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      Wisconsin Republicans vote to fire top election official as denialists tighten grip

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      Wisconsin’s top elections official suffered another blow on Thursday when the Republican-controlled state senate voted to fire her by a party line vote of 22 to 11. Meagan Wolfe’s status as elections administrator will now likely be determined in court.Legal experts and the Wisconsin attorney general have disputed the move by Republican senators to remove Wolfe, a respected and accomplished non-partisan leader. Her removal would affect the administration of elections in 2024 and illustrates the increasingly wide reach of election deniers and rightwing conspiracy theorists in Wisconsin politics.Before she became a lightning rod for conspiracy theories and criticism surrounding the 2020 election, Wolfe enjoyed wide support from Republicans in the state legislature. Appointed to head the Wisconsin elections commission in 2018, she was confirmed by a unanimous vote in the state senate in 2019.When the Covid-19 virus pummeled Wisconsin, disrupting elections, an attorney representing the Republican assembly speaker, Robin Vos, and the former senate majority leader Scott Fitzgerald wrote in a letter that they “wholeheartedly support” many protocols outlined by the statewide commission.Crucially, Wolfe, who provides expertise and recommendations to the commission, serves at their direction – and not the other way around.One pandemic-era policy that has come under fire by Republicans, creating temporary adjustments to nursing home voting, was issued by a unanimous vote of the three Democratic and three Republican commissioners.“Meagan is being blamed for the decisions of her commission,” said Claire Woodall-Vogg, executive director of Milwaukee’s election commission. “It’s really unfortunate that she’s being used as the scapegoat when she was not the person responsible for making any decisions that they’re punishing her for.”It was only after the 2020 election, which Donald Trump lost to president Joe Biden by just over 20,000 votes in Wisconsin, that complaints about the nonpartisan administrator began to circulate. Groups and individuals that spread falsehoods about widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election have obsessed over Wolfe, publishing missives in Gateway Pundit, a site that peddles misinformation, and earning a warning from state capitol police for allegedly stalking her.State lawmakers, largely focusing their criticisms on pandemic-related policies like the expanded use of ballot drop boxes and the guidance for nursing home voting, joined the chorus calling for Wolfe’s ouster.When Wolfe’s term ended in June, Democrats on the bipartisan commission blocked a vote to send a recommendation for her reappointment to the state senate, anticipating the senate would in turn vote to fire her. The commissioners relied on precedent from a 2022 Wisconsin supreme court ruling that found a Republican member of the state’s natural resources board who declined to put himself forward for reappointment in 2021 could not be removed from office.Still, Republicans moved forward with reappointment proceedings for Wolfe, holding a 29 August hearing where election deniers and conspiracy theorists from around the state gathered to air their grievances about Wisconsin elections. In a letter, the Democratic attorney general, Josh Kaul, wrote that the state senate had “no current authority to confirm or reject the appointment of a WEC administrator”, an opinion that was echoed by the legislature’s own nonpartisan attorneys.Jeff Smith, a Democratic state senator on the shared revenue, elections and consumer protection committee who abstained from a committee vote on Wolfe’s reappointment, said in a statement that the vote was “not properly before the Senate or its committees”, adding that he has “full confidence in Administrator Wolfe and the work that she has done for the people of Wisconsin”.Devin LeMahieu, the Republican state senate majority leader who voted against Wolfe’s reappointment, previously accused the administrator of “mishandling” the 2020 election. LeMahieu’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.During the floor session on Thursday, the Democratic senate minority leader, Melissa Agard, described the move to oust Wolfe as one of many “shameless continued attacks on our elections”.Democrats in the state senate objected to the vote repeatedly. Mark Spreitzer, a Democratic member of the senate’s shared revenue, elections and consumer protection committee, called the nomination “fake” and accused Republicans in the senate of indulging conspiracy theorists.Senators opposing the vote noted the wide-ranging implications of Wolfe’s disputed reappointment process.“Disenfranchisement was real,” said the Democratic state senator Lena Taylor, describing the long lines that plagued polling places in Milwaukee during the spring 2020 election. Taylor argued that the vote – which she described as a “sham process” – would delegitimate sincere elections concerns in favor of falsehoods and conspiracy theories.LeMahieu disputed Democrats’ opposition to the process, instead blaming Democrats on the elections commission for blocking the commission from advancing Wolfe’s nomination to the senate. The Thursday vote, LeMahieu said, “represents the lack of faith” in Wisconsin elections, sidestepping claims that the process would embolden conspiracy theorists.Elections officials in Wisconsin worry the ongoing proceedings will fuel more misinformation about elections and say their work will be negatively impacted if Wolfe leaves her position or is removed from office.“We’re already dealing with extra public records requests that are coming through in regards to elections,” said Kaci Lundgren, a Douglas county clerk. “Laws change all the time in regards to elections, so to have that experience and that knowledge gone, it would be disconcerting, it would be difficult. Frustrating.”Woodall-Vogg agreed, describing the possible vacancy as “a major blow”. The Milwaukee official added that a disruption in leadership would likely impact the staff of the elections commission, who provide technical assistance to clerks across the state. “I think what is most disappointing is that they’re bringing a nonpartisan election official and making her position very political.”Shortly after the vote Thursday, Kaul announced he had filed a lawsuit against Republican leaders, seeking to keep Wolfe in her job.“The story today is not what the senate has purported to do with its vote,” he said in a press release. “It’s that the senate has blatantly disregarded state law in order to put its full stamp of approval on the ongoing baseless attacks on our democracy.”Addressing reporters Thursday afternoon, Wolfe said she would remain in her position until a court said otherwise. She said Republicans sought to oust her because “I will not bend to political pressure”.“The senate’s vote today to remove me is not a referendum on the job I do, but rather a reaction to not achieving the political outcome they desire,” she said. “The political outcome they desired, I believe is to get rid of me. The reason they want to get rid of me for political purposes is because I will not bend to political pressure.”She also expressed some disbelief that many of the claims that her office had repeatedly debunked continued to circulate in front of the legislature and were relied on as a basis for trying to remove her.“It is sometimes hard to wrap my head around how we still are here,” she said.
      Join us for a live event on 26 September in Chicago, Democracy and Distrust: Overcoming threats to the 2024 election. More

