(The Center Square) – The Wisconsin Elections Commission says Green Bay’s clerk broke the law when she mailed 152 duplicate ballots before the spring election.
A draft memo from the commission said there is no doubt that Clerk Celestine Jefferys broke the law earlier this year.
"The Commission finds that the Respondent, due to an error in processing certificate envelope labels, issued duplicate ballots to electors in violation of Wis. Stat. § 6.86(1)(ar)," the memo states.
The memo is part of a challenge filed with the Elections Commission from the Brown County Republican Party.
The April ballot case is not connected to Jefferys’ latest duplicate ballot scandal. Her office sent two ballots to an unknown number of voters just last week.
Jefferys defended this spring’s duplicate ballots by arguing none of the second ballots were counted, and Wisconsin law doesn’t have any consequences for accidentally mailing two ballots.
“Wisconsin law prohibits election fraud, not the inadvertent issuance of multiple ballots. The statute does not impose liability for inadvertent duplication in issuance, rather, it establishes the elector’s right to receive a ballot,” Jefferys wrote in her response to the complaint. “While an instance of inadvertent duplication did occur in the City of Green Bay for the Spring 2026 election, Clerk Jeffreys put additional safeguards in place to ensure affected voters were notified, and more importantly, ensured that only one eligible ballot was tabulated per voter.”
The Elections Commission acknowledged that there are no penalties for mailing duplicate ballots but said Jefferys also clearly broke the law.
“[Jefferys] discusses her duty to prevent more than one ballot from any voter being counted in an election, and the Commission agrees that this is a duty of the Respondent. The Commission disagrees only to the extent the [Jefferys] appears to argue that this is the only relevant duty concerning these allegations. Multiple checks and redundancies exist within the election administration system to prevent duplicate ballots from being either issued or counted. Clerks are required to track each request made, each ballot issued, each ballot returned, and each ballot counted. In this case, there was an error and violation in ballot issuance, but procedures to track, review, record, and, on Election Day, count valid returned absentee ballots appear to have been properly carried out,” the Commission wrote in its memo. "The Commission orders [Jefferys] to continue to maintain a complete chain of custody for all ballots issued and to continue to ensure that no voter can vote more than once in an election."
The Elections Commission is expected meet next week to talk about the challenge, and its order to Jefferys.
