By Timothy Ramthun
Every Wisconsinite who casts a ballot deserves to know that their vote will count exactly as they cast it.
The recent primaries are just the latest example, after it was discovered that USB drives from voting machines in Milwaukee were missing data, thus delaying the results. This comes amidst an upset victory for a candidate no one expected to win in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, calling into question what the polling companies were showing that Wisconsin’s Democrat primary voters wanted and what they got on election night.
For Wisconsin voters, incidents like these are more than election-night headaches. When clerks fumble ballots, when flash drives go missing, when “human error” becomes the go-to explanation for yet another election night scramble, voters feel disenfranchised. A voter who did everything right, registered, showed up, filled out the form correctly, shouldn’t have to wonder whether some clerk’s mistake canceled out their voice. Sloppy work by some election officials doesn’t just embarrass a city; it guts the practical value of the right to vote itself. A vote that isn’t counted accurately might as well have not been cast.
This isn’t paranoia. It’s about math and processes that need to be reconciled. I am not supportive of polls, but Pew Research found that the confidence Americans hold that this November’s elections will be conducted fairly and accurately has slid to just 55%, down from 61% in 2024. A Marist poll found a similar drop, with only 66% of Americans confident that their state or local government will run a fair election this fall, down sharply from 76% in October 2024. Trust isn’t collapsing because voters are cynical by nature. It’s collapsing because election officials keep giving them reasons to be, which is most telling.
For another example, look no further than Green Bay. City Clerk Celestine Jeffreys just resigned after a Wisconsin Elections Commission investigation exposed how she was central to a pattern of duplicate ballots sent to voters: 152 duplicate ballots in April alone, plus an undisclosed number ahead of the August primary. This wasn’t Jeffreys’ first brush with controversy, either. Her office had already drawn scrutiny for improperly letting third parties return absentee ballots and for failing to deactivate voter registrations as state law requires. A former county clerk put it plainly: officials need to “really evaluate how things are done,” because Green Bay may not have “the right person in that job.” The clerk was right, and now the city is scrambling for a permanent replacement in the middle of a midterm cycle.
Then there’s Milwaukee, a city that seems allergic to an efficient election night. The missing results from the USB drives that carried absentee ballots contained audit logs, not ballot information, leaving roughly 15,000 ballots unaccounted for until officials scrambled back to the counting facility, under police escort, to fix their own mistake. Election officials called it “human error.” Fair enough, but this is the fourth major Milwaukee elections issue since 2020, following the 2025 ballot shortages at polling locations, which followed the 2024 fiasco where unlocked tabulator doors forced a recount of 31,000 absentee ballots, which in turn followed 2020’s issue, when a lost flash drive delayed reporting on 169,000 ballots. All of this comes on the heels of existing concerns about ballot integrity, chain of custody, voting-machine algorithms, mail-in ballots, inaccurate voter rolls, and the use of drop boxes. At what point does “human error” stop being an excuse and start being a pattern that demands real accountability?
The good news: voters aren’t powerless and neither is the federal government. The U.S. Department of Justice already has clear legal authority to deploy Civil Rights Division staff monitors to election sites without waiting for an invitation from local officials, and plans to deploy a record 1,000 monitors during this year’s midterm election. Given Wisconsin’s repeated, well-documented breakdowns, it’s exactly the kind of action needed to restore confidence to our voters.
But Wisconsinites shouldn’t wait on Washington. Concerned citizens can serve as poll watchers and observers who are trained and credentialed to watch the process unfold and flag irregularities the moment they happen, rather than reading about them in the paper weeks later. As the America First Policy Institute’s Center for Election Integrity shows, most registered voters are eligible to serve, no party membership required. It’s one of the most direct, hands-on ways to protect the integrity of your own community’s voice.
Ultimately, though, poll watchers and federal monitors are safety nets, not fixes. Wisconsin needs higher standards of election administration. Our system of elections needs real accountability when clerks fail and zero tolerance for the “human error” excuse becomes a permanent institution. A mea culpa here, a statement there, isn’t a fix, it’s a pattern of Wisconsin officials doing damage control after “irregularities” happen instead of comprehensive reforms to prevent them. That must end before November.
Timothy Ramthun is a former Wisconsin State Representative who served in the Wisconsin State Assembly from 2019 to 2022. He was a candidate for governor in 2022, making election integrity the centerpiece of his campaign and calling for reforms to strengthen Wisconsin’s elections.
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