Jay Heck, Wisconsin Examiner

Back in 2015, the majority (then and now) Republican state Legislature, together with then-Republican Gov. Scott Walker, engineered the destruction of the effective and nationally heralded non-partisan Government Accountability Board (GAB). The GAB had been established with near unanimous bipartisan support in 2007 in the wake of the infamous Legislative Caucus Scandal of 2001-2002 which resulted in the criminal prosecution and removal from office of five of the top legislative leaders of both political parties. Republicans sought to replace the GAB with a more pliable and partisan entity that they hoped would provide them with greater partisan advantage in future elections.

The result was the establishment of the partisan-appointed WEC which was devised and set up with only Republican input and support — with no buy-in or even consultation with nonpartisan organizations like Common Cause Wisconsin and without any bipartisan legislative support. In 2019, Republican legislators unanimously voted to install the current WEC Administrator, Meagan Wolfe, replacing Mike Haas, who had held the position since 2015.

Wolfe has, by any objective measure, performed her role as administrator effectively, fairly and with a high level of professional and personal integrity and in a decidedly nonpartisan manner. And yet, because some far-right Republican conspiracy theorists and election deniers were, and remain, upset over the narrow but incontrovertible loss by Donald Trump in Wisconsin by some 20,500 votes to Joe Biden in 2020, Wolfe became and continues to be the scapegoat and target for their baseless and unhinged charges.

Every such allegation has been disproven and discredited in the courts, by numerous bipartisan, nonpartisan and even partisan GOP investigations and inquiries as well as by vote canvasses and recounts. In every case, Biden defeated Trump in Wisconsin fairly and accurately.

And yet, the election deniers spurred on by Trump and the likes of “Pillow Man” Mike Lindell and discredited former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman (fired by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) last year after wasting more than $2 million in taxpayer funds vainly searching for election “fraud” in 2020) maintain an almost mystical hold over the Republican leadership in the Wisconsin Legislature. That includes its current leaders who know better — Vos, State Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg), Senate President Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield) and others. All have continued to call for the removal of the capable Meagan Wolfe, who is completely without any culpability or blame for Trump losing Wisconsin. And all of them know that.

As administrator, Wolfe does not make any policy or operational decisions for the WEC. She simply executes the decisions and the will of the six appointed WEC commissioners. The administrator has no authority or vote on the commission to determine the actions taken by the WEC. Every decision made by the WEC is based on a majority vote of the commissioners, as was determined when the WEC was established. Wolfe serves at the pleasure of the WEC commissioners.

At the end of June, the three Republican-appointed WEC Commissioners, Chair Don Millis, Robert Spindell and Marge Bostelman, voted to reappoint Wolfe to another term as administrator when her current term expired on June 30. The three Democratic-appointed WEC Commissioners, Ann Jacobs, Mark Thomsen and Joe Czarnezki, all abstained from voting. The 3-0 vote was not sufficient (4 votes are required) to forward the Wolfe reappointment to the state Senate for confirmation where LeMahieu and Kapenga said she would be voted down and ousted.

Because of this unanticipated development, the matter is temporarily on hold. The courts may determine what happens next.

For the moment, at least, Wolfe will continue in her role as administrator. , As we draw ever closer to the beginning of the critical 2024 elections in Wisconsin it becomes more important than ever that the WEC have the firm, steady, able and experienced leadership at the helm that Wolfe has provided for the past nearly four years.

Wisconsin voters of all political views and stripes would be best served by Meagan Wolfe continuing in her current role. The integrity of the 2024 election and its adherence to the law and to fairness and democracy just might depend on it.

Wisconsin Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner on Facebook and Twitter.

On July 20, Republican Wisconsin state legislators on the Joint Committee for the Review of Administrative Rules (JCRAR), at the behest of Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and State Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg), voted to suspend an emergency rule regarding common sense clerk corrections for small omissions on absentee ballot witness certificates. While this action should have no substantive effect on election administration for now-existing Wisconsin Election Commission guidance makes clear this correction process is permissible, it is yet another example of the many right-wing attacks on the ability of Wisconsinites to be able to vote and on the dedicated election clerks throughout the state who serve we, the voters.

In 2020, Republican and Democratic members of the Republican-created Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) voted unanimously, 6-0, to allow election clerks to make simple corrections to incomplete addresses of witnesses signing the outside envelopes of absentee ballots.

Clerks could not correct the voter’s information or do anything that would alter the intention or integrity of the ballot. But it made perfect sense that a clerk should be able to add the street address number if it was missing or the zip code to the witness’ address. And no one in Wisconsin disagreed until after the November 2020 election in Wisconsin. Then, former President Donald Trump and his allies launched an all-out attack on absentee votes and voters in Wisconsin and elsewhere, falsely claiming “fraud,” “ballot harvesting” and lodging other completely untrue, baseless, made-up charges with no proof, evidence or legal standing.

