GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – A Sept. 22 trial was scheduled Thursday in a lawsuit challenging the access election observers had in Green Bay during early voting last fall.
The Republican National Committee, along with four non-Green Bay residents, filed the lawsuit Nov. 1 accusing Green Bay city clerk Celestine Jeffreys of violating the law by not allowing people to observe all public aspects of in-person absentee voting at city hall. On Nov. 2, Judge Marc Hammer ordered the city to add an area for observers to watch ballots being placed into a ballot box, but the underlying issue of the case has not been resolved.
In court Thursday, plaintiffs’ attorney Kurt Goehre characterized it as a legal dispute which should be resolved with briefs to the court.
“Our position is that members of the public have the right to observe all public aspects of the in-person absentee voting process. So, they denied that fact pursuant to the statute. So, I think at this point it makes sense to set a dispositive motion deadline for the parties to brief that, because it doesn’t appear to me there are any factual issues that would prohibit that at this point,” Goehre said.
But Green Bay Assistant City Attorney Lindsay Mather disagreed.
“I would actually fundamentally dispute that. I don’t think there’s a disagreement that there’s a right to observe the public aspects of voting. There’s a disagreement about the fact that observers were being denied that right. The disagreement is essentially factual, that the disagreement is whether observers were being denied the right to observe those parts of the process, not about if they have the right to do so,” Mather said.
Judge Hammer encouraged the parties to continue to try to settle the case short of trial.
Absent that, the parties have to submit legal briefs by July 14. If the case isn’t decided through those, a two-day jury trial is scheduled for Sept. 25-26.
There are no elections scheduled in Wisconsin until February 2024.
Green Bay’s election administration has been the subject of several complaints in recent years.
In April 2020, voters had to wait up to four hours to vote after the city consolidated 31 polling locations down to two in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The city’s election administration came into question again in November 2020. Republicans accused Mayor Eric Genrich of allowing private consultants to take over election operations, which would be a violation of state law. The city denied any wrong doing, and lawsuits about it were resolved in the city’s favor.
In February 2022, the city started counting absentee ballots hours ahead of the time given to the public. City officials have apologized for what they call a “clerical error.”
