MADISON, Wis. — Dane County and the City of Madison plan to put everything election-related under one roof.

The move comes after a report from the county’s Election Security Review Committee made the recommendation. 

What was once an empty warehouse on the city’s north side will soon be a state-of-the-art elections center.

You can think of the facility as a more than 40,000-square-foot blank canvas that will become an elections hub for the city and county after a nearly $19 million investment.

“I think we got a really good deal buying this building,” Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell explained. “You know, when we were looking at building new it was going to be two to three times more.”

Purchased for roughly $5 million, the former Ale Asylum Brewery at 2002 Pankratz Street already sits on county land near the Dane County Regional Airport.

The previous brewery provides a blank canvas for designing a state-of-the-art elections facility in Madison, Wis. (Spectrum News 1/Mandy Hague)

The possibilities seem endless — from equipment storage to space for ballot processing and recounts, practically everything election-related, except for voting, would happen under one roof.

McDonell said the tipping point came in 2020.

“We had death threats to election officials here in Dane County that were pretty serious, that happened around the country,” McDonell said. “There’s a real emphasis on chain of custody and safety of not just the staff but the equipment [and] ballots, and really our infrastructure here is inadequate.” 

Threats from election deniers and potential Russian cyber-attacks often make news headlines, however, another real risk might surprise you — water.

Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell discusses the potential remodel plans for the former Ale Asylum in Madison, Wis. (Spectrum News 1/Mandy Hague)

“There are hundreds of jail beds above us at the City-County Building that leak, that overflow,” McDonell said of his current office. “We just have a lot of water above our server rooms that could destroy an election.”

The type of election facility envisioned in Madison is common in other states where elections are only conducted at the county level, unlike in Wisconsin, where the responsibility goes down to the township level.

“So, that means there’s a scanner in every town hall in an unsecured broom closet. Well, in today’s world, that just doesn’t cut it,” McDonell added.

For him, the space provides a sense of security that can’t come soon enough.

The project is currently in the architectural design phase and is expected to be completed in a year and a half.