Hi, folks,

If you cast an absentee ballot, returned it correctly, and learned that it wasn’t counted because of an administrative error, what would you do? 

Would you give up hope on absentee voting? Chalk it up to a one-off error? Sue because your vote didn’t count?

My guess is your answers vary. That’s true, at least, for the nearly 200 Madison voters who got disenfranchised in 2024 after casting absentee ballots.

Some have sued the city for monetary damages. We’ve known about that, and I’ll keep following the case that’s now scheduled for a trial in 2028. But what about everybody besides those eight plaintiffs who have generated most of the publicity among the disenfranchised voters?

For my latest story, I obtained the voting data of each of the 193 voters and contacted them to learn about their experiences. Some, I noticed, stopped voting absentee. Others kept going. Some stopped voting entirely.

Let me touch, briefly, on two voters on opposite ends of the spectrum (sort of). 

Mark Ediger, a retired chemistry professor at UW-Madison, told me it was a one-off error that didn’t shake his trust in elections. He is the only voter among the 193 to vote absentee in both of the two elections following the presidential election when the error occurred.

Then there’s Nathan Haimowitz, a journalist living in Spain who voted from abroad in 2024. A former poll worker and get-out-the-vote organizer, Haimowitz hasn’t cast a vote since the error, and he told me the error made him think that voting wasn’t that easy.

So these are two very different reactions, except that both of them oppose the lawsuit seeking money for the error. Ediger said he found the lawsuit bewildering, and Haimowitz said the money could be debilitating to an election board already under fire.

But there’s no consensus on that. I also spoke with Joanne Fairbotham, a 35-year-old medical coder raised not to trust absentee voting. She was infuriated with the city, asking for the former clerk to resign. And she has only cast votes at the polls since. 

Fairbotham said she thinks the lawsuit will force the city to take the error seriously. And, she added, it could also prevent similar errors in other Wisconsin municipalities, who look to the lawsuit to understand the gravity of the error.

Though these accounts are anecdotal, election experts say the lost trust tracks with the expected effects of disenfranchising errors.

“There’s growing evidence that when someone tries to vote and they are prevented from doing so for one reason or another, it makes them less likely to vote in the future, and it can change their behavior,” Kevin Morris, a senior research fellow and voting policy scholar with the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program, told me. “You can lose a lot of trust very easily, and it can be very difficult to build that trust.”

Check out the story to read more, and to see the brilliant illustration by Michelle Perez. Election Day is on the horizon in Wisconsin, and I’m excited to share my Election Day story with you.

Let me know what questions you have about elections in Wisconsin. You can reach me at [email protected] or by replying to this email.

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