Five Wisconsin voters followed every rule. They filled out their absentee ballots correctly, had them witnessed, and returned them on time. Then a single city clerk decided their votes didn't count — not because of any law, but because of a rejection system she invented herself.

In April 2026, Mequon City Clerk Caroline Fochs threw out five absentee ballots because the witness addresses didn't include a ZIP code or state. The problem? The Wisconsin Elections Commission doesn't require that information. The official ballot form doesn't ask for it. A court already rejected a push to require ZIP codes in 2024. None of that mattered. Fochs had her own system, and she used it.

When Ozaukee County officials reviewed the situation, even the county clerk — a Republican — said the ballots should have been counted. But the county declined to act, and those five votes were lost in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election.

This isn't an isolated incident. Clerks across Wisconsin are applying different standards to the same ballots. Whether your vote counts can depend entirely on which clerk happens to be reviewing it. That is not how democracy is supposed to work.

We are calling on the Wisconsin Elections Commission to enforce uniform, statewide standards for absentee ballot review — and to make clear that individual clerks do not have the authority to create their own rejection criteria that go beyond official guidelines. Every voter in Wisconsin deserves to know that the rules are the same no matter where they live.

Five votes may not have changed the last election. But the next one could be much closer. Fix this now.