Ballot Errors Create Another Headache for City Clerks

As if city clerks didn’t , along comes the case of the misprinted ballots.

Testing done in advance of the April 3 General Election has discovered a flaw in the election ballots sent to the City of Milwaukee and 18 other municipalities in Milwaukee County, including Greenfield.

Ballots received from printer Burton & Mayer, Inc., were tested by the City of Milwaukee and other Milwaukee County municipalities and failed to work in the optical readers. According to WISN 12, nearly 450,000 printed ballots are flawed and need to be reprinted.

“It's a mess,” Greenfield Mayor Michael Neitzke said. “The ballots are late, and they won't work electronically. The absentee ballots look like they will have to be computed by hand.

“I understand that everyone associated with the election is under tremendous burdens. Even still, this is all shocking.”

The county was to get in touch with another contractor regarding a ballot reorder over the weekend.

Early in-person voting and absentee ballot voting will continue, but those ballots will likely have to be reconstructed, or imputed manually before or on election night.

mailed out the city’s absentee ballots Friday afternoon. The incorrect ballots had to go out as soon as possible because waiting for a new batch of correct ones potentially could have left absentee voters with not enough time to return them.

Not only were the ballots incorrect, they were late. Goergen expected the ballots March 13; Greenfield received theirs Friday, or 10 days late.