Mequon clerk rejected some ballots that appear to have met her own disputed standard

Since at least 2024, the Mequon city clerk has applied an unusually strict standard to determine the validity of a witness address on an absentee ballot certificate, rejecting the ballots that she finds provide insufficient information.

A Votebeat review of 32 ballots rejected on those grounds since August 2024 found that Mequon City Clerk Caroline Fochs is using a stricter standard than most Wisconsin clerks — many of these ballots likely would have been accepted elsewhere. And she appears to have misapplied her standard in the rejection of at least 10 of those ballots.

Since at least 2024, WEC has instructed clerks to count ballots even if the witness address just lists street name, number and municipality. The envelope that a witness addresses and signs does not include spaces for state or zip code.

Fochs created a different standard that she trains her election officials to follow: If a witness lists a municipality that shares a name with another elsewhere in the country and does not include a ZIP code or state, even though the envelope doesn’t call for them, Fochs told Votebeat she does not count the ballot. If the municipality name is unique, she will count it without a ZIP code or state.



https://www.votebeat.org/wisconsin/2026/04/30/mequon-clerk-caroline-fochs-rejected-ballots-disputed-standard/