Never has election law been so unpredictable!
As we age, we let go of some of our ambitions, realizing they will never materialize. The Head Groundskeeper has come to accept that he’ll never be put on paid leave, like Madison’s city clerk.
Who among us has not stumbled across an overdue library book once thought lost? Maybe a kid that you forgot you had? Madison’s city clerk stumbled across a tranche of uncounted ballots from the last election. (We can imagine her reaction: “This isn’t good!”) So now Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl is on paid leave. Getting a paycheck without working! The dream of every red-blooded American!
We even have some empathy for Nino Amato, Madison’s version of Harold Stassen. The chronic candidate asked the clerk’s office if he could move into a new aldermanic district after the election, having been defeated once before in his current district. That way, if he lost, he wouldn’t have to move. Clerk’s office said Sure, go for it!
Hire the Dyslexic!
Oops! Other way around! Big book of laws says got to move before the election. Like Trump’s “peacefully and patriotically” asterisk, the City of Madison website says no matter what the clerk tells you, don’t take it to the bank. The burden is on candidates to comply with state law.
A person must be a resident elector of the city and, if the office is alderperson, a resident of the aldermanic district, at least 28 days before the election. — Wis. Stat. secs. 62.09(2)(a) and 6.02(1).
Here is where Blaska gets a bit snarky. One would think some burden should accrue to the city clerk’s office. Count every ballot (as Democrats once insisted) and maybe get up to speed on election law, since elections is what they do for a living. Not like we’re seeking Maribeth’s regimen on avian flu.
At breakfast this morning, three old guys recounted how, between us, we had campaigned and been elected to city alder, county supervisor, state legislature, and county executive. None had hired an attorney to hack through Wisconsin Election Law. Election lawyers ain’t cheap. Let’s start at $500 an hour! High-profile specialists like David Boies (Al Gore’s lawyer in the Florida recount epic) charge $2,110 an hour. (But they validate.)
On the subject of elections, an appeals court overruled a Dane County Circuit Court judge (dog bites man). Contra Judge Everett Mitchell (again?!) the appellate court ruled local officials can not e-mail absentee ballots to voters who claim to be unable to manage a paper ballot. (But they can work a computer?) For now, anyway. The appellate court could well be reversed by the (spell it with me) Protasiewicz supreme court.
Then again, city clerks in Racine turned a laundry truck into a mobile voting booth, against the law. Ballot drop boxes were legal, then illegal, then legal again after the Spell It With Me supreme court reversed itself. Ballot harvesting: legal then illegal.
Blaska’s Bottom Line: Nino Amato did due diligence. He asked the Madison City Clerk’s office for guidance on election law. If that office did not know the plain language of the law then it should say “Beats us!” The fault is not the candidate’s.
If the city clerk can’t understand election law,
who can?
6 responses to “It’s the law! (We think)”
I predict the city investigation of the city clerk will result in no consequences as they will deem it an “honest” mistake ( which by the way is no different than a dishonest mistake). I also predict that when she runs for re-election she will win by a large margin. That’s the problem of electing a city clerk, rather than hiring the position based on merit. Why should a clerical job be political and an elected hire?
Not elected. County clerks are elected but not city clerks. Which is why the mayor could put Maribeth on paid leave. An elected official would be immune.
Always a delight to see one of Madison’s progressive elites caught with his/her pants down. How could this happen when Madison city government is well known to be immune from human error?
Looking at the time she was hired (2006) she should be coming up on her contract renewal ( department heads are on 5 year contracts ) next year. I wonder if the mayor and city council will give her another 5 years?
Charlotte NC had a botched vote count some years back. I asked my buddy, then the political reporter for the Charlotte Observer, if the officials were crooked or incompetent.
“They aren’t crooked” he said.
Same election, my Town was one vote off. Ten of us worked two hours recounting everything to find the one vote mistake before we could go home.