And because of that cowardly fear of a defeated former president, Wisconsin Republican legislative leaders and their lackeys on the rules committee moved last week to prohibit common sense absentee ballot envelope corrections or curing, as it called. This is insanity.

Why would the majority political party in the Wisconsin Legislature (due to their extreme partisan gerrymandering of state legislative districts) vote to make it more difficult for Wisconsinites to be able to vote? Or even not to have perfectly legitimate absentee ballots counted?

The answer is clear by now. Republican legislators and their conservative allies on the Wisconsin Supreme Court fear the voters, they fear democracy and they fear fair and free elections because they are still under the spell and control of Trump — who lost the 2020 election by a whopping 8 million popular votes, a decisive 306-232 Electoral College vote and Wisconsin by more than 20,500 votes. That result was confirmed by a post-election canvass, a recount and by every court, federal and state, that was brought in to rule on the outcome.

Trump, nearly two years after the fact, still will not accept his defeat and has threatened to endorse Vos’ conspiracy theorist Republican primary opponent this August if Vos doesn’t suppress voters and won’t join Trump in trying to overturn the 2020 election.

And LeMahieu, who knows better, apparently doesn’t have the backbone to stand up to Trump.

The rules committee action follows the July 8 hyper-partisan 4-3 decision by conservatives on the Wisconsin Supreme Court to prohibit the use of safe, secure voter ballot drop boxes, which have long been legal and utilized in Wisconsin as a means of safely and securely delivering absentee ballots to election clerks. Because of delays and the uncertainty of the U.S. Mail and due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of secure voter drop boxes made perfect sense.

Again, Republican and Democratic election commissioners voted unanimously to accept the widespread use of the drop boxes in 2020, and there were more than 500 in use throughout 66 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties. There was not a single incident or instance of a drop box being broken into, “stuffed” with “illegal” or illegitimate ballots or any problem with their use.

It was only after Trump and his subordinates like Rudy Guiliani and Sydney Powell concocted the post-election “Big Steal” lie that voter drop boxes suddenly became targets. Aided in Wisconsin by Trump apologists like Janel Brandtjen, Michael Gableman, Timothy Ramthun and goaded on by Minnesota’s “Pillow Man” Mike Lindell, voter drop boxes suddenly became evil and needed to be banned.

That wasn’t the only damage the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s conservative majority inflicted on voters with their misguided July 8 decision. They also made it much more difficult for voters, specifically voters with disabilities and elderly voters, to be able to return completed absentee ballots to their election clerks. They ruled that voters could not have a friend, neighbor or family member return the ballot for them. That constituted “ballot harvesting” and “voter fraud” in the view of conservatives and, apparently, a majority of the Republican Party. This makes no sense at all unless the goal is to suppress the vote in Wisconsin.

Voter suppression is precisely what all of this is about. It began in 2011, when the Republican-controlled Legislature and then-Republican Gov. Scott Walker rammed through the most extreme and restrictive voter photo ID law in the nation — surpassing states like Mississippi, Georgia and South Carolina with a long history of suppressing votes. And it has continued through the 2021-22 Wisconsin legislative session with the introduction of more than two dozen measures to make voting more difficult or to further restrict voting safely by absentee ballot or in-person early voting. Fortunately, the current governor, Tony Evers, has vetoed every one of these anti-voting, anti-American hyper-partisan proposals. But he is all that stands between them and their being enacted into law in the near future.

Republicans appear to have cynically calculated that these “ballot security” measures to suppress the vote may be harmful to some of their own voters, but that it will block more Wisconsinites who might vote for their political opponents. Republicans have targeted voters who reside in urban areas like Milwaukee, Madison, Racine and Green Bay. They have also homed in on college and university students by making it more difficult for that population to vote, even with a college-issued photo ID, than almost anywhere else in the nation.

Most cruelly, Republicans have targeted Wisconsinites with disabilities, the elderly and the poor who must rely on public transportation and don’t have or cannot easily obtain the required photo ID needed to vote in Wisconsin.

Republicans have not always behaved like this in Wisconsin. The question now is when, or even if, they will come to their senses and abandon this vicious assault on the very essence of our being as Americans, a promise that has made this state and this nation a beacon of freedom and hope in the world: our 233-year-old commitment to free and fair elections.

Wisconsin Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner on Facebook and Twitter.

