Celestine Jeffreys, the Green Bay City Clerk who became infamous during the 2020 election for handing the keys to city election operations to a Democrat operative from New York, has resigned. Her exit comes after she was identified as the person responsible for sending 152 duplicate absentee ballots to voters during Wisconsin's April election — and then doing it again ahead of the August 11 primary.
Two elections in a row. Same clerk. Same "error."
The Wisconsin Elections Commission found probable cause that the duplicate ballot mailings violated state election law and unanimously authorized a formal investigation. Jeffreys had been placed on paid administrative leave on July 9, and the city's own response to state investigators named her as the person who reprinted the ballot labels in both incidents. The City of Green Bay and Jeffreys announced her resignation in a joint statement on August 7.
Doug Reich, Chairman of the Republican Party of Brown County, didn't mince words. "It's the bare minimum, and it's long overdue," Reich said.
Nicholas Boerke, legal counsel for Brown County GOP board member Theresa Sipes, put a finer point on it: "This is either gross incompetence or something worse and the difference matters."
That's the question nobody in Green Bay city government seems eager to answer. Was Jeffreys simply bad at her job, or was something else going on? The city's statement wished her "the best in her future endeavors" — the kind of warm sendoff you give someone who's retiring after thirty years, not someone who just got caught compromising ballot integrity in back-to-back elections.
Logan Churchwell, Research Director at the Public Interest Legal Foundation, connected the dots that local officials apparently couldn't. "Today's announcement shows that Green Bay could no longer ignore this pattern," Churchwell said.
Jeffreys took over as city clerk in January 2021, after former clerk Christine Teske resigned before the 2020 election. Jeffreys had been Mayor Eric Genrich's chief of staff. Once installed, she presided over an operation that accepted $10 million in so-called "Zuckbucks" funding — Mark Zuckerberg's money, funneled through left-wing nonprofits into Wisconsin municipal election offices. During that cycle, Jeffreys allowed Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein, a former New York Democrat operative, to help run Green Bay's election administration. She barred Republican poll watchers from observing early voting. She worked with leftist "voter rights" groups. In 2024, she admitted to non-compliance with voter registration deactivation law.
Five years of this. Five years of one compliance failure after another, each one conveniently cutting in the same direction.
Green Bay is not some sleepy rural township where the clerk's office runs on autopilot. It's the largest city in a swing-state county that both parties target every cycle. Brown County is one of the most competitive jurisdictions in one of the most competitive states in the country. The person running elections there doesn't get to make the same "mistake" twice and call it an accident.
Stacy Menke, the deputy clerk, is now serving as interim clerk for the August primary. Mayor Genrich will nominate a permanent replacement, subject to city council confirmation. Given that Genrich is the one who installed Jeffreys in the first place — after she served as his own chief of staff — the council might want to pay closer attention to that nomination than they did last time.
