Federal agents have been interviewing current and former election officials in Milwaukee about the 2020 presidential election, intensifying a nationwide review of voting in swing states that President Donald Trump lost six years ago.
The FBI's Milwaukee field office has visited the homes of former election officials in recent weeks and is planning to interview police officers who worked on election night, people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post. Agents have also spoken with the deputy administrator of Wisconsin's elections commission and the director of Milwaukee's elections commission.
Officials are watching closely to see whether agents will attempt to seize absentee ballots from the 2020 election, as the FBI did in January in Fulton County, Georgia, and whether it has obtained election data from Maricopa County, Arizona. The Justice Department has also sought 2024 ballots from Wayne County, Michigan.
A seizure in Milwaukee would raise particular concerns. Under Wisconsin state law, absentee ballots in Milwaukee carry tracking numbers that, when cross-referenced with ballot logbooks, could allow investigators — or the public — to identify how individual voters cast their ballots.
“Our secret ballot is secret for a reason,” Ann Jacobs, the Democratic chair of the state’s bipartisan elections commission, told the Post. “It’s sacrosanct. It is at the heart of our American democracy, and those people who demand to know how everyone voted are violating those core tenets of what it means to vote as an American.”
Kevin Kennedy, a former nonpartisan chief election official in Wisconsin, warned that if the ballots reached the FBI, the information could leak. "You're going to see things like, 'Here are the Biden voters in your neighborhood,'" he said. “The bottom line is the potential for mischief is there, and we have seen in this age of social media that it will happen.”
In interviews, agents have asked former officials about two debunked conspiracy theories: a flash drive briefly left behind in a vote tabulator on election night — an incident witnessed by observers from both parties and confirmed in a subsequent recount — and an unsubstantiated claim that ballots were printed for Joe Biden in a secret back room of an election office.
Recounts, court rulings and independent reviews have all confirmed that Biden legitimately won Wisconsin in 2020. The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.