NOW WATCH: $100 Million Sought in Alex Jones' Defamation Trial from Sandy Hook families

$100 Million Sought in Alex Jones' Defamation Trial from Sandy Hook familieswww.youtube.com

Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling's recommendation of criminal charges against five Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) officials — stemming from sensationalized allegations about “possible" voting fraud in a Racine County nursing home and “possible" widespread, statewide fraud in the 2020 elections — are little more than a baseless, hyper-partisan attack on legal and approved election procedures made by a highly partisan elected official. The charges only serve to undermine public trust in our election system if they are not repudiated.

Further, the Republican politicians who have rushed to judgment and embraced these questionable allegations and called for resignations of WEC staff and commissioners are highly irresponsible. Their inflammatory statements only serve to further sow seeds of distrust in democracy and add fuel to the fire of the conspiracy theories that continue to permeate the state and the nation about the results of the 2020 election.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester), state Senate President Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield), state Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine) and others prematurely called for the resignation of WEC Administrator Meagan Wolfe, almost simultaneously, with the announcement by Sheriff Schmaling of his unproven allegations. That is unfair and irresponsible in the extreme. Further, Schmaling has made allegations of wrongdoing but offered little or no evidence that the voting “irregularities" were either illegal or substantiated.

Schmaling alleged that the WEC violated Wisconsin election law by facilitating “illegal" voting in March of 2020 when all six commissioners — three Republican appointees and 3 Democrats — voted unanimously not to send special voting deputies into nursing homes to assist residents with voting because of an alarming spike in COVID-19 infections in Racine County and elsewhere.

Vos' own partisan appointment to the WEC, former Republican state Rep. Dean Knudson expressed fierce disagreement with the actions of Schmaling and the call by Vos and other GOP politicians for Wolfe and WEC commissioners to resign.

“Certain public figures in Wisconsin are under intense pressure to find someone to be the fall guy for Trump's loss in 2020 in Wisconsin," Commissioner Knudson told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “It is the equivalent of losing the playoff football game and six months later still complaining about the bad call by the referee and insisting that they never officiate a game again."

“There are a lot of individuals that are under pressure to try to find some explanation other than the obvious one," Knudson added. Asked what that obvious explanation was, Kundson said, “That Biden got more votes in Wisconsin than Trump did."

The Racine County allegations come in the wake of continuing controversy and confusion about an investigation into the 2020 election authorized by Vos in August. Vos named former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman to try to discover non-existent “fraud" in Wisconsin during the 2020 election. Gableman has said he believes Donald Trump defeated President Joe Biden in Wisconsin last year, even though two recounts and numerous court decisions confirmed a Biden victory by more than 20,000 votes. Gableman has publicly admitted he knows very little about how elections are or should be conducted in Wisconsin and his legal authority to investigate and to subpoena county election clerks has been called into question.

As if the highly questionable allegations in Racine by Schmaling, a Trump supporter, and the botched Gableman effort weren't sufficient to appease former President Donald Trump and his supporters, the Wisconsin Legislative Audit Bureau almost two weeks ago issued its long-anticipated review of the 2020 election that had been authorized by state legislative Republicans. State Sen. Robert Cowles (R-Allouez), who co-chairs the Legislature's Audit Committee, said he hopes the report leads to bipartisan fixes for the issues the audit identified, but that the state's elections, overall, are “safe and secure."

Even so, that report has fueled GOP calls for wholesale changes to the WEC, which was created solely by Republican votes in the Wisconsin Legislature in 2015. And last week, Trump-supporting Republicans in the state Senate, unhappy that the LAB report didn't uncover and detail the non-existent “fraud" in 2020 that they are still desperately and fruitlessly seeking, announced plans to open yet another fishing expedition looking yet again into the 2020 election, to be led by state Sen. Kathleen Bernier (R-Chippewa Falls). Apparently, there is no limit to how far Trump sycophants will go to pursue a different outcome to the 2020 presidential election results in Wisconsin, no matter how many times they fall short of changing it.

It is one thing to look at and carefully examine the election procedures that were in place in Wisconsin during a unique and unprecedented public health crisis that led to several actions that were out of the ordinary compared to a “normal" election year, pre-COVID. There is always room for improvement and adjustments to election administration and security. Such reviews occur after every election. Election officials, clerks and poll workers performed well under the unique circumstances of these elections, considered to be the most secure and successfully administered elections in recent history.

But the unproven Racine County allegations, the highly questionable Gableman kangaroo court inquest and now, the state Senate “investigation" are nothing more than hyper-partisan political stunts that waste taxpayer dollars and corrosively undermine the legitimate public trust and confidence that Wisconsinites have had and should continue to have in the conduct of elections in the state — all in order to appeal to the vanity of a former president who decisively lost the election in Wisconsin and in the nation — but who refuses to accept the result.

This unseemly and destructive partisan circus needs to end now.

Wisconsin Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner on Facebook and Twitter.