Wisconsin City Clerk Sued in Illegal Ballot Harvesting Scheme

The city clerk of Green Bay, Wisconsin, participated in illegal absentee ballot harvesting in the local election on April 5, a new legal complaint filed with the Wisconsin Elections Commission claims.

Several voters reported seeing City Clerk Celestine Jeffreys accepting multiple absentee ballots from the hand of a single person several times, according to Erick Kaardal, special counsel with the Thomas More Society, a not-for-profit public interest law firm. Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich, a Democrat, appointed Jeffreys to her current post.

“This is ballot harvesting and it is illegal,” Kaardal said in a statement.

The complaint (pdf), cited as Roeser v. Jeffreys, against Jeffreys was filed with the Wisconsin Elections Commission on April 21 on behalf of witness Matt Roeser, a voter residing in Green Bay, according to the Thomas More Society. The complaint also identifies Janet Argus and Victoria J. Linssen as witnesses.

Wisconsin law provides that it is “illegal absentee ballot harvesting” for a municipal clerk to receive multiple ballots from an individual voter in the clerk’s office. Generally, the only legally permissible methods of delivery of absentee ballots are personally delivering one’s own absentee ballot to the clerk or personally mailing it…. (Excerpt from the Epoch Times)