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      What Republicans are doing to Wisconsin is a warning sign to all Americans | Andrew Gawthorpe

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      If you need a reminder that the Republican party’s problem with democracy extends beyond the antics of Donald Trump, look no further than Wisconsin. A battle is under way there which began before the January 6 insurrection was even a twinkle in Trump’s eye, and which will do much to determine the future of democracy in America whether Trump ultimately answers for his crimes or not. It’s no exaggeration to say that Wisconsin and its state capitol, Madison, are now the front line of the battle to save American democracy.In 2011, Republicans gerrymandered Wisconsin’s state legislature so badly that the party can win supermajorities despite losing the popular vote, as it did in 2018. Voters have fought back, and earlier this year they elected Janet Protasiewicz to the state supreme court, ushering in a new liberal majority which looked poised to finally overturn the gerrymander and bring democratic regime change to Madison.But Wisconsin Republicans have no intention of seeing their undeserved power slip away. They’re proposing to impeach Protasiewicz on spurious charges before she has ruled on a single case, paralyzing the court and leaving the gerrymander intact.When Trump argued that he was the real winner of the election because the votes of people living in Democratic-leaning urban areas were somehow fraudulent and should not count, he was repeating arguments that Wisconsin Republicans had already honed. The speaker of the state assembly, Robin Vos, has explained that the state’s gerrymander is fair because “if you took Madison and Milwaukee out of the state election formula, we would have a clear majority”. Because Madison and Milwaukee are the parts of the state with the largest concentration of non-white voters, Vos has revealed what the Wisconsin gerrymander is really about: race.There is a long history in the United States of skewed electoral systems being used to suppress the voices of minority voters, and Wisconsin’s is only the latest example. Like their predecessors in other states, Wisconsin Republicans have been remarkably frank about their intention of ensuring that minorities stay in their place. When Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tony Evers powered to victory in 2018 with massive wins in Madison and Milwaukee, the Republican legislature used a lame-duck session to strip him of much of his power. Not content with that, Evers’ Republican opponent in 2022, Tim Michels, promised that if he was elected then Republicans in Wisconsin “will never lose another election”.The latest target of this raw, racist power politics is the Wisconsin’s electorate new choice for the state supreme court. Protasiewicz won by more than 10% on record turnout, which was spurred by widespread voter dissatisfaction with the fruits of Republican rule. In particular, voters oppose the state’s harsh anti-abortion law, which makes abortion illegal unless it is necessary to save the life of the mother, with no exceptions for other medical problems or rape. A majority of Wisconsinites wanted a liberal state supreme court which would overturn that law, and they voted accordingly.By linking abortion rights to questions of democracy, Protasiewicz came up with a playbook that can be used across America to push back against attacks on basic constitutional rights, be they in the doctor’s office or the voting booth. That’s why Republicans are so scared of her and desperate to find a way to stop her from succeeding.Republicans’ plan to impeach Protasiewicz is nakedly hypocritical: They argue that Protasiewicz, who received Democratic campaign donations, cannot give unbiased rulings in gerrymandering cases – despite the fact that numerous other Wisconsin state supreme court justices, including Republicans, have also received party donations and ruled on cases with political implications.Their plan also bends democratic norms, in this case by impeaching Protasiewicz and then simply leaving her in limbo, legally unable to hear cases. Because the plan wouldn’t actually formally kick her from office, it denies the state’s Democratic governor the opportunity to replace her with another liberal. Democrats are fighting back, but their chances of success hinge on their ability to convince Republicans in the gerrymandered assembly to do the right thing.As Wisconsin goes, so goes America. Although sometimes referred to as a “moderate” state, it is more accurate to view Wisconsin as one very conservative state and one very liberal state jammed together. The fact that it is narrowly divided between the two parties is precisely why Republicans have resorted to constitutional and political skullduggery to give themselves an unfair advantage.The same is true of many other states, and indeed of America as a whole. What happens in Wisconsin is a crucial test case of whether the most brazen attempts to turn competitive elections into uncompetitive one-party control will fly.This challenge will remain whether Trump goes to jail or not. Wisconsin Republicans were some of the most fervent backers of Trump’s own undemocratic actions, but they needed no lessons from him in how to suppress the will of the people. The Republican party’s belief in its own god-given right to rule – and that of its white, rural electorate – found its most dangerous expression in Trump’s attempt to overthrow the 2020 election, but it long predated him. It will outlive him unless it is chastened by accountability and defeat at every turn. All eyes are now on Wisconsin and Janet Protasiewicz to see if it will be. Good luck, your honor.
      Andrew Gawthorpe is a historian of the United States at Leiden University. He hosts a podcast called America Explained and writes a newsletter of the same name More

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      Wisconsin voters caught in the middle as misinformation takes on education

