When an election goes smoothly, most voters never think about what happens after they feed a ballot into a machine. When it does not, questions come quickly: Were the votes counted? Is the system secure? Why are results missing? And can the public trust what comes next?

Green County confronted those questions again after the Aug. 11 primary, when municipalities successfully completed their local election-night work but the county could not properly process all of the results being transmitted to Monroe. County staff spent hours working with the election technology vendor, Liberty Vote, before turning to backup methods, including telephone calls and physical delivery of results. Complete unofficial results were not available until the following morning. The problem did not affect the official vote count, but it delayed reporting and consumed significant staff time.

For municipal clerks, that meant election night did not end when the polls closed. Some had already gone home after completing long days at their polling places, forcing county officials to begin calling clerks late at night and again early the next morning. In previous elections, clerks have physically driven election materials to Monroe when electronic transmission failed — including during a snowstorm in April 2024. At Tuesday night's Town of York meeting, the town clerk recalled not getting home until around midnight after one such failure.

The frustration now appears to have reached a breaking point. Green County Clerk Ariana Voegeli told officials at Wednesday's Town of New Glarus meeting that the county intends to change election equipment vendors. County documents are even more direct, listing "poor service" from Dominion and Liberty Vote over several years as having resulted in a "loss of trust."