Green Bay’s DEI hire city clerk is facing another state investigation on yet another election administration “error.”
Celestine Jeffreys was placed on administrative leave last week after her office sent an unspecified number of absentee ballots to voters in several Green Bay wards — in advance of Wisconsin’s August primary. Jeffreys’ office described the mistake as a “printing error,” according to the Green Bay Press Gazette.
The bungling clerk’s latest miscue occurred less than three months after the office issued duplicate absentee ballots “in at least 152 instances” before the city’s spring elections, according to a complaint filed by the Republican Party of Wisconsin and Brown County GOP board member Theresa Sipes.
‘It’s Not an Oops’
At a meeting on Thursday, the Wisconsin Elections Commission moved to open an investigation into Green Bay’s top election official, who has repeatedly broken state election law and has continuously undercut voter confidence in Wisconsin’s third-largest city. Former commission chair and Democrat appointee Ann Jacobs said she found the latest mistake “unconscionable.”
“We need, I think, as an organization to investigate exactly what was going on in Green Bay, so we know how this error happened,” Jacobs said. “Any assurances we had after the first time it happened that it wouldn’t happen again are thin at this point.”
The situation is so bad that Green Bay’s leftist leader was forced to issue a press release announcing the clerk he hand-picked to do his bidding in the rigged 2020 election will be on administrative leave pending the city’s own internal review and the WEC investigation. Mayor Eric Genrich called the errors “unacceptable,” but insisted the city has “no concerns with the security or propriety of the electoral process.” He said that the city is acting to make sure “these errors are never replicated.”
But city officials said the same in April.
“It’s not an ‘oops.’ There’s a long track record of this,” Doug Reich, chairman of the Republican Party of Brown County, told The Federalist on Sunday in a phone interview. “It’s up to the mayor’s office and the city council to remove her from that position and hold her accountable, and when that fails to happen we’re supposed to have WEC do it.”
After years of dealing with a hostile clerk’s office, Reich and other Brown County Republicans say they aren’t holding their breath that things will change. Even if Jeffreys is shown the door, Genrich’s critics believe the highly partisan mayor and his rubber-stamp city council will put someone even more concerning in the clerk’s office.
In short, things could get a lot worse in a city notorious for election shenanigans as the critical midterm election approaches.
‘This Will Happen Again’
In response to the Republican Party of Wisconsin’s complaint in April, the Elections Commission found probable cause that Jeffreys broke state election law in sending out scores of duplicate absentee ballots before the spring election. At least 152 individuals received two ballots.
RPW filed the complaint on behalf of a Green Bay voter, Theresa Sipes, who after completing and returning an absentee ballot received another for the same election. The party said the clerk’s office did not respond to its concerns, so it filed the complaint with the state elections regulator.
City officials blamed the problem on a printing issue and an administrative error, the Green Bay Gazette reported. Incredibly, they insisted that Jeffereys’ office didn’t violate election law because only one voter sent back two ballots.
“They essentially claimed it’s not illegal to send out duplicate ballots,” Reich said. “So we filed a rebuttal and said if WEC doesn’t act this will happen again. Sure enough, in a few weeks the same thing happened again.”
‘With Daggers in her Eyes’
Jeffreys has assembled a breathtaking record of incompetence and election law-breaking over her five-plus years as Green Bay City Clerk.
She has on multiple occasions failed to comply with procedures for auditing voters who have registered to vote at their polling places on Election Day. As The Federalist has reported, Jeffreys earlier acknowledged that she failed to follow the law. Her defense? She wasn’t aware of the law.
In January 2024, a Brown County Circuit Court Judge tossed out the city’s disorderly conduct citation against election observer and attorney Janet Angus, calling the city’s action “retaliatory.” Jeffreys, again, was in the middle of the matter.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission found that Jeffreys violated election law in the 2022 spring election when she accepted multiple absentee ballots brought in on behalf of voters. Green Bay resident Matt Roeser alleged that he and two other witnesses saw the clerk “accept, many times, multiple absentee ballots from an individual voter,” according to Green Bay’s WBAY News.
Also in 2022, a Wisconsin judge issued a temporary injunction demanding Green Bay election officials allow Republican poll watchers to observe the entire early voting process throughout the 2022 election cycle. The ruling came less than 24 hours after the Republican National Committee (RNC) took legal action against the city for barring GOP observers from supervising certain parts of the in-person absentee voting procedures.
Jeffreys’ hostility to Republican poll observers has been a common theme over her tenure, Roeser and his wife Polly told The Federalist in an interview. They recalled a particularly tense standoff at a polling site on the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay campus. Polly Roeser was observing the election and Matt was outside observing what he says was blatant electioneering by a leftist voting group. Volunteers were standing outside the polling site telling people who to vote for, the Roesers said. They called an attorney who contacted Jeffreys to put a stop to the illegal conduct.
“She ran out to the university and looked at us with daggers in her eyes,” Matt Roeser said, adding the leftist get-out-the-vote group called the police on them on eight separate occasions for daring to question their practices.
‘Zuckbucks’ Champion
Jeffreys, a former city council member and diversity manager at the Green Bay Chamber of Commerce, served as Genrich’s chief of staff during the Zuckbuck’s scandal of 2020. Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife handed out hundreds of millions of dollars for election administration grants during the Covid-plagued 2020 election. The grants came with strings attached, including the requirement that local election administrators work with a network of leftist “voter rights” groups tied to former President Barack Obama and other Democrats.
Green Bay was a member of the so-called “Wisconsin 5,” the largest cities in Wisconsin run by liberals that received the lion’s share of the $10 million in Zuckbucks funding Badger State municipalities received. Jeffreys was instrumental in the clerk’s office working with the left-wing groups, including New York Democrat operative who was given the keys to the room that housed the absentee ballots for the 2020 presidential election.
Jeffreys replaced Christine Teske just weeks before the election after the longtime Green Bay clerk resigned amid the growing presence of leftist activists in the clerk’s office.
‘Voters Deserve Confidence’
The feckless state elections regulator has contributed to a “permissive” environment, the RPW’s latest complaint against Jeffreys asserts.
Last year, longtime Madison City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl resigned after her office failed to count nearly 200 absentee ballots in the 2024 election. The Wisconsin Elections Commission described the “oversight” as “egregious.” In September of the pivotal presidential election year. Witzel-Behl’s office mailed more than 2,200 duplicate ballots to Madison voters across 10 wards.
“[D]espite the scope of the Madison incident, no formal complaint was filed, no investigation was initiated by the Commission, and no corrective order was issued,” RPW’s April complaint states. “The absence of any formal Commission action following the Madison incident may have contributed to a permissive environment in which municipal clerks, including Respondent, fail to treat the absentee ballot issuance process with the seriousness the law demands.”
Reich, the Brown County GOP chairman, said if Green Bay and the WEC can’t be counted on to bring accountability to repeat election law violators, perhaps the U.S. Department of Justice should get involved. Local Republicans say the Trump administration should send federal election monitors to Green Bay during November’s midterms. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon announced last week plans to deploy monitors to Arizona, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Virginia.
Green Bay could play a significant role in determining Wisconsin’s statewide races for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and others.
Republican Congressman Tom Tiffany, who represents Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District and is making a run for governor, is closely watching the developments in Green Bay.
“Green Bay has once AGAIN sent duplicate absentee ballots, and it’s unknown how many were mailed,” Tiffany posted on social media late last month. “This comes after more than 150 duplicates were mailed during the April election.”
“We need a full audit and accountability. Voters deserve confidence in our elections.”