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      In Wisconsin, two groups of activists are touring the state spreading seemingly opposing information about the state’s election system. One of them, led by a former Republican state senator, aims to restore trust in the administration and outcomes of elections, while the other rejects the results of the 2020 election and promotes debunked claims about widespread voter fraud in the state.Former state senator Kathy Bernier’s efforts form part of a multi-state push by the non-partisan group Keep Our Republic to educate the public about elections and democracy issues “before it is too late”, according to the organization’s website.The other coalition of activists, called North of 29 – a reference to Highway 29, which cuts a line across the state roughly between Green Bay and Minneapolis – spreads a dire message about elections: they aren’t secure, fraud is rampant, and the only way to ensure correct election results is to return to hand-counting ballots.It is difficult to ascertain the relative impacts of Bernier’s group, which debunks elections falsehoods, and North of 29, which spreads them. But confusion about the behind-the-scenes of elections and an appetite for explanations in Wisconsin, a swing state known for delivering razor-thin margins during statewide races, has created an environment for both groups to draw in voters.Groups similar to North of 29 appear to be active across the country. Efforts to spread unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud and promote a return to counting ballots by hand, driven largely by volunteers and local rightwing political groups, are aided by prominent figures such as the MyPillow founder, Mike Lindell. In Shasta county, California, and more recently, Spalding county, Georgia, the spread of conspiracy theories resulted in local officials opting to hand-count ballots.Hannah Fried, the executive director of All Voting is Local, a voting rights advocacy group, said she is concerned about the trend. “Machine tabulation has become the gold standard,” said Fried. “What we don’t want to see is localities trying to implement hand-counting before machine tabulation, based on conspiracy theories.”The available research, including a 2018 study focusing on voting in Wisconsin, overwhelmingly shows voting machines tally votes much faster and more accurately than a human could by hand.The groups pushing to reinstate hand-counting in Wisconsin and elsewhere formed in the wake of the 2020 election. Stephanie Forrer-Harbridge, who founded North of 29 in 2020, said the idea came to her after she and her husband watched in disbelief as the election results came in on TV, with Trump losing Wisconsin. “We were like, ‘What’s going on?’” she said.After election day, she watched with interest as figures like Lindell and Douglas Frank, a chemist and former math teacher, took Trump’s unfounded allegations that the election was stolen and claimed to substantiate them using data. One of Frank’s hallmark findings suggests that similar voter registration patterns in counties across Michigan proved the existence of an “algorithm” used to steal the election. Frank applies this assertion, which PolitiFact has debunked in depth, to states across the country.Frank’s findings confirmed Forrer-Harbridge’s suspicion that something nefarious had gone on during the 2020 election, and inspired her to act. “I reached out to Dr Frank, and I’m like, ‘We need help,’” she said.Frank agreed to come to Wisconsin to speak with residents who had questions about the results of the 2020 election, and election integrity generally. “I literally cried when he said he’d come,” Forrer-Harbridge said.The results of the 2020 election in Wisconsin have been affirmed repeatedly by recounts, investigations and surveys, including a review by a conservative group that called for a revision of certain pandemic-era policies implemented by the Wisconsin Elections Commission, but found no evidence of widespread fraud. But misinformation and claims that Wisconsin’s elections are compromised and vulnerable to massive fraud have continued to circulate, largely driven by politicians and prominent media figures repeating the false claims.Mike Wagner, a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin and a misinformation researcher, attributes the persistence of elections-related falsehoods to political polarization and the willingness of bad-faith actors to endorse a lie for political gain. “If you trust someone and think they should be the leader of the free world and they tell you, ‘you were lied to and this [election] was stolen,’ it’s not surprising that some people believe that,” Wagner said.Since 2020, Frank has crisscrossed the country speaking about his theory of election fraud and his prescriptions to curb it, visiting Wisconsin regularly, where he speaks at town hall-style events in communities around the state. One event in Barron county, in the north-west of the state, drew hundreds of attendees on 28 July.Invites to the event, billed as a second amendment rally, were shared online by groups including the Barron county Republican party. Dave Graf, a resident of Barron county, noticed one flyer for the event advertised a lineup of unfamiliar speakers, including Frank. (Also featured: “new age entertainment”, “free beer”, and “hourly drawings for firearms”.)Graf was interested.After serving for 20 years in the US military as a mental health counselor, Graf has spent the first years of his retirement informally tracking the rise of extremism in his community. He had long worried that “white nationalism, xenophobic nationalism, was something that was essentially going unchecked in the military” and was dismayed to find that an ocean away, friends from his home town were beginning to embrace a similar worldview.Most people at the event, which he and other attendees estimated drew more than 500 people, seemed more interested in the gun raffle than the lineup of speakers. But one point, raised by Frank, concerned him.Frank suggests that supporters canvass the area, going door to door to see if their voter data checks out in person, Graf said. “We’re an open-carry, second amendment-loving place where this rough-looking group of people may be knocking on doors and intimidating folks.”Forrer-Harbridge confirmed that North of 29 trains canvassers to search for election fraud, but vehemently denied that the efforts constituted voter intimidation. “We don’t care who you want to vote for,” said Forrer-Harbridge. “We want to make sure it counts, and that’s what our right is as citizens.”Forrer-Harbridge said she has trained “team leads” in more than 20 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties to knock doors in search of fraud.Door-to-door canvassing in search of voter fraud is not a new concept. One group, called US Election Integrity Plan, has been sued in a federal court in Colorado for allegedly violating the Voting Rights Act and the Ku Klux Klan Act by going “door-to-door around Colorado to intimidate voters.Frank and Lindell did not respond to requests for comment.When I asked Bernier, the Wisconsin leader of Keep Our Republic, whether she was concerned about groups like North of 29, she shrugged and said she didn’t pay them too much attention. “I try not to keep track of them because they are so irrelevant, in my mind,” she said.Instead, Bernier said she focuses on voters who have questions about the electoral process but aren’t invested in the idea that the 2020 election was rife with fraud.The goal, Bernier said, “is to educate the electorate on our electoral system and its checks and balances, to assure people that when the election results are in, they are factual and you can count on that”. Her plan involves traveling across the state over the next year, coordinating with municipal and county clerks to present the nitty-gritty, sometimes boring details of elections administration to demystify the process for voters.Before she was elected to the state assembly in 2010, Bernier served for a decade as the Chippewa county clerk – a role that includes administering elections in the county. Later, as a lawmaker, Bernier chaired numerous elections committees in the assembly and senate. Allegations of rampant voter fraud in the 2020 election rankled her, and she earned a reputation for speaking out against the Republican party on the issue.Bernier stressed the importance of demonstrating nonpartisanship to voters who may have supported Trump but aren’t sure where they land on claims of rampant voter fraud. She says her background as a conservative has helped her establish a rapport with some voters.Bernier’s not alone in her efforts. County clerks and municipal clerks – the people who make elections run – work year round to instill a sense of faith in the electoral process.Nevertheless, groups like North of 29 continue to promote misinformation and give platforms to the people actively spreading it. More

