Wisconsin election auditor meeting with a convicted fraudster, Mike Lindell and other ‘oddballs’: report

The former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice overseeing Republicans' review of the 2020 vote has been meeting with "oddballs" as part of his blunder-plagued audit.

"Michael Gableman met with a host of election conspiracy theorists this fall as part of his taxpayer-funded review of the 2020 presidential contest for Assembly Republicans," the Milwaukee Journal Sentinelreports. "Among those Gableman met with were Peter Bernegger, a felon convicted of fraud who has been using the open records law to gather images of Wisconsin ballots, according to Nate Cain, a West Virginia consultant who has assisted Gableman."

In October, Gableman admitted he had no idea how elections are conducted.

The newspaper reported, "Gableman and his team last month also met with Shiva Ayyadurai, who has contended without evidence that the votes were taken away from Donald Trump based on a science fiction novel; Mike Lindell, the MyPillow executive who has spent a year making over-the-top false claims that the election was hacked by the Chinese; and Douglas Frank, the chairman of the math and science department at an Ohio school who has falsely asserted that votes in Michigan were manipulated with a mathematical 'key.'"

Barry Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the "oddballs" he is meeting with "are all election skeptics who have bought into the big lie."

There are also concerns about Gableman's staffing decisions.

"Assembly Republicans hired Gableman at taxpayer expense this summer to conduct his own review of the election," the newspaper noted. "Among those Gableman has retained to assist him is Cain, who last year told a conservative YouTube host that a civil war could start if the election was not audited. He also wrongly claimed it was statistically impossible for the ballots that were counted the latest to go so heavily to Joe Biden."

Assembly Republicans gave Gableman $676,000 to conduct his review.

Read the full report.