The Republican chair of the Senate elections committee called on former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman Monday to wrap up the GOP’s probe into Wisconsin’s 2020 election “sooner rather than later,” saying the repeated questioning of the election’s results only serves to sow doubt in democracy and has led to threats against state and local election officials.
Sen. Kathy Bernier, chair of the Senate Committee on Elections, Election Process Reform and Ethics and a former county elections clerk, said the widely criticized investigation initiated by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos also threatens to undermine their own party.
“Mr. Gableman is coming to my county and I will attend that meeting along with my concealed carry permit to be perfectly honest because it keeps jazzing up the people who think they know what they’re talking about, and they don’t,” Bernier, R-Chippewa Falls, said during a panel discussion at the Capitol assailing efforts to “delegitimize” the election and the civil servants who carried it out.
A small percentage of voters and witnesses made mistakes on their absentee ballot certificates in 2020. Here are some examples of the kinds of errors that were either allowed or corrected by the clerk in order to permit the ballot to be counted.
“I think my advice would be to have Mr. Gableman wrap up sooner rather than later, because the longer we keep this up … the more harm we’re going to do for Republicans,” Bernier added.
Other participants in the discussion included Bob Bauer, who served as White House counsel under former President Barack Obama, and Ben Ginsberg, who worked as campaign counsel for several high-profile GOP campaigns including former President George W. Bush and Mitt Romney. Bauer and Ginsberg earlier this year created the Election Official Legal Defense Network, which provides legal assistance and advice to election officials facing challenges or threats.
Much of the panel’s discussion focused on how ongoing audits and investigations into the 2020 election, paired with unfounded claims of fraud by former President Donald Trump and many of his allies, have led to harassment and threats directed at local and state election officials.
“Wisconsin has found itself really in the middle of a harmful and disturbing national trend that involves the intimidation of election officials — the people who are supposed to call balls and strikes in our elections,” Ginsberg said.
Ginsberg
Reuters reported last week that an article on Gateway Pundit, the far-right website known for spreading hoaxes, alleging “thousands of fake votes” had been discovered in Madison resulted in angry calls and death threats against Madison City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl.
Witzel-Behl is among 25 election officials who have been targeted by more than 100 threats arising out of the Gateway Pundit post, Reuters reported. Messages to at least five of the officials, including Witzel-Behl, were deemed serious enough to report to law enforcement.
A recount and court decisions have affirmed that President Joe Biden defeated Trump in Wisconsin by almost 21,000 votes. Reviews of the election by the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau and the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty found no evidence of widespread fraud. Four voters out of roughly 3 million who cast ballots have been charged with fraud.
Gableman, who was hired by Vos earlier this year to conduct the probe into how the election was conducted, falsely asserted at a rally last year that the 2020 election was stolen, though he has also said he has no intention as special counsel of overturning the election’s results.
Vos, R-Rochester, has allocated $676,000 in taxpayer funds to Gableman’s review and earlier this year said the investigation, which was originally planned to be finished by the end of October, would likely carry over into next year.
“The easiest way to wrap up Special Counsel Gableman’s investigation is to get the Democrats to cooperate,” Vos said in a statement Monday. “Instead, invoking McCarthyism has been their only motive, trying to discredit the investigation rather than finding ways to improve the system, and prevent fraud going forward.”
“I’m as scared and concerned as I’ve ever been in my entire career about the state of American democracy,” said David Becker, executive director and founder of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, at a briefing on growing threats to election professionals in Wisconsin.
Slow-going probe
The former justice’s probe has been slowed by multiple court battles over Gableman’s efforts to hold private meetings with local elections officials and state elections commission administrator Meagan Wolfe.
A hearing has been scheduled for Dec. 23 on Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul’s request for a restraining order against Gableman’s subpoena seeking a meeting with Wolfe. Last week, a Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge scheduled a hearing for Jan. 21 on Gableman’s request that the Waukesha County sheriff compel the mayors of Madison and Green Bay to meet with him or face jail time.
Officials have balked at the request, although Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway has said she is open to testifying publicly about the city’s handling of last year’s election.
Gableman’s investigation has largely focused on private election grants from the Chicago-based Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), funded by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, that Republicans say were used to unfairly increase turnout in the Democratic strongholds of Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Kenosha and Racine.