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      Wisconsin Elections Official Targeted in Partisan Clash Over Voting

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      Meagan Wolfe, the Wisconsin Elections Commission administrator since 2018, has been demonized by former President Donald J. Trump’s allies in the battleground state.Republicans in Wisconsin pushing to oust the state’s nonpartisan head of elections clashed on Tuesday with voting rights advocates and some local clerks during a rancorous public hearing in Madison, sowing further distrust about voting integrity.With their new supermajority in the State Senate, Republicans fought over the reappointment of Meagan Wolfe as the Wisconsin Elections Commission administrator.The agency’s head since 2018, Ms. Wolfe has become a steady target of right-wing attacks, fueled by former President Donald J. Trump’s grievances about his defeat in the battleground state in 2020. Many of them hinge on his falsehoods about election fraud and the use of electronic voting machines and ballot drop boxes.Ms. Wolfe did not attend the hearing, where a stream of critics told a Senate election oversight committee that she should be ousted. Among them was Michael J. Gableman, a conservative former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice whom Republicans tasked with leading a 14-month investigation into the 2020 election results in the state. The review, which cost taxpayers $1.1 million, found no evidence of significant fraud.“A majority of people in Wisconsin have doubts about the honesty of elections in this state,” he said at the hearing. “That’s disgraceful.”On Tuesday, Ms. Wolfe declined to comment through a spokesman for the elections commission, who shared a copy of a letter that she sent to legislators in June that had sought to dispel election misinformation.“I believe it is fair to say that no election in Wisconsin history has been as scrutinized, reviewed, investigated and reinvestigated as much as the November 2020 general election,” her letter said. “The outcome of all those 2020 probes produced essentially the same results: the identification of a relatively small number of suggestions for procedural improvements, with no findings of wrongdoing or significant fraud.”Meagan Wolfe, the administrator, did not attend the hearing, where a stream of critics told a Senate election oversight committee that she should be removed.Ruthie Hauge/Wisconsin State Journal, via Associated PressAt the hearing, Ms. Wolfe’s supporters described her as a model of competency who guided a network of state, county and local election officials through the pandemic and has done so in an impartial manner. They warned that her removal would result in chaos.“Considering what happened after the 2020 elections and since, we are in a world of crazy for next year,” said Lisa Tollefson, the clerk of Rock County, in the southern part of the state. “With the actions and accusations that have been made toward election officials, we are certainly seeing the highest turnover in county clerks and municipal clerks in our history.”Dan Knodl, a Republican who is the chairman of the Senate committee, challenged her “world of crazy” remark.“Are you predicting something, or you have information that something is on the horizon?” he said.Ms. Tollefson answered that the political climate was only likely to intensify in Wisconsin and pointed to the hard-fought election in April that flipped Wisconsin’s Supreme Court from conservative to liberal.Several times during Tuesday’s hearing, Democrats argued that the Legislature did not have the authority to vote on Ms. Wolfe’s reappointment, noting that state law requires her renomination to come from the commission.A June vote by the commission on whether to appoint her to another four-year term ended in an impasse, with three Democrats abstaining over concerns that Republicans would use their supermajority in the Senate to remove her. By doing nothing — declining to renominate or take any other action — the commission can effectively keep Ms. Wolfe in her current role under state law.Republicans have challenged the statute, and the issue is expected to end up being decided by the courts.Ann S. Jacobs, a Democratic commissioner, referred to the move by G.O.P. lawmakers to oust Ms. Wolfe as a “circus.”Mr. Knodl bristled at her language and said he was not about to abdicate oversight.“Whether it’s circuslike or not, that’s what we’ll do,” he said. “Thank you for attending the circus.”Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause in Wisconsin, a government watchdog group, said Ms. Wolfe’s removal would be a major blow to the state, which is likely to once again be a crucial battleground for the presidential race.“The vast majority of Wisconsin’s voters and citizens can and will lose confidence and trust in our elections,” he said. More

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      ‘In enemy territory’: first Republican debate descends on Democratic city

