Hi, folks.

As we speak, the Wisconsin Elections Commission is deciding what to do about Mequon — the latest issue that tests the limits of clerk discretion.

Here’s some background from my latest story, which I might update after the meeting:

Since at least 2024, the Mequon city clerk has applied an unusually strict standard to determine the validity of a witness address on an absentee ballot certificate, rejecting the ballots that she finds provide insufficient information.

A Votebeat review of 32 ballots rejected on those grounds since August 2024 found that Mequon City Clerk Caroline Fochs is using a stricter standard than most Wisconsin clerks — many of these ballots likely would have been accepted elsewhere. And she appears to have misapplied her standard in the rejection of at least 10 of those ballots.

WEC has instructed clerks to count ballots even if the witness address just lists street name, number, and municipality. The envelope that a witness addresses and signs does not include spaces for state or ZIP code.

Fochs created a different standard that she trains her election officials to follow: If a witness lists a municipality that shares a name with another elsewhere in the country and does not include a ZIP code or state, even though the envelope doesn’t call for them, Fochs told Votebeat she does not count the ballot. If the municipality name is unique, she will count it without a ZIP code or state.

Three of the ballots rejected between 2024 and 2026 had witness addresses in Fox Point, which Fochs said was a duplicate municipality. While the suburb of Fox Point shares its name with a small handful of neighborhoods and geographical features around the country, it is the only such named municipality in the United States. Four ballots from Chicago were also rejected on this basis, though Chicago, Illinois, is the only incorporated city with that name in the country.

Read the story for more.