Overview
- The Wisconsin Elections Commission certified the April 7 results Friday after Judge Everett Mitchell’s order Thursday required counting 23 Madison absentee ballots.
- The commission had voted 5–1 on April 30 to exclude the ballots under the state rule that absentee votes must reach polling places by 8 p.m., even though the clerk had them by April 6 and a courier delivered them late.
- In a lawsuit filed by Law Forward for two Madison voters, Mitchell told the commission to accept Dane County’s original April 15 canvass and blocked enforcement of the April 30 directive tied to its investigation.
- Because poll workers did not consistently mark the late arrivals, Madison used a drawdown to remove 23 random ballots earlier, and those votes now return to the totals that matched the first canvass.
- The 23 ballots do not change any outcomes, including the state Supreme Court race won by Chris Taylor by more than 300,000 votes, yet the decision protects voters from losing ballots due to errors by election officials.