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      The Republican party faces an electability test on Wednesday when candidates including election deniers, climate deniers and anti-abortion extremists take the debate stage in a city that rebukes them and a state they cannot afford to lose.The first presidential primary debate will be held in Milwaukee, a racially diverse Democratic stronghold in Wisconsin, a battleground that could decide who wins the White House in 2024.Even without Donald Trump, who is skipping the primetime televised event, the juxtaposition between Republicans who have embraced his far-right agenda and their sceptical host city offers a preview of the party’s struggle to broaden its appeal.“This is a debate of bad ideas,” said Mandela Barnes, born and raised in Milwaukee and a former lieutenant governor of Wisconsin. “It’s going to be a bunch of Maga extremists showing up in this city because Wisconsin is a critical state every election year. But regardless of how they perform, the reality is they are choosing a losing strategy of extremism and showing how out of touch they are with the people of this country and specifically people here in the city of Milwaukee.”Republicans chose Milwaukee for the first debate and their national convention next year largely because of Wisconsin’s status as a swing state. Four of the past six presidential elections have been decided by less than one percentage point here, with Trump winning narrowly in 2016 before losing by a similar margin in 2020.In a measure of Wisconsin’s importance, Joe Biden travelled to Milwaukee last week to promote his efforts to create manufacturing jobs. On Sunday his campaign announced it was spending $25m to run ads in seven states, including Wisconsin, to counter Republicans as they debate.While Republicans have the edge in many rural areas, in Milwaukee, the state’s biggest city, the population of about 600,000 – around 40% African American, 40% white and 20% Latino – is heavily Democratic and has even had three socialist mayors. It was once known as the “machine shop of the world” but, like many cities in the industrial midwest, was hollowed out by factory closures and jobs losses in the 1980s and 1990s and is now embarked on a recovery, at least downtown.The city remains highly racially segregated and, in predominantly Black neighbourhoods on the north side, there are areas with cracked roads, overgrown grass and a patina of rust. An otherwise handsome row of houses with well-kept gardens can be punctuated by a derelict property with boarded-up windows.Angela Lang, founder and executive director of Bloc (Black Leaders Organising for Communities), works from an office within view of two big abandoned buildings in the 53206 zip code, which has the highest incarceration rate of Black men in the country. The organisation started in 2017 and works all year round to turn out voters. “Our team of ambassadors are basically canvassers on steroids,” she said.Lang said Republicans have a long history of using racist dog whistles about Milwaukee. “We’re the largest economic engine in the state yet we’re not treated that way and most folks’ conclusion is racism is a part of that. It’s jarring to have folks who otherwise insult Milwaukee in so many ways want to descend here. People are reading between the lines that this is going to be a battleground.“What happens in Milwaukee can determine the rest of the state and ultimately the importance of Wisconsin can influence the rest of the country. So to hear that now they’re showing up, folks see it’s transactional and a little bit disingenuous. I don’t think a lot of folks are welcoming them with open arms given their policies and their comments about Milwaukee.”Lang worries that next year’s convention could bring full Maga extremism to the city. “If this was like George Bush’s Republican party, I’d feel a little bit safer, but just to know how extreme the party has gotten and they haven’t denounced some of these far-right values and ideas and things that people are saying, I’m concerned about the safety of our city next year. I’ve been having some dark conversations and very sobering reality conversations of how to prepare and what that means for our city, especially a party that has embraced far-right violence lately.”In another Black suburb, Greg Lewis sat in the pews of St Gabriel’s Church of God and Christ, where he is assistant pastor. He is also the founder and executive director of Souls to the Polls Wisconsin. Three-quarters of people in the neighbourhood do not care about the debate, he suggested.“There’s one thing about that Republican party: they’re not afraid to go into enemy territory,” he said. “They have an office right in the middle of the central city right here; it’s on Martin Luther King Drive, as a matter of fact. So it’s not surprising. It’s a bit insulting for some of us because we understand how putrid the politics, how they are so nasty and uncaring, unloving and just irrational.“It’s an insult but this is an expectation now. I expect for those things to happen and that doesn’t hardly disappoint me any more. What disappoints me is when we don’t stand up against those things.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe debate is likely to illustrate how far the Republican party has shifted since falling under Trump’s spell. The eight candidates almost uniformly support his border wall and launching military action against drug cartels in Mexico. All except Chris Christie have vowed to fire the FBI director, Christopher Wray. Most have leaned into “culture war” issues such as curbing abortion and transgender rights and some have endorsed Trump’s “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen.Such positions are wildly out of step with the majority of voters in Milwaukee. Ed Fallone, an associate law professor at Marquette University Law School, who has lived in the city since 1992, said: “Relatively few residents of the city of Milwaukee care about the candidates. Milwaukee is a heavily Democratic city and votes heavily Democratic.“However, residents are viewing this debate and also the convention as this alien entity that has arrived on our body and we’re concerned to see whether it will have a beneficial effect in generating positive interest in our town among the country, or whether it’ll have a negative effect and whether the Republicans are going to attack their host.”Milwaukee is emerging from a violent weekend that saw 28 people shot and four killed. Fallone would not be surprised if Republicans try to exploit this for political gain. “The concern I have as a resident is that the Republican candidates will just try to create their theme, whether it’s American carnage or ‘woke’ efforts to defund the police or whatever fear stoking that they’re going to engage in on public safety, they will try to make Milwaukee into a negative example.“The conservatives in the far suburbs and rural areas of Wisconsin don’t normally attack Milwaukee. They recognise we’re an important economic engine for the state. But I’m worried that conservatives running for president will try to make us exhibit one in the defund the police narrative that they’re trying to sell, which is not fair and not true.”Wisconsin will be one of the most crucial swing states in the general election. Democrats have been able to chip into the once-reliably conservative Milwaukee suburbs that saw Republican support drop in the Trump era, while Republicans have made gains made in rural areas over the same period.Democrats enter the next election cycle feeling emboldened. They have won 14 of the past 17 statewide elections, including Biden in 2020 and Tony Evers in 2022. Earlier this year Janet Protasiewicz’s victory in the Wisconsin supreme court race took majority control of the court away from conservatives for the first time in 15 years, with major decisions looming on abortion access, redistricting and voting rules.Many here say that abortion rights could be decisive in 2024 and Wednesday’s debate will put Republicans’ views on the issue in the spotlight. But Trump, the frontrunner who faces criminal charges in four separate cases, will not attend; he has reportedly pre-recorded an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson to be streamed at the same time. Trump has also said he will surrender to authorities in Georgia on Thursday to face charges in the case accusing him of illegally scheming to overturn his 2020 election loss.Charlie Sykes, editor at large of the Bulwark website, who lives in Milwaukee, said: “It’s impossible to overstate how surreal this moment is that the former president of the United States will be perp-walked for the fourth time, will face a more than a dozen new felony charges, will have his mugshot taken, will be out on bail and yet is by far the leading Republican candidate for president of the United States.“We have been numbed and battered and bruised for the last eight years but this is an extraordinary moment, the split screen in American politics where you have these Republican candidates running for president over here, Donald Trump facing more felonies and Republican voters looking at that and going, yeah, we’re pretty much OK with the guy – orange is the new black.” More

