WAUPACA COUNTY, WI – The Waupaca County Board of Supervisors voted 22-3 to throw out and redo its vice chair and highway committee elections after determining the original results failed to meet the legal standard required under state statute and county ordinance.
The problem stemmed from how votes were counted at the board’s April 21 organizational meeting. Winning candidates had been elected by a plurality, meaning they received more votes than any other candidate, but not the outright majority of supervisors required by law. Officials called a special meeting on April 28 to address the issue after the error was discovered following the original vote.
At the special meeting, attorney Andy Phillips of the Wisconsin Counties Association laid out three paths forward for the board: ratify the original flawed results, ratify them but correct the process going forward, or adopt a clean slate approach by redoing the elections entirely. The board chose the clean slate option by a wide margin.
Not everyone agreed with that decision. Supervisor Joel Bartel, who had been declared vice chair following the original vote, called the do-over an attempt to manipulate a legitimate election outcome and argued that neither the county clerk nor corporation counsel raised any procedural objections at the time the original vote was held. Other supervisors pushed back, maintaining that correcting a legal error, regardless of when it was caught, was simply a matter of following the rules.
In the new election, Ricky Ertl of Iola narrowly defeated Bartel for vice chair by a 13-to-12 margin, with two supervisors absent.
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