Liam Beran
Maribeth Witzel Behl during an August tour of the city clerk's office.
Madison City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl served as city clerk since 2006.
Madison City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl resigned Monday, ending a nearly two-decade tenure as the city’s head election official. Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway placed Witzel-Behl on administrative leave for the spring election as the state elections commission and city investigated how her office missed counting nearly 200 ballots in November.
“On behalf of City of Madison residents, I want to extend my gratitude to Maribeth for her commitment and dedication to public service,” said Rhodes-Conway in a statement announcing Witzel-Behl’s resignation Monday morning. “Maribeth embodies the motto she brought to the Clerk’s Office: ‘We exist to assist.’ I wish her the very best in future endeavors.”
Witzel-Behl started in the City Clerk’s Office processing liquor license applications in 2004 and has served as city clerk since 2006.
After numerous election incidents in 2024, city leaders were left with “undermined” confidence in Witzel-Behl’s leadership, according to a Dec. 20 email from the mayor’s chief of staff that Isthmus obtained via an open records request. The City Clerk’s Office in September mistakenly sent out 2,250 duplicate absentee ballots to voters, which caught the attention of Wisconsin Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, and in November, staffers did not count 193 general election absentee ballots.
Witzel-Behl did not ever directly communicate that her office had left these ballots uncounted; the Wisconsin Elections Commission instead told the mayor’s office of the error in December, after a municipal clerk contacted the commission during the ballot reconciliation process. The WEC in January launched an investigation into the November error. An internal city investigation is also ongoing.
Three weeks before the April 1 election, Rhodes-Conway placed Witzel-Behl on administrative leave, a measure she and other city officials felt “was a necessary step to maintain public confidence in the operations of our clerk’s office,” given the ongoing investigation. City Attorney Michael Haas became the acting city clerk in the interim and will continue to serve as city clerk until a replacement is found.
A national search will take place to find Witzel-Behl’s replacement.