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      In Wisconsin, Biden Attacks a Far-Right Senator but Avoids Trump Talk

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      As he promoted his economic agenda in Milwaukee, the president took several jabs at Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, in what served as a stand-in for an attack on Donald Trump.A week before Republicans visit Milwaukee for their first debate of the 2024 campaign, President Biden traveled to the city on Tuesday and attacked not former President Donald J. Trump or his Republican primary rivals, but Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.Mr. Biden spent several minutes contrasting his political record with that of Mr. Johnson, a Republican who has long expressed skepticism about government investment in local manufacturing jobs.“Ron Johnson, he believes outsourcing jobs is a great thing,” Mr. Biden said. “He doesn’t think American workers should manufacture products that require a lot of labor.”Mr. Biden’s sustained attack on Mr. Johnson, who won re-election last year to a third term that won’t end until 2029, served as a stand-in for an attack on Mr. Trump. The indictment on Monday of Mr. Trump in Georgia, the fourth brought against the former president, loomed heavy over the effort by the White House and the Biden campaign to promote his economic agenda, which they have taken to calling “Bidenomics.”The president has not addressed his predecessor’s legal travails, and he continued to avoid them on Tuesday. The White House, Mr. Biden’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee each declined to comment about the charges against Mr. Trump in Georgia.“I think we’ve seen this movie before, actually,” Olivia Dalton, a White House spokeswoman, told reporters en route to Milwaukee. “We certainly can’t speak to what others are spending their time on.”Indeed, Mr. Biden’s tour and speech at a factory that produces wind turbine generators and electric vehicle charging stations were aimed at highlighting legislation he signed last year investing in renewable energy manufacturing. He reminded the audience several times that Mr. Johnson voted against the bill, as he sought to elevate the senator as an avatar of far-right “MAGA” elements of the Republican Party.“We have the best workers in the world,” Mr. Biden said. “It’s about time Ron Johnson’s friends understood that.”Asked to respond to Mr. Biden’s remarks, Mr. Johnson replied in a text message, “He is lying.”In Wisconsin, where the parochial nature of the state’s politics has often insulated it from national happenings, Mr. Biden’s trip served as a kickoff to a campaign for what officials in both parties expect to be again among the most competitive battleground states in the country. Vice President Kamala Harris visited the state last week to promote broadband access at a factory in Kenosha County and attend a fund-raiser in Milwaukee.Four of the last six presidential elections in Wisconsin have been decided by less than 23,000 votes. Since 2000, only Barack Obama has won the state by more.The state is in perpetual campaign mode. Four months after a State Supreme Court race that became the most expensive judicial election in American history, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin has retained nearly all of its organizing staff in preparation for bruising campaigns for president and the Senate. Senator Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat who helped introduce Mr. Biden at his event on Tuesday, is seeking a third term.Even the most liberal Democrats in the state have rallied behind Mr. Biden, just as they did last year for Gov. Tony Evers, a white-haired pickleball enthusiast whose big applause line during his re-election victory speech last fall was “boring wins.”“Folks are used to having to support older white men in this state,” said Francesca Hong, a Democratic state representative from Madison. “I’m going to keep saying Bidenomics as often as I can.”Meanwhile, Wisconsin Republicans remain at odds about whether to keep fighting about the 2020 election.A Trump-endorsed candidate for governor who questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 contest won last year’s primary but lost the general election to Mr. Evers. The Wisconsin Assembly’s Republican speaker spent 14 months on an investigation into the 2020 election — an endeavor that ended only after the former State Supreme Court justice responsible for leading it endorsed the primary opponent of the man who appointed him.And now one of the leading Republican prospects to take on Senator Baldwin next year is David A. Clarke Jr., a former Milwaukee County sheriff who has become a regular figure on the far-right, pro-Trump speaking circuit.Mr. Clarke on Tuesday said the Republican leadership in the State Legislature had become “disconnected” from the party’s base because it had failed to change voting laws in response to Mr. Biden’s 2020 victory in the state.“I am connected to and keep my finger on the pulse of the base voter,” Mr. Clarke said. “The concern is that voting integrity issues have not been resolved by the G.O.P. Legislature since the 2020 election. In a clean, fair and honest election, they feel we can win.”Mr. Clarke said he did not have a timeline to enter the race. “My name recognition and approval rating with G.O.P. voters in the state put time on my side,” he said.Wisconsin’s politics are on the verge of a major shift, with the State Supreme Court gaining a liberal majority for the first time in 15 years. The court is poised this year to overturn the state’s 1849 ban on abortion as well as Republican-drawn maps that have given the G.O.P. near-supermajority control of the State Legislature.Officials in both parties say the looming court decisions could juice turnout for their bases.Republicans are already outraged at the prospect of having the court overturn the abortion law and invalidate the maps. The State Assembly speaker suggested last week that he might consider impeachment hearings for the newly elected justice if she did not recuse herself after calling the maps “rigged” during her campaign.Democrats, on the other hand, see the possibility of having competitive down-ballot races for the first time since 2010 as a way to energize liberal voters who may not otherwise be enthused about voting for Mr. Biden, whose approval ratings in Wisconsin have sagged just as they have elsewhere in the country. More

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      Wisconsin lawsuit urges state to strike down Republican-drawn electoral maps

