MADISON, Wis. – A local election secretary failed to realize that Wisconsin’s new legislative maps moved a rural town to a new district, leading to an administrative error that could disenfranchise many voters in a Republican state Assembly primary race.
The new maps moved Summit, a town of about 1,000 people in Douglas County in far northern Wisconsin, from the 73rd Assembly District to the 74th District. But voters in Summit received ballots for the 73rd primary instead of the 74th primary, City Clerk Kaci Jo Lundgren said in a news release issued Tuesday afternoon.
Democrat Angela Stroud defeated John Adams in the primary in the 73rd. Incumbent Chanz Green and former prison guard Scott Harbridge faced off in Tuesday Primary for the Republican Party nomination in the 74th District.
The incorrect ballots mean votes in the 73rd Summit primary likely won’t count under state law, Lundgren said. Furthermore, no one at the Summit could vote for Green or Harbridge in the 74th.
The Associated Press has not announced a winner in the 74th District race while it determines whether the outcome of the race could be challenged because of disenfranchised voters. As of 11:15 pm on Wednesday, Green led by nearly 1,000 votes.
In the news release, Lundgren said about 700 Summit residents are registered voters.
Lundgren, who oversees elections in Douglas County, told The Associated Press in a phone interview that he reviewed the new legislative boundaries many times but somehow didn’t realize that Summit is now in the 74th District.
“It was human error,” she said. “It was a mistake. I made this mistake. … It was an oversight on the part of a municipality.”
Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe said during a news conference Tuesday afternoon that state law does not address such a situation.
“I don’t know what the solutions would look like,” Wolfe said. “I’m not aware of anything like that happening, for any precedent in this situation.”
Wolfe said Summit voters who voted in the 73rd primary did not commit fraud since they received official ballots. Votes cast in other races on the Summit ballot, including election questions about whether the state should adopt two constitutional amendments that restrict the governor’s authority to spend federal aid, will still count, she said.
The liberal-leaning state Supreme Court threw out Republican-drawn legislative boundaries in 2023. GOP lawmakers in February adopted new maps that Democratic Governor Tony Evers tied instead of allowing the liberal court to create districts that could be even worse for them. Tuesday’s primaries mark the first election with the new borders at stake.
The confusion surrounding these new maps seemed limited to Summit. The state election commission had not heard of similar oversights anywhere else in the state, Wolfe said.
Matt Fisher, spokesman for the state Republican Party, had no immediate comment. No one immediately responded to an email sent by the AP to Green’s campaign.
Harbridge told the AP in a phone interview that the error shouldn’t matter unless the race between him and Green was close. He has already consulted some lawyers, but does not have the money to challenge the results in court, he said.
“I’m not happy about it at all,” he said of the error. “I don’t understand how this could happen.”
