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The county clerk’s office will depart the downtown City-County Building if a new elections center is approved.
For decades, local couples seeking marriage licenses have gone downtown to the county clerk’s office in the City-County Building. But with a new elections center approved by the Dane County board, they’ll be headed to Packers Avenue near the Dane County Regional Airport.
“For us, nothing will remain downtown,” Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell tells Isthmus in an email. “We will all be in the new location.”
City of Madison elections officials will also be housed at the new center but Mary Bottari, chief of staff to Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway, says “It’s a bit too early for us to say what [other] operations, if any, might move.” It’s also too early to say whether there will be early voting in the City-County Building in 2024 since the clerk’s office is currently operating out of the Madison Municipal Building while its office is undergoing a significant renovation.
On Nov. 2, the board voted to purchase the building that formerly housed the Ale Asylum brewery for just under $5 million.
McDonell says much of the county clerk’s office’s work is already being done virtually. But part of the new facility will be open to the public, with five to 10 county staffers. McDonell says people visiting the county clerk should have an easier time parking at the new location than they currently do downtown. For those without a car, Metro’s Route B serves the new facility.
A report from the Dane County Election Security Review Committee last year found that “both the Madison and Dane County clerks are located in a building with minimal access control or security”: the City-County Building on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. After the 2020 election, Madison City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl received death threats severe and specific enough that she reported them to law enforcement after the far-right website Gateway Pundit published a false story claiming thousands of fake votes had been found in Madison.
The election security committee recommended elections administration be moved to a dedicated facility with improved safety, prompting the proposed purchase of the Ale Asylum property.
In a survey of Dane County municipal clerks cited in the report, an overwhelming majority said threats against election officials had increased and that they were concerned about the safety of themselves or their staff. About 30% said they were at least somewhat concerned about being assaulted on the job.
The report also found that city of Madison election equipment was vulnerable to water damage, with some “covered by tarps to protect against a leaking ceiling.” Paper ballots were often stored behind a single locked door without further access control or security.
The new location will feature more security, limits on who can get into parts of the building, and a security fence on the backside of the building protecting the area where election materials are loaded into and out of the facility.
The county also considered buying the former United Vaccines site in Fitchburg, but found that site was too small and would need its roof replaced. “The Ale Asylum building was in much better shape, and the lot allowed for future expansion and for secure parking,” says McDonell.
