Madison Reporter

 A Dane County Election Security Task Force is calling for a complete overhaul of the system after highlighting security and safety concerns in a recent report.

“Dane County needs a modern, secure facility to house election equipment, ballots and other materials and a place where election officials can feel safe doing their job,” County clerk Scott McDonell told Channel3000.com on Monday.

The report also detailed concerns about the security of the administration and the buildings the election materials are kept in, noting that the election materials are not well protected against security breaches and incidents like flooding or fires. While stressing that greater allocation for security measures like barriers, locks and cameras should be implemented prior to the 2024 presidential election, it added that smaller steps should be taken in the here and now; as the risk of fraud, violence and tampering is much higher after the 2020 presidential election, and the clerk should be fully aware of such risks.

McDonell added that there has been a series of threats against certain clerks to go along with a litany of broadly concerning incidents. While in the midst of preparing the report, the task force employed the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to do a security check on the City County Building that houses the clerks’ offices, and during that time a person wearing camouflage and a facemask created a disturbance inside the Madison clerk’s office.

Among the final recommendations outlined in the report was that officials limit public access to the buildings and move clerks and elections officials to an area or building that has greater control over who can enter, which the office has begun to do by allowing marriage license access online.