Green Bay City Clerk Celestine Jeffreys’ reign of incompetence and law-breaking has come to an end.
Jeffreys, who began her notorious tenure during Green Bay’s scandalous handling of the 2020 election, stepped down late last week amid an investigation into her latest election administration mess.
But there remain several “conveniently” unanswered questions for Green Bay’s leftist leadership, according to the Brown County GOP.
‘It’s Long Overdue’
Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich released a statement on Friday announcing that “Ms. Jeffreys has made the decision to step down from her role as City Clerk.”
“We wish her the best in her future endeavors,” the mayor’s office said.
That’s it. A two-sentence goodbye, followed by notice that the announcement will be “the City’s only statement on the matter.”
Jeffreys’ ignominious resignation comes a month after the city placed the embattled clerk on administrative leave for sending an unspecified number of absentee ballots to voters in several Green Bay wards — in advance of Wisconsin’s August primary. The election is scheduled for Tuesday. Jeffreys’ office described the mistake as a “printing error.”
As The Federalist reported last month, 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.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission has launched yet another investigation into the city clerk’s office, finding probable cause that Jeffreys’ latest ballot mishap broke Wisconsin elections law. City officials later this month are expected to deliver a presentation on their investigation into the clerk’s office to the leftist-led Green Bay City Council, which has countenanced Jeffreys’ incompetence for years.
Doug Reich, chairman of the Republican Party of Brown County, told The Federalist last month that two absentee ballot debacles in the span of a few months is “not an ‘oops.’” And Jeffreys leaving mid-investigation isn’t accountability.
“[I]t’s the bare minimum, and it’s long overdue,” Reich wrote on the county GOP’s Facebook page.
“Two elections. Two rounds of duplicate absentee ballots. A state investigation. And the best the city could produce, even after all that, was a two-sentence statement with no explanation and no apology to the voters affected,” the chairman added.
‘Gross Incompetence Or Something Worse’
Reich said Green Bay officials have yet to clarify how many voters received absentee ballots for Tuesday’s primary election. He noted that Jeffreys personally printed the spring election ballot labels, and she did it again in June.
“And her April report to the WEC left that out entirely, which is its own problem,” the GOP official wrote. “What has the city offered as proof? An unsworn letter from its own attorney. No records. No affidavit. Nothing Jeffreys has put her name to under oath. That’s not transparency, it’s damage control.”
Nicholas Boerke, Sipes’ legal counsel, has asked the Wisconsin Elections Commission to find that the city has failed to comply with the election regulator’s July 31 order demanding Green Bay officials explain how Jeffreys’ “printer error” happened — again.
“As I have said all along, this is either gross incompetence or something worse and the difference matters,” Boerke wrote in his letter to the commission. “An unsworn letter from a city lawyer, with no records, no affidavit, and nothing the (former) Clerk will stand behind under oath, is not accountability. More is necessary.”
The attorney said the WEC has the authority to subpoena records and take testimony under oath.
Here’s another important question: Who is running the city clerk’s office? As Reich wrote, Green Bay’s deputy clerk has been left holding the bag, running day-to-day operations, including preparing for Tuesday’s primary, “while the city drags its feet on a permanent replacement.”
From Zuckbucks To Ballot Disasters
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 took legal action against the city for barring GOP observers from supervising certain parts of the in-person absentee voting procedures.
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 got 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 Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein, a former New York Democrat operative who was given the keys to the room that housed the absentee ballots for the 2020 presidential election.
Spitzer-Rubenstein, according to emails obtained by Wisconsin Spotlight, told then-city clerk Christine Teske he could assist in “curing” — or correcting — absentee ballots that were missing or had incorrect information. He said he could to the same for Milwaukee elections officials.
Jeffreys replaced 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. Jeffreys was officially appointed to the post after the election.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation, an election integrity litigator, has for years raised alarms and complaints about the Green Bay city clerk’s office under Jeffreys. PILF filed the complaint that ultimately forced city officials to admit that Jeffreys had broken election law because she did not understand election law.
“Today’s announcement shows that Green Bay could no longer ignore this pattern,” PILF’s Research Director Logan Churchwell said in a statement to The Federalist following Jeffreys announced departure. “It should serve as a reminder to election officials nationwide: following election law is not optional, and PILF will continue holding officials accountable when they fail to do their jobs.”
