Can Wisconsin handle election deniers this time? » Urban Milwaukee

Four years ago, at the end of September 2020, the concerns of the then President Donald Trump The decision as to whether Trump would not accept the election result in the event of defeat was becoming more and more concrete. The COVID-19 pandemic had led to a massive increase in mail-in voting and Trump had warned his supporters against using this method of voting.

Then, in the days following the election, when the outcome was still uncertain, conspiracy theories began to spread across the country. In Wisconsin, Trump supporters complained about a “ballot dump” in Milwaukee that had changed the outcome for Joe Biden (In fact, the sharp increase in mail-in votes had only slowed poll workers at the city’s central counting site in counting the votes.)

“It was a farce at the ballot box,” one voter told the Wisconsin Examiner on Nov. 6, the day before Biden was declared the winner. “We are seeing an incredible amount of ballot tampering, voter fraud and voter fraud, and nothing is being done to change the situation in cities like Detroit, Philadelphia and Atlanta.”

That same weekend, a Wisconsin lawyer and the Trump campaign began hatching a plan. That plan—which came about as Trump’s last legal options to overturn the election results were exhausted—would soon become the Fake Elector scheme, in which Republicans in Wisconsin and six other states where Biden had won would create false electoral college slates for Trump. The plot formed the basis for the Trump-incited attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, as Congress attempted to certify that Biden had indeed won the election. Trump’s supporters used the Fake Elector scheme to argue that the certification needed to be halted so the fraudulent electoral votes could be counted.

In the months following the election, numerous reviews, audits and investigations were launched to uncover the voter fraud that Trump and his supporters baselessly claimed stole the election from him. In June Robin Vos had commissioned the state representative. Janel Brandtjen (R-Menomonee Falls) and former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman with their own investigations into the elections. Gableman and Brandtjen eventually joined the calls for the election results to be annulled and received massive criticism for doing so.

Gableman’s investigation lasted over a year, incurred large legal fees, and kept public records secret without finding any evidence of fraud. Brandtjen, who was chairman of the Assembly Elections Committee at the time, repeatedly invited conspiracy theorists to testify, providing a platform for debunked claims of wrongdoing.

After Gableman’s review was completed, the state representative said: Tim Ramthun ran a Republican primary for governor based solely on election conspiracy theories. Voter refusers in the Wisconsin state government and local activists Peter Bernegger of New London (already convicted of fraud) and Harry Waitfrom Union Grove (charged with illegally requesting mail-in ballots), and former mayor of Menomonee Falls Jefferson Davis became the core of the election-denying wing of the state’s Republican Party – with allies in the legislature and a significant number of voters on their side.

But despite the power that conspiracy theories about the election have over some Republicans in Wisconsin, election experts say the state is prepared for 2024 and is unlikely to see a repeat of the 2020 effort to overturn the results.

“This will be another case of alarm,” Jay HeckExecutive director of Common Cause Wisconsin, says: “All of this was done in 2020 with no impact and no evidence.”

Laws and regulations have been changed or clarified. Election officials and others have spent countless hours repeatedly relaying factual information about how the election system works. The two lawyers who were instrumental in planning the election fraud plot have been charged with serious crimes by the state Department of Justice. Wisconsin’s fake electors have admitted in a settlement that they attempted to falsify the election results and that they will not serve as electors for Trump in the future. And for Trump, there is no element of surprise anymore.

Mandell believes the small group of voter objectors in Wisconsin will make unfounded accusations, while Heck is careful to note that there are attempts to discourage people from voting and to remain vigilant against disruptive observers at polling places and central counting sites where absentee ballots are counted. But in general, the two are confident that poll workers, election officials and legal observers are prepared.

“There’s no doubt that things will continue to be thrown at the wall, but I think we’re in a much better position than we were four years ago or even before that,” says Jeff Mandell, general counsel at the nonprofit voting rights firm Law Forward. “When I think about threats to this election, there are obviously things that we keep hearing about both in Wisconsin and across the country. And we’re thinking about those things and preparing for them, but I think they’re very unlikely problems. And while we’re doing everything we can to be prepared, I’m pretty skeptical that any of those things will show up in Wisconsin, if any of them do show up in Wisconsin.”

In the run-up to the election, Republican politicians continue to make false claims about the system. Last week, US Representative said: TomTiffany and several county sheriffs held a press conference to denounce the use of mail-in ballots and warn against attempts by noncitizens to cast their ballots. Republicans in Congress have tied passage of a federal spending bill to the SAVE Act, which bans noncitizens from voting in federal elections, even though that is already a crime punishable by prison and deportation and is incredibly rare, according to the data.

“It’s just not happening,” Mandell says. “It’s already illegal under state law. It’s already illegal under federal law. The consequences are enormous. And so I would say some of this grousing about this fictitious idea of ​​non-citizen voting is just evidence of how much voter refusal has been marginalized because there’s almost nothing left for them to talk about.”

Earlier this year, the Wisconsin Supreme Court overturned an earlier decision and again allowed the use of drop boxes to return mail-in ballots. Several poll workers in Republican parts of the state have decided to stop using this method after receiving unsubstantiated warnings that they are vulnerable to fraud and “ballot harvesting,” the alleged practice of political groups collecting and returning hundreds of mail-in ballots at once.

The Republican Party has promised to send more than 100,000 volunteers as poll watchers. In the last election, several of Wisconsin’s most notorious voter refusers were called by police for disrupting voting during the Democratic primary in a special Senate election in August. They promised to return in November.

In the small Rusk County town of Thornapple, the U.S. Department of Justice has filed suit against local officials for repeatedly refusing to use electronic voting machines and instead counting ballots by hand. The suit argues that the town must use machines that allow voters with disabilities to cast their ballots. Election conspiracy theorists have regularly called for ballots to be counted by hand, fearing that electronic machines – which are not connected to the internet – are vulnerable to hacking. Election officials say manual counting increases the risk of human error and that voting machines are much more accurate.

In other states, voting rights activists warn that Republican members of election boards and other agencies responsible for certifying election results could step in and refuse to certify the election if Trump loses. Mandell says Wisconsin’s decentralized voting system helps protect against that threat.

Each municipality has an election board that is responsible for certifying local election results, which are then sent to county election boards and then to the state. Mandell says the role of local officials in Wisconsin means that anyone who refuses to certify is throwing out the votes of their friends and neighbors. That’s an important safety measure, he says.

“You’re talking about people who aren’t saying, ‘I’m skeptical of elections,’ or ‘I don’t like voting machines,’ or other nonsense,” he says. “You’re talking about people who are saying, ‘I want to throw away the votes of my friends and neighbors. I don’t want my spouse’s vote or my family’s votes to count.’ And I think people are understandably and rightly reluctant to say things like that.”

‘Another alarm bell’: Election experts say Wisconsin is prepared to avoid conspiracies was originally published by the Wisconsin Examiner.