Dunn County clerk responds to questions about April 2024 election
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By LeAnn R. Ralph
MENOMONIE — In the April 2 election, Dunn County Supervisory District No. 20 did not have a candidate on the ballot.
Write-in candidate Carol Larkin received 6 votes April 2 for District 20, and Spencer Berndt received 31 votes.
Larry Bjork, county board supervisor from the Town of Spring Brook, said at the May 15 Dunn County Board meeting that he had been hearing questions about the District 20 election and freedom of information (open records) requests.
Bjork said he did not want people to have to go to court to get the information they had requested.
Dunn County Clerk Andrew Mercil, who gave his annual report to the county board at the May 15 meeting, noted that he had recently sent out lists of open records requests that he had received to all Dunn County Board members.
District 20, which covers Ward 8 in Menomonie on the southwestern side of the city, was listed on the county clerk’s website as having no candidate for the April 2 election.
Hilary Robinson, the Dunn County Board supervisor who was representing District 20, filed a notification of non-candidacy in December.
During his annual report, Mercil outlined the deadlines for elections and pointed out that election preparation begins six months prior to an election.
Election preparation includes notices that must be published in the newspaper at various times, keeping records of who files notices of non-candidacy and who has filed the proper paperwork to be included on the ballot, county-wide training for election workers, ballot preparation and proofing as well as sending out requests for absentee ballots.
The county clerk’s office has been “an office of one” for the last six weeks following the resignation of the county’s deputy clerk, Mercil said.
ASAP
Mercil said he has been trying to answer as many open records requests as possible to provide the information requested.
According to Wisconsin’s Open Records law, requests to open records requests must be made “as soon as practicable and without delay.”
“Practicable” means as soon as something is capable of being put into practice or accomplished, or as soon as it is feasible.
Mercil said, from the open records requests he has received, that there is a sense that people think he is not providing all of the records available.
“I can only provide records for what we keep in Dunn County. I can’t make up records,” he said.
The “cast vote record” does not exist in Dunn County, and the county does not receive the cast vote record, and the cast vote records are not kept in Dunn County, he said.
A cast vote record is the electronic record of the ballots scanned into vote-counting machines.
According to www.votebeat.org, the lines of data appear on a spreadsheet full of zeros and ones to indicate the votes from the anonymous ballots that were cast. The CVR is essentially a receipt of everything that the machine has scanned. Voter names are not included on the CVR because, by law, ballots are private.
According to various sources, the cast vote record is useful to researchers and election auditors.
Following the election in the fall of 2020, and subsequent elections since then, election clerks around the country have received requests for cast vote records as part of effort to prove conspiracy theories about election fraud, according to various sources.
Disagreement
Mercil can only provide public records that are available and that are allowed by state law to be distributed to the public.
According to state law, certain voter records must remain confidential, such an elector’s date of birth, driver’s license number, Social Security number and any need for voting accommodations.
If someone disagrees with the information provided by the county clerk’s office, “that is their right. But I can’t make records that don’t exist,” Mercil told the Dunn County Board.
Mercil said he is aware of the accusations made about him and the District 20 election.
When there is an open seat for any office, there is a requirement by state statute, that any person written in on a ballot must have the votes counted, he said.
If a candidate is running for a position that has a candidate listed on the ballot, then only those who registered as write-in candidates can have the votes counted, Mercil said.
If there is an open seat with no candidate on the ballot, then every write-in vote must be counted for that position, he said.
The deadline for registering as a write-in candidate is 12 noon the Friday before the election, which for this year, was March 29, Mercil said.
On Friday, March 29, 2024, the Dunn County Government Center was closed, but since the deadline for registering as a write-in candidate was noon, Mercil kept the county clerk’s office open.
Someone did come in before noon to register as a write-in candidate, he said, adding that he had provided the necessary forms and helped to facilitate the registration.
Mercil said he then processed the registration for the write-in candidate, updated the county’s list of write-in candidates, and e-mailed the list to all of the municipal clerks in Dunn County.
After that, Mercil travelled to the Town of Colfax, where he had scheduled Badger Book training at 2 p.m. for election workers.
Midnight
Mercil noted that he is almost 40 years old and that he is not been up until midnight in about a decade.
Rumors have been circulating that Mercil was recruiting candidates for the District 20 position until midnight.
“People say a lot of things about me — they aren’t true,” he said.
“I would like to stay up until midnight, but 9 o’clock is pushing it,” Mercil said.
The Dunn County clerk’s office is always open to answering questions from anyone stopping in or calling to ask questions.
“Contrary to what has been said, I did not specifically recruit a candidate for District 20. I was not involved in that at all. I think the concern is that I had and that I might have been doing something that is questionable,” Mercil said.
“I have only ever tried to make sure that I administer the duties and responsibilities of governing my office to the utmost potential that is deserving of the office. Does that answer your question (Supervisor Bjork)? he said.
“If you did take credit for getting the guy — I’d say good job,” Bjork replied.
“I don’t want Dunn County to be thought of as not doing things proper,” he said.
“I don’t either,” Mercil said.
Constitutional amendments
Thomas Hagen, county board supervisor from Menomonie, asked about the two state-wide referendum questions concerning election funding and election workers.
The two questions were approved with more than 50 percent of the statewide vote April 2 to amend the Wisconsin Constitution.
The first question amended the constitution to read, “No state agency or office or employee in state government and no political subdivision of the state or officer or employee of a political subdivision may apply for, accept, expend, or use any moneys or equipment in connection with the conduct of any primary, election or referendum if the moneys or equipment are donated or granted by an individual or nongovernmental entity.”
The second question amended the constitution to read, “No individual other than an election official designated by law may perform any task in the conduct of any primary, election or referendum.”
Vague
The Wisconsin attorney general is working with the Wisconsin Supreme Court to determine the intention of the verbiage changing the constitution and what it means because the verbiage is so vague, Mercil said.
One question is what constitutes an election worker and who makes the determination of who is an election worker? Is it state statute? The county clerk? The Wisconsin Elections Commission? Mercil said.
The attorney general and the Supreme Court are working on it so everyone can follow the changes and make them effective, he said.
The target of the constitutional amendment appears to be service organizations that would help with absentee ballots, Mercil said.
In the City of Menomonie, for example, there are 1,000 absent ballots that are requested, he said.
If the work of labeling the envelopes and getting the ballots into the envelopes were left entirely to the clerk and the deputy clerk, preparing the absentee ballots alone would take several days, Mercil said.
There are “short windows” of deadlines set by state law to produce the ballots, to have them printed, to proof the ballots and to receive approval from the Wisconsin Election Commission, and then to get them out in the mail, he said.
The details of how to administer the amendments to the state constitution have not yet been determined, Mercil said.
Any task
The amendment contains the words “any task,” and critics of the question say that the amendment to the Wisconsin Constitution is so vague, it could be interpreted to prevent the League of Women Voters, for example, from providing non-partisan election information, such as information on how to register to vote, or that it would prevent neighbors from driving elderly neighbors to polling places to cast their ballots.
Other municipal employees in addition to the municipal clerk and the election workers also perform tasks related to conducting elections, such as public works employees who shovel snow off the sidewalks or remove ice so voters can safely reach the polling place, or public works employees who help bring voting equipment from storage to the polling place.
Both constitutional amendments were intended to make it more difficult for Wisconsin residents to vote, critics say.
Supporters of the constitutional amendments say they will remove “dark money” and “interference” from elections.
