The backbone of any functioning democracy is trust. When an election is over, voters need to believe the results are accurate, the rules were followed, and every legal vote was counted as it was cast. Without that confidence, everything else begins to break down.
That’s why what continues to happen in some of Wisconsin’s largest, most liberal cities should concern everyone — Republican or Democrat.
Last week, Wisconsin once again found itself waiting on Milwaukee.
As results trickled in from a closely contested Democratic gubernatorial primary, thousands of absentee ballots remained outstanding. Eventually, officials acknowledged another problem at Milwaukee’s Central Count: five of the nine USB drives brought to the county contained audit logs rather than election results.
“Human error,” officials said. Maybe it was. After all, Milwaukee government doesn’t exactly have a sterling track record of excellence. It’s entirely possible the city’s latest Election Day gaffe was nothing more than bureaucratic incompetence. But when the same problems keep emerging from places like Milwaukee election after election, it’s understandable why some voters begin to suspect something more nefarious than simple government ineffectiveness.
In November 2024, Milwaukee officials had to rerun roughly 31,000 absentee ballots after discovering that doors on the city’s tabulation machines had not been properly secured, once again delaying results from overwhelmingly Democratic Milwaukee late into the night. Wisconsin voters have grown accustomed to waiting past midnight for Milwaukee’s biennial ballot dump. At this point, waiting for the inevitable “human error” explanation has started to feel less like an anomaly and more like part of the process.
Then there is Green Bay.
Earlier this year, 152 Green Bay voters were sent duplicate absentee ballots. Officials initially blamed a “system glitch,” and new safeguards were supposedly implemented to prevent it from happening again.
Months later, it happened again. More than 200 voters were sent duplicate ballots ahead of the August primary, prompting another Wisconsin Elections Commission investigation. This time, Green Bay finally took meaningful action: City Clerk Celestine Jeffreys was placed on leave and ultimately resigned.
In Madison, officials discovered after the November 2024 election that 193 legally cast absentee ballots had never been counted at all. The Wisconsin Elections Commission’s subsequent investigation found failures involving ballot handling, training, transportation and reporting and described what happened as a “profound failure” that “undermines public confidence in elections.”
That last part matters. Because public confidence in elections isn’t rebuilt by telling people they shouldn’t have questions. It’s rebuilt by giving them answers.
Maybe every one of these incidents has an innocent explanation. Maybe none involved anything more sinister than incompetence. But repeated election administration failures in some of Wisconsin’s most heavily Democratic communities inevitably invite skepticism — especially when those failures involve absentee ballots, late-night reporting or other circumstances already at the center of public distrust.
And when the response from politicians and election officials is simply to dismiss each incident as another harmless “human error,” that skepticism doesn’t disappear. It grows.
Ann Jacobs, chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission and an open supporter of David Crowley, was quick to label Milwaukee’s latest election administration blunder an “unfortunate human error,” while dismissing skepticism surrounding the incident as “breathless whispers of nonsense” and little more than conspiracy theories.
That is exactly the wrong approach.
Throughout her tenure on the Elections Commission, Jacobs has repeatedly lectured skeptical voters — predominantly Republicans — that Wisconsin’s elections are secure and that concerns about the process are unfounded. But when repeated failures occur in Milwaukee’s election administration, those same officials shouldn’t rush to explain them away. They should be the loudest voices demanding answers and accountability.
Restoring faith in elections requires more than constantly telling voters to trust the process. It requires holding election officials accountable when that process breaks down and ensuring Wisconsin has a process worthy of that trust.
Jacobs had an opportunity to demonstrate that kind of leadership. Instead, she chose to lecture skeptical voters from her ivory tower. Whether that response stems from a failure to understand where the skepticism comes from or an arrogant dismissal of it, the result is the same: voters are given another reason to distrust the people telling them everything is fine.
They begin asking why these mistakes keep happening. They wonder why the problems so frequently seem to emerge from the same heavily Democratic cities. And when they’re lectured for asking those questions instead of seeing accountability from the people responsible, some inevitably begin wondering whether there is something they aren’t being told.
That is exactly the environment in which distrust flourishes.
There are certainly people who make sweeping allegations about elections without evidence. But politicians who claim to care about combating election misinformation should understand that incompetence, secrecy and a lack of accountability are rocket fuel for those theories.
You cannot demand trust while treating scrutiny as illegitimate. You cannot tell voters that questioning election administration is dangerous while shrugging off repeated failures in election administration. And you certainly cannot rebuild confidence by treating the people asking questions as a bigger problem than the officials making the mistakes.
Wisconsinites deserve elections that are honest, fair, and transparent. They deserve election officials who understand that their responsibility extends beyond simply producing a final vote total. They are also custodians of public confidence in the democratic process.
Mistakes will happen. But repeated mistakes without meaningful accountability stop looking like isolated incidents and start looking like a broken system — particularly when they repeatedly emerge from heavily partisan jurisdictions and appear to advantage the same political party.
If Democrats and election officials genuinely want Wisconsinites to have greater faith in their elections, they should spend less time lecturing skeptical voters about the questions they’re asking and more time demanding answers from the officials giving them reasons to ask.