Court rulings have found nothing illegal about the more than $10 million in grants CTCL distributed to about 214 municipalities in 39 of Wisconsin’s 70 counties, including many in areas solidly won by former President Donald Trump. Nor did CTCL turn down grant requests from any of the Wisconsin municipalities that made them.
Gableman said last month he planned to look into the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s decision last year to waive the state’s requirement to send special voting deputies to nursing homes. The commission voted in March 2020 to tell clerks they need not send poll workers into nursing homes to assist with absentee voting after many were turned away due to the pandemic.
Bauer
‘Dealing with facts’
Bernier, who has not joined some Republicans who have called for several members of the elections commission and Wolfe to resign, said more can be done to better administer elections in the state.
“The fact of the matter is that we’re to a point of dealing with facts and not fiction. These made-up things that people do to jazz up the base is just despicable, and I don’t think any elected legislator should ever play that game,” Bernier said.
Bernier said one bill she is drafting would add a seventh, nonpartisan seat to the six-member elections commission. One of the challenges the commission faced last year came in the form of split 3-3 votes on several issues, which resulted in a lack of guidance to local election officials.
GALLERY: Local elections bring in voters
West Baraboo resident Kathy Gray signs her name in the poll book as her husband, Frank, waits in line Tuesday morning at Village Hall.
West Baraboo resident Ron Rupert signs in to vote Tuesday morning at village hall.
West Baraboo resident Melinda Zufall feeds her ballot into a voting machine Tuesday morning at village hall.
West Baraboo residents Ron Rupert and Melinda Zufall fill out their ballots Tuesday morning at village hall.
Mikka Roessler fills out a ballot Tuesday at the Baraboo Civic Center.
Baraboo voter Ryan Ramnarace signs an electronic poll book Tuesday at the Civic Center before collecting a ballot.
Bill Armstrong, Baraboo, inserts a completed ballot into the counter Tuesday at Baraboo Civic Center.
Election Chief Inspector Pam Jones processes absentee ballots Tuesday at Portage City Hall.
Election workers routinely wipe down and sanitize the ballot machine and the individual voting station throughout the day Tuesday during the spring primary election at Portage City Hall.
Portage City Clerk Marie Moe talks about absentee ballot processing to election workers Tuesday at City Hall.
Erica Helwig receives ballot instructions Oct. 21 at the Portage Municipal Building. Helwig, 21, cast her first vote in a presidential election through in-person early voting because she said it’s a safer option than standing in line on Election Day during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Erica Helwig fills out her ballot Oct. 21 at the Portage Municipal Building. Helwig, 21, decided to cast her first vote in a presidential election through in-person early voting because she said it’s a safer option than standing in line on Election Day, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Poll worker Matigan O’Leary sits outside Portage City Hall to screen voters for COVID-19 symptoms prior to entering the building to vote in the Aug. 11 primary election. Plexiglass partitions were placed between voters and poll workers and voters were given hand sanitizer upon entering the polling place.
Poll worker Sue Barton feeds an absentee ballot into a machine Aug. 11 at Portage City Hall during Wisconsin’s partisan primary election.
Springvale Clerk Becky Gutzman signs in before dropping off town ballots April 13 at the Columbia County Administrative Building.
Patti Hauser-Kassner, of Lewiston, Randolph Clerk Maxine DeYoung, Lewiston Clerk Kurt Kassner and Hampden Clerk Diane Guenther wait with ballot bags while spaced apart April 13 in the lobby of the Columbia County Administrative Building.
Poll worker Matt Foster wipes down polling stations during the spring election April 7 in the basement of Portage city hall.
Becky Ness, deputy clerk for the city of Portage, explains the absentee ballot process to a voter days before the April election from behind a sheet of plastic at the Portage Municipal Building. Organizers also put curtains of plastic in front of poll workers during the election to prevent possible transmission of COVID-19.
Baraboo City Clerk Brenda Zeman, left, and poll worker Ann Adkins count absentee ballots Tuesday afternoon at the civic center in Baraboo.
Gerald Cote signs a poll book Tuesday at the Baraboo Civic Center.
Election Day 2020 in West Baraboo
Election Day 2020 in Baraboo
Election Day 2020 in West Baraboo
West Baraboo residents stand in land before preparing and casting their ballots in the Nov. 3 election.
Election Day 2020 in Baraboo