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      A day after Wisconsin supreme court justice Janet Protasiewicz took office, flipping control of the court to liberals, a coalition of legal groups in Wisconsin has filed suit to challenge the state’s electoral maps. It alleges that the state’s maps are gerrymandered and unconstitutional and aims to correct the partisan advantage Republican lawmakers have maintained in Wisconsin’s electoral maps for more than a decade.The complaint alleges that Wisconsin’s maps deny voters “equal protection and free association” rights and violate Wisconsin’s constitution, which calls for districts to consist of contiguous geographical territory.The lawsuit, filed at the state supreme court, asks the state to redraw the electoral maps for the state senate and assembly before the 2024 elections. The case also requests that state senators not up for reelection face a special election in 2024 after new maps have been drawn.If the court rules that Wisconsin’s maps are unconstitutional, Law Forward, a left-leaning law firm and one of the groups filing the lawsuit, “would be willing” to propose new maps, said Jeff Mandell, the group’s founder.States are tasked with redrawing their electoral maps every 10 years. In Wisconsin, the state legislature is responsible for drawing the legislative lines that shape political control of the state.In 2011, Republican lawmakers gathered behind the closed doors of a Madison law firm across the street from the state capitol, redrawing the state’s electoral maps and shifting millions of voters into new districts. The resulting maps, which were quickly signed into law by the former Republican governor Scott Walker, nearly guaranteed Republican majorities in both chambers of the state legislature.“In 2011, the legislature engaged in the most extreme version of gerrymandering that we possibly have ever seen,” said Mark Gaber, who manages redistricting litigation with Campaign Legal Center, one of the organizations signing onto the complaint. “The 2011 Republican legislature ensured that Wisconsin voters would never be able to change their minds.”A decade later, on 15 April 2022, the Wisconsin supreme court ruled in a 4-3 decision to adopt Republican lawmakers’ new maps, which further entrenched the party’s advantage in the state.In statewide contests, Wisconsin elections are typically competitive – the Democratic governor, Tony Evers, won the 2018 gubernatorial election by 1.1 percentage points, and was re-elected in 2022 by 3.4 percentage points. Presidential contests have been decided by similarly narrow margins in the last decade. In the state assembly and senate, though, Republicans have maintained large majorities since 2011. Currently, Republicans hold a majority in the assembly and a supermajority in the state senate.The legal groups filed the lawsuit on behalf of 19 voters, among them Denise Sweet, an Anishinaabe poet and Native Vote Manager with Wisconsin Conservation Voters, and Rebecca Clarke, a county supervisor from Sheboygan county. They argue that Wisconsin’s maps deprive their communities and constituencies of representation in the state legislature.In a statement, Evers called the complaint “great news for our democracy and for the people of our state whose demands for fair maps and a nonpartisan redistricting process have gone repeatedly ignored by their legislators for years”.Protasiewicz, who was sworn in to the supreme court on Tuesday after winning a closely watched election on 4 April, has criticized Wisconsin’s legislative maps as unfair and campaigned on the issue. In an interview with the Capital Times, the Madison newspaper, Protasiewicz said she “would enjoy taking a fresh look at the gerrymandering question”.This complaint is the first major voting rights case for Wisconsin’s new liberal majority on supreme court, which could decide more elections-related cases ahead of the 2024 elections.Wisconsin voters have tried to challenge the state’s gerrymander in the federal courts in the past. In a 2018 case brought by 12 Wisconsin voters, the US supreme court ruled that the court could not weigh in on the plaintiff’s claim that the entire map was gerrymandered, asking the plaintiffs to return with a case focusing on specific districts. In a separate ruling in 2019, the court ruled that partisan gerrymandering could not be adjudicated by federal courts. More

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      How a Wisconsin official became ‘a scapegoat’ for voter fraud falsehoods

