I’m referring to the liberal law firm Law Forward’s civil suit against the city and its former clerks over the mishandling of 193 ballots in the November, 2024 election. These were absentee ballots that were misplaced and not counted. They would not have made a difference in any race.
What was really bad about that was the fact that City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl failed to bring it to the attention of the mayor or the city attorney until weeks after she discovered the problem. For that, she and her deputy were forced to resign. The city apologized. There were two separate investigations by the city and the state elections board. New people and new procedures are in place.
This was a bad mistake, but what else do you want the city to do?
Well, Law Forward wants city taxpayers to pay unspecified monetary damages. How much might that be? According to a story in the Wisconsin State Journal, a claim filed in March seeks to value these votes at $175,000 apiece. If they got all of that, it would be just under $34 million. If Law Forward took the customary 30%, that’d be around $11 million. While it seems unlikely that the payout would be nearly as high as that, a cynical person (and I am not a cynical person) might suggest that Law Forward is doing this for two reasons: the money and the exposure for their nonprofit.