GREEN BAY – The attorney leading a partisan review of Wisconsin’s 2020 election acknowledged this week that he doesn’t understand how elections are supposed to be run.
The admission by former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman comes as he subpoenas mayors and election officials.
His comment raises fresh questions about how long Gableman’s taxpayer-financed review will take. He called an Oct. 31 deadline set for him by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos of Rochester unrealistic.
“Most people, myself included, do not have a comprehensive understanding or even any understanding of how elections work,” Gableman said in an interview late Tuesday before addressing the Green Bay City Council about his plans.
Gableman’s acknowledgment that he does not know how elections work comes 10 months after he told a crowd of supporters of former President Donald Trump without evidence that elected officials had allowed bureaucrats to “steal our vote.” Recounts in the state’s two most populous counties and court decisions determined Joe Biden won by more than 20,000 votes, or 0.6 points.
Vos this summer hired Gableman and gave him a $676,00 budget to review the election. In the interview, Gableman said he planned to write a report that started by comparing what happened in 2020 with what should have happened.
“Section one: What should have occurred during the election? How do these things work? Most people don’t know about that,” he said. “Election laws are unlike, say, laws about don’t kill me — they’re not intuitive. No one can call elections laws common sense. Once you understand them, it may be common sense but it’s not intuitive. And so most people, myself included, do not have a comprehensive understanding or even any understanding of how elections work.”
Democratic Rep. Mark Spreitzer of Beloit, who sits on the Assembly Elections Committee, said Gableman should get up to speed.
“If you are going to investigate an election, you should start by educating yourself about how elections work,” he said. “How can we trust the findings of a person who doesn’t understand how elections work?”
Election officials for weeks have questioned Gableman’s competence to handle an election review, noting he has associated with conspiracy theorists, suggested clerks must prove their innocence and sent subpoenas to Milwaukee City Clerk Jim Owczarski, who has no election duties.
Gableman this summer met with officials conducting a partisan review of the Arizona election and attended a South Dakota forum hosted by MyPillow executive Mike Lindell, who has baselessly claimed China hacked the election. More recently, he has been in touch with Shiva Ayyadurai, who falsely stated Massachusetts destroyed a million ballots and claimed without evidence that votes were taken away from Trump based on the science fiction novel “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”
More subpoenas issued
In his report, Gableman also plans to discuss guidance the bipartisan state Elections Commission gave to clerks around the state and grants the Center for Tech and Civic Life gave to Wisconsin cities to help them run their elections.
Those grants, which were funded by donations from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, have frustrated Republicans because large, Democratic-leaning communities received more than rural and suburban ones that tend to vote for Republicans.
Gableman said he plans to also review voting machines, but he did not provide specifics about that part of his work.
With Vos’ approval, Gableman last week issued subpoenas to the top election officials for the state, Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Kenosha and Racine. On Tuesday he said he was doing the same for the mayors of those five cities.
By Wednesday afternoon, Milwaukee and Racine had received their second round of subpoenas. The subpoenas were directed at the mayors and the people in each city government who are “most knowledgeable in regard to the November 2020 General Election.”
As with the subpoenas that went to city clerks, the new ones seek “all documents contained in your files and/or in your custody, possession, or control, pertaining to the Election” — a massive set of documents that officials have said would be difficult to produce.
In the interview, Gableman said if officials “want to cooperate … and want to narrow it down or otherwise, then I’m certainly open to doing what is efficient.”
He has told officials to meet with him on Oct. 15 and Oct. 22 at a rented office in Brookfield.
Gableman aide Zakory Niemierowicz declined to say Wednesday whether those interviews would be held in public. Gableman has said he will perform his work in private and then publicly release his report. Attorneys for election officials have questioned whether he can conduct his interviews privately.
In his question-and-answer session with the Green Bay Common Council, Gableman said those who talk to him will be granted immunity from criminal prosecution.
“It’s so important to remember that the mission that has been assigned to me, to the Office of Special Counsel, by the Legislature is not a prosecution. It’s not a criminal proceeding,” he said.
He did not note that the subpoenas he has issued warn the recipients in boldface type that they could be imprisoned if they do not comply with his demands. Critics have questioned whether he could do that and who could enforce such a provision.
Michael Maistelman, a Milwaukee attorney who frequently represents Democrats, said the mayors should respond to the subpoenas as some on Trump’s team have responded to subpoenas from Congress — by disregarding them.
“The folks subpoenaed by Gableman should simply ignore the subpoenas just like the folks that Gableman is carrying water for do,” Maistelman said.
Gableman during his presentation in Green Bay said he had no intention of trying to reinstate Trump.
“One of the more vocal criticisms from some quarters is that this investigation is an effort to somehow restore former President Trump to the White House,” he said. “If that’s the program, nobody has shared it with me — nor would I have accepted this job if that was the case.”
He made his comments just hours before Vos, who hired Gableman, said in the New York Times that he did not know whether Biden had legitimately won the election.
Vos in May told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he recognized Biden’s win and was not trying to change the result.
“The election’s already over,” he said then. “My job is to be frustrated with the result, which I am, especially with what’s going on in Washington, D.C.”
Molly Beck and Alison Dirr of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.
Contact Patrick Marley at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @patrickdmarley.