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      The future of Wisconsin’s top election administrator, a respected and experienced elections official, is uncertain as state Republicans continue to fan the flames of rightwing conspiracy theories about her role in the 2020 election.When Meagan Wolfe took over as interim elections administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) in 2018, her appointment to the seat was uncontroversial. Then the assistant elections administrator, Wolfe had helped run Wisconsin elections since 2011, redesigning the state’s online voter information portal and overseeing IT and cybersecurity work on elections statewide. Republicans in the state senate confirmed her appointment to helm the WEC unanimously in 2019.But by her term’s conclusion last month, bipartisan support for the administrator had evaporated. Rightwing activists and public figures who falsely claimed the 2020 election was stolen pointed to the WEC, and Wolfe, as conspirators in a plot to deliver the presidency to Democrats. Republicans in office echoed the conspiracy theorists’ allegations that the WEC had bungled the 2020 election – if not outright endorsing their claims of fraud.In recent weeks, Wolfe’s reappointment has become a messy political showdown between elections officials and Republicans in the state senate. Though she currently remains in her role, the battle alarms elections experts, who worry that political attacks on elections administrators will deepen the distrust in Wisconsin’s elections that took hold in 2020 and allow it to continue in the critical swing state moving into another presidential election year.“All of the misinformation and disinformation about voter fraud sort of just got blamed on Meagan Wolfe,” said Kathleen Bernier, a former Republican state senator who has chaired the senate elections committee and broke with her party over claims of voter fraud. Bernier, who now leads an elections education organization called Keep Our Republic, described Wolfe as “a scapegoat”.In the weeks leading up to Wolfe’s reappointment, falsehoods about the elections administrator circulated. When Gateway Pundit – a rightwing website that often spreads disinformation about elections – published a post enumerating a list of false claims and calling on readers to urge legislators to stop Wolfe from beginning her second term, the WEC said the commission was flooded with emails with claims that appeared to be copied from the misleading post.At a press conference during the Wisconsin GOP’s annual convention on 17 June, state senator Devin LeMahieu signaled that Wolfe would not survive a confirmation hearing in the state senate. The reason she would not garner support from Republican legislators, LeMahieu elaborated, was her “mishandling” of the 2020 elections.On 27 June, the six-member bipartisan WEC convened to discuss her reappointment. During the meeting, the commissioners expressed uniform respect for Wolfe, praising her record in office and denouncing election lies.“I think you would agree with me that Meagan Wolfe is blamed for all manner of fanciful conspiracies that have no basis in fact,” said Don Millis, a Republican commissioner. “What’s concerning about these conspiracy theorists is that they’re willing to trash the reputations of anyone who’s interested in trying to administer elections fairly in our state.”In a procedural maneuver, the three Democratic members on the bipartisan commission blocked the body from taking a vote on Wolfe’s reappointment, which would have triggered a vote in the senate – and likely jeopardized her position.Without a vote, Wolfe would remain in office, an unusual but not unprecedented scenario. In 2022, a Republican-appointed member of the state’s Natural Resources Board refused to step down at the end of his term. The Wisconsin supreme court, then controlled by conservatives, ruled that the end of an official’s term does not create a vacancy in their office. Without a vacancy, the court ruled, the state could not replace an appointed official.The next day, senate Republicans voted to proceed as though Wolfe’s appointment had been sent to the legislature for confirmation. Lawmakers have not yet moved forward with a confirmation hearing or up-down vote, which would follow in a typical confirmation process.Wolfe was at the helm of state elections in 2020, “one of the most difficult if not the most difficult times for American elections”, according to Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin who directs the university’s Elections Research Center.The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic sent elections workers scrambling to adjust the voting process to mitigate the risk of the virus while ensuring people could still exercise their right to vote. As Wisconsin’s 7 April elections approached, Covid-19 had spread rapidly around the US, taking hold in Milwaukee and disproportionately killing Black residents in the historically segregated city, “a crisis within a crisis”, the Wisconsin governor, Tony Evers, said in a press conference.The WEC worked on new guidelines for voting amid the pandemic, including sending absentee ballots, rather than in-person poll workers, to nursing homes. Unlike a move by Evers to postpone the April election, the decision by the bipartisan elections commission to adapt their operations in nursing homes was not challenged in the courts, and the commission voted to continue the practice in the November general election.In the wake of the election, recounts and multiple reviews confirmed Biden’s victory in Wisconsin and underscored administrators’ success in running clean elections during a difficult year.Still, a subset of Republican party activists in the state clung on to Donald Trump’s false claims that the election had been stolen. A 14-month long investigation by Michael Gableman, a former Wisconsin supreme court justice who promoted Trump’s false claims of election fraud, elevated unfounded doubts about the security of the 2020 election in Wisconsin.During the investigation, which ultimately yielded no evidence of widespread fraud, allegations surfaced about a nursing home resident who had voted despite lacking the cognitive ability to do so. The WEC’s pandemic-era nursing home policy of deploying absentee ballots rather than poll workers – a source of little controversy when enacted – was suddenly a smoking gun, and Wolfe, a high-profile suspect.“I think standing strong is really important,” said Wolfe. “Doing as much as we can to push back, and letting people know we’re not going to be silent when they try to disparage our election process and our work and the results of elections. But sometimes that’s an impossible task and it’s a huge worry for all of us. Not just in Wisconsin, but around the country.”Although no evidence calling the results of the election into question was ever uncovered, including in nursing homes, the idea that Wolfe and the elections commission had behaved illegally and delivered a fraudulent victory to Biden caught on. Rightwing figures around the state played up the allegations, with the Racine county sheriff even calling for members of the commission to face criminal charges for sending absentee ballots to nursing homes during the pandemic. Republican lawmakers – including assembly speaker Robin Vos – called on Wolfe to step down. In 2022, Janel Brandtjen, a state representative from Waukesha county, echoed Trump’s calls to decertify the election.Wolfe withstood those attacks, but far-right Republicans did not relent, instead ramping up their attacks this year as election administrators prepare for the 2024 presidential contest. A resolution, which passed during last month’s annual Wisconsin GOP convention, called on the elimination of the WEC, and in the weeks leading up to Wolfe’s reappointment, officials like Brandtjen called for her removal from office.Though Wolfe’s public support from Republican state lawmakers deteriorated, her reputation in the field of elections administration has not wavered. During her tenure, Wolfe chaired numerous national committees on elections administration and security and under her leadership, the WEC earned recognition for improving voting accessibility.A bipartisan letter of support signed by elections officials around the US and published online by the non-partisan group Center for Election Innovation and Research described Wolfe as “one of the most highly-skilled election administrators in the country”. The 2021 letter emphasized how difficult it would be to replace Wolfe given her experience and stature.Claire Woodall-Vogg, the executive director of Milwaukee’s elections commission, described Wolfe as a critical resource and source of stability in the state’s elections and said the consequences of Wolfe losing her position would be “frightening”.“We reach out to the election commission for technical assistance on a daily basis,” said Woodall-Vogg. “You need people who are competent, who are being led and trained well, and I would imagine that morale would sink so low that you would have constant turnover and we would really lack the technical assistance that we need in order to administer elections.”Scott Krug, the Republican chair of the Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections, also split publicly with leaders in his party, praising Wolfe as “open and honest and transparent.” Municipal clerks in his district, he said, supported the administrator. “I don’t think their opinions ever changed, and they’re the ones that actually run the elections.”Despite the senate’s move to force a vote on Wolfe’s confirmation, the legislative body has taken no further action to proceed to a vote.“As a legal matter, and as a constitutional matter, I don’t think any of this has any meaning,” said Jeffrey Mandell, a Wisconsin election law litigator. “It’s been weeks now since they passed that resolution. If they really wanted to vote down their fake nomination, they could have done it that night. They didn’t.”Even if Wolfe remains in office through the 2024 elections, experts say the false and misleading allegations about her conduct that this conflict has generated will haunt elections in the state.“There will continue to be people who are suspicious about elections, distrust authorities, and this will give them another reason to have those views,” said Burden. More