2020 election records in Arizona and Georgia, electoral battlegrounds where President Donald Trump has falsely claimed he won the 2020 election.
In December 2020, President Trump sued unsuccessfully in hopes of throwing out absentee ballots in both Milwaukee and Dane counties. Numerous subsequent reviews of the election found former President Joe Biden won Wisconsin by more than 20,000 votes.
Millis points to a state law that allows clerks to destroy election materials 22 months after that election. He said he's known for more than a year Milwaukee County is still holding onto its 2020 absentee ballots.
"We've known about them for a while," Millis said. "And I guess if I could consider myself at fault, maybe we could've done more to sort of light a fire, if you will, under folks."
Millis said the state's largest county should have either destroyed those records by now or gotten a court order shielding the sensitive voter information attached to them,
Christenson told CBS 58 Wednesday the county is holding onto the ballots and related records because of an ongoing lawsuit brought by Peter Bernegger, who has made unfounded claims about Wisconsin elections and has filed scores of unsuccessful lawsuits against state and county elections officials.
State court records Bernegger's 2023 lawsuit against Milwaukee County is still open.
"There's no way my corporation counsel or myself would risk destroying anything that's under litigation," Christenson said. "So, unfortunately, yeah, we've held onto those ballots for almost six years."
Christenson said the ballots are in a "secure location" at the moment. When pressed for more details, Christenson said that's all he could share.
Wisconsin state law requires clerks to put a voter number on the back of absentee ballots, which then aligns with that voter's listing in pollbooks.
Critics of the law, including Rock County Clerk Lisa Tollefson, maintain that requirement makes it too easy to discover how someone voted.
"That voter number is also listed on the poll list next to the voter's name," Tollefson said Wednesday. "So, if they can have both of those documents, they can connect the dots and see how someone voted their ballot."
Tollefson said she destroyed her county's 2020 ballot materials in the fall of 2022, in accordance with what state law allows. She added she understood Christenson's reasoning because of the open lawsuit.
The ballots still in the county's possession include those cast from nine municipalities: Milwaukee, Fox Point, Franklin, Greendale, Oak Creek, Shorewood, South Milwaukee, Wauwatosa and West Allis.
The vast majority of those votes came from the city of Milwaukee, which turned about 176,000 ballots to the county.
Paulina Gutierrez, the director of the Milwaukee Election Commission, referred questions to the Milwaukee County Corporation Counsel before providing a statement.
"The City of Milwaukee Election Commission’s number one priority is the to administer safe and secure elections and this includes protecting a citizen’s right to a private vote," Gutierrez said. "The city of Milwaukee would never release materials that would compromise that privacy."
Christenson said he wants the law to change as it relates to placing a voter number on each ballot. In the meantime, he insisted the county would fight any attempt to obtain 2020 election records.
"Rest assured that we will do and I will do everything in my power to protect the rights of our voters," he said.
Millis said he believed the county should push for Judge Glenn Yamahiro, who is presiding over the Bernegger case, to issue an order allowing Milwaukee County to destroy the 2020 materials or, at minimum, ensuring outside investigators won't have access to the voter numbers put on each ballot.
"I think if you got in front of these- in front of the current judge, I think that would be something that judge would take very seriously," Millis said. "Just because there's a lawsuit doesn't mean everything [the plaintiff is] asking for is fair game, and you have to press the issue."
Questioning the current law
The law currently mandating that absentee ballots have a number than can be traced back to pollbooks is in place to discourage double voting.
Both Christenson and Tollefson said there are better ways to guard against someone casting an absentee ballot, then trying to vote in-person on Election Day.
"I first started trying to get this changed in 2017," Tollefson said. "So, we've been working on this for a while."
WEC Communications Director Emilee Miklas said the agency has also been pushing for changes to the law.
“Election officials at central count locations are currently bound by state statue to record absentee numbers on the back of ballots until the law changes," Miklas said. "The Commission has raised issues with the current law for years; however, efforts to reform the law have stalled in the Legislature."
However, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) said he supports the law, indicating any changes will not happen until 2027 at the earliest. Vos is retiring at the end of this year, and the fall elections will decide which party controls the state Assembly and Senate.
“It’s important we don’t eliminate any law that will prevent double voting or allow anyone here illegally to cast a vote," Vos said in a statement. "Our number one priority should be keeping our elections secure and ensuring our citizens trust the system.”
A spokesperson for Democratic Gov. Tony Evers said the governor supports repealing that portion of the law if that had widespread support from clerks across the state.
In a statement, Evers said his administration would work to protect any information that could reveal how one of the state's residents voted.
"In Wisconsin, our neighbors—our local clerks, election administrators, and poll workers—run our safe and secure elections," Evers said. "So, it gets me PO’d when President Trump lies and spreads baseless conspiracy theories about Wisconsin’s elections, because what he’s doing is attacking the integrity and hard work of Wisconsinites across our state."