GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) - The city of Green Bay is firing back at a national report earlier this week highlighting an email from its clerk arguing against establishing an early, in-person absentee voting site on the UW-Green Bay campus, in part, because it would help Democrats.
"A lot of detail and nuance about our decision has been completely and totally lost," says Celestine Jeffreys, Chief of Staff for Green Bay Mayor Jim Schmitt. "It's not the clerk's office waiving a magic wand and doing it."
Jeffreys explained in detail why the city didn't establish any "satellite clerks' offices" this year.
"It's about ballot security, having the appropriate software so that we can register voters the same day and basically duplicating the clerks' office someplace else," Jeffreys says. "Her email had nothing to do with our decision not to establish those locations for the November election."
Lauding Kris Teske's work on getting as much background information from both the Wisconsin Elections and Ethics Commissions, Jeffreys echoes the response WTAQ received earlier this week when speaking with a spokesperson for the now-splintered former Government Accountability Board.
"The Elections Commission staff counsel provided the clerk with guidance on what criteria she and the city council could consider when deciding whether to establish satellite absentee voting locations, and where they might be," wrote Reid Magney, Public Information Officer for both the Wisconsin Elections and Ethics Commissions. "Polling locations are established by municipal clerks and their governing bodies (city councils or village and town boards)."
UW-Green Bay is a polling location for wards 1, 2 and 3 in district 1 on election days. Jeffreys reiterates that just because that's a place used, doesn't mean it can easily happen.
"This is important and it is complex and we had met many times before making a decision to not establish any satellite locations," says Jeffreys. "When the clerk's office establishes those locations that is something the governing body has to say yes to. It needs to be brought before the governing body to say yes not only to doing it but to appropriating the budget. It's not impossible, but it isn't simple either."
MADISON SHADE
The Teske email story has drawn so much attention to Green Bay, that on Wednesday even Madison's mayor and city clerk chimed in on their situation.
"The notion that a local official, be it a city clerk or an elected official, would do anything to thwart voter turnout is just repugnant," Madison Mayor Paul Soglin said, during a press conference touting his own city's early voting numbers.
Asked about the public swipe at Titletown, Jeffreys spoke about the differences between the two cities.
"What people's motives are, are something you to ask that individual person," Jeffreys says. "I actually contacted the city clerk in Madison to find out how they did it. Madison is a different place than Green Bay."
Jeffreys learned that Madison has 12 satellite locations, with 9 of those located in libraries. The libraries in Madison are the city's property, whereas in Green Bay, libraries are the county's property.
"The city has the ability to activate those sites because they're already city property," explains Jeffreys. "The Madison librarians have been for quite some time been very involved in registering voters, so again, it was very easy for the clerk to activate that system that was already in place."
The remaining three locations, according to Jeffreys in a conversation with Madison City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl, are in a municipal building, at UW-Madison and at Edgewood College.
"We don't have the libraries, our libraries are not as numerous as Madison, we're looking forward to being able to do satellite locations, but we're putting that in for the very first time," Jeffreys says.
Jeffreys also slammed the writer in The Nation story, Ari Berman, for not once contacting the city for a comment calling it, "rather poor journalism."
NEW LOCATIONS IN 2017
While Green Bay may never have thought about putting into play several satellite early, in-person absentee voting locations, next year may be when those places may be opened.
Jeffreys says planning for this voting expansion rollout continues, with several cities like Madison being looked to for examples of what it would look like.
"What was the philosophy behind the decision making? Is it location, is it hours, is it accessibility? We're looking at all that and trying to discern what are the common threads here," says Jeffreys. "We are looking forward to establishing expanded opportunities for April 2017."
She believes that Green Bay residents would want their city officials to get this right, rather than doing it quickly.