Election workers, right, verify ballots as recount observers, left, watch during a Milwaukee hand-recount of presidential votes at the Wisconsin Center. The recount of the presidential election in Wisconsin’s two most heavily Democratic counties began Friday, Nov. 20, 2020 with President Donald Trump’s campaign seeking to discard tens of thousands of absentee ballots that it alleged should not have been counted.
A fourth Wisconsin voter out of roughly 3 million who cast ballots in the 2020 presidential election was charged with election fraud on Thursday by a Republican prosecutor who is running for attorney general.
Fond du Lac District Attorney Eric Toney said the charge alleging that a felon voted illegally does not mean that the election won by President Joe Biden was stolen. The criminal complaint does not identify whether the person charged is a Republican or Democrat or who he voted for in the presidential election.
Milfred and Hands recap the 2020 election, higher turnout, the eroding suburbs and Dane County surge. President Donald Trump isn’t conceding to President-elect Joe Biden just yet and might not ever. But if history is a guide, the president’s pledge to recount Wisconsin’s votes won’t change much.
“But elections are the cornerstone of our democracy and the integrity of our electoral process must be protected at every turn,” Toney said in a statement. “We will continue to prosecute any circumstances of voter fraud, as allowed by law, in order to safeguard our electoral process and ensure the public has confidence in our elections.”
Wisconsin Republicans, fueled by anger and the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from former President Donald Trump, have ordered two separate investigations in the battleground state Biden won by fewer than 21,000 votes. One is underway by the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau. The other was ordered by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and is being led by former conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman.
Charges of election fraud are exceedingly rare in Wisconsin, but there typically are a handful after every major election. The crime of election fraud is a felony.
Only three other people have been charged to date with fraud related to the November election.
In one case, out of St. Croix County, a 64-year-old man faces four felony charges for casting two absentee ballots. A preliminary hearing in that case is set for Monday. In Sawyer County, a 36-year-old Florida man was charged with election fraud after unsuccessfully trying to obtain an absentee ballot by falsely claiming he was a resident of the village of Radisson. A preliminary hearing in that case is set for Oct. 11. In a third case, a 49-year-old Cedarburg woman faces two felony charges after prosecutors say she submitted an absentee ballot close to Election Day for her life partner who had died months earlier. Trial is set to begin Oct. 12.
In the latest case, prosecutors allege that 63-year-old Donald Holz voted illegally in Fond du Lac because he was a convicted felon who had not completed the terms of his probation. He faces a $10,000 fine and up to three years and six months in prison if convicted.
According to the complaint, Holz told investigators that he “went ‘online’ and as far as he knew it was ok for him to vote.” Holz said he told election workers he was on probation and doesn’t know why they let him vote if he wasn’t allowed to, the complaint said.
“Holz stated he wished he had called his probation agent to determine if he was eligible to vote,” the complaint said.
The prosecutor, Toney, is running against University of Wisconsin professor Ryan Owens in the Republican primary for attorney general in 2022. The winner will face Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul, who on Thursday dismissed the GOP election investigation as chasing conspiracy theories.
Year in review: The top Madison-area stories of 2020
It started out well enough. The Badgers were making a late-in-coming run at the Final Four. Hometown insurance behemoth American Family announced it was boosting its starting minimum wage to $20 an hour. Madison East Siders welcomed a new Pinney branch library.
The first two and a half months of the year feel like a different era, when news of a strange new virus infecting people in China was safely tucked away in the back pages of the newspaper and the heart-breaking images of a white Minneapolis police officer kneeling on the neck of a 46-year-old Black man had yet to go viral.
Then came March and successive waves of closures, cancellations, lockdowns, furloughs, layoffs, infections and deaths. If the subsequent uprisings over the killing of George Floyd weren’t enough to remind America that it has plenty of work to do to overcome racism, the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha tragically emphasized the point. And a divisive presidential election carried the tone of the year at the end.
While it may not be a year to look back on with particular fondness, 2020 no doubt is one to remember. Here’s a look back at some of the top stories in the Madison area as they occurred.
With the Green Bay defense failing to lay a hand on 49ers running back Raheem Mostert for much of the first half and the Aaron Rodgers-led offense committing two turnovers and failing to convert a third down yet again during a scoreless first 30 minutes, the Packers dug themselves a 27-0 halftime deficit on their way to a demoralizing 37-20 loss.
A look back at the year 2020 through the lens of Wisconsin State Journal photographers John Hart, Amber Arnold and Steve Apps
