City Election Commission executive director retires
Decision made last year, before April controversy
Neil Albrecht, City of Milwaukee Election Commission executive director, is retiring after 15 years with the office and eight years at its helm.
“I have surpassed my goal retirement age and philosophically, I’m a believer there are no guarantees in life and just look forward to being able to focus on some other neglected aspects of my life,” he told the Journal Sentinel Wednesday.
Albrecht, 58, said his goal retirement age was 55.
He said he decided to retire now because the period of his appointment is nearing its end.
Albrecht and Mayor Tom Barrett said Albrecht had decided last year that he would not pursue another appointment.
“We tried to convince him to continue,” Barrett said. “We think he does a really solid job and he just, like many people, decided that he wanted to do something else with his life and I’m very respectful of that.”
Barrett has appointed Claire Woodall-Vogg, who serves as the commission’s business systems administrator, to fill the role. Her current duties include conducting staff database training, managing and analyzing voter data, and maintaining quality control standards, according to the mayor’s office.
She has been with the City of Milwaukee since 2013, except for a stint as Cedarburg’s city clerk from June 2019 to January of this year, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Barrett said people who worked with her have great respect for her and see her as someone who understands the nuances of running an election effectively.
Citing his notice last summer that he wouldn’t seek another term, Albrecht said his decision to retire now had no connection to controversy surrounding April’s election. Barrett echoed Albrecht.
The statewide election took place in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic and drew national attention to the long lines of voters who waited for hours to cast their ballots.
Some Milwaukee aldermen said in the days after the election that they wanted to better understand why the city dramatically cut its number of voting sites from 180 to just five.
“It’s an election to this date that I will maintain never should have moved forward the way that it did because of the number of Milwaukee residents that were marginalized and disenfranchised,” he said. “But I know that the City of Milwaukee — and speaking for me directly — did everything we could to make that election fair and accessible to voters.”
Barrett praised Albrecht’s work, saying he was required to conduct an election in “the most impossible scenario you can imagine.”
The mayor’s cabinet appointments require approval by the Common Council.