Special Counsel Investigating Wisconsin 2020 Elections Says Legislators Should Consider ‘Decertifying’ Election Results

NEW YORK (VINnews) — Former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, the Special Counsel charged with investigating the 2020 Wisconsin elections told the Wisconsin Assembly hearing that a series of unlawful acts took place during the election and called for the dismantling of the bipartisan Wisconsin Election Committee.

After presenting a 136-page report delineating the legal issues with the election, Gableman said that “our recommendations are fairly predictable considering what we just covered… The elimination of WEC (Wisconsin Election Commission)… At this point, I believe the legislature ought to take a very hard look at the option of decertification of 2020 Wisconsin Presidential Election.”

Gableman’s report notes that “Wisconsin election law does not explicitly authorize the decertification of electors. But neither does it prevent it.”

Citing the U.S. Constitution’s delegation of the duty to select electors exclusively to state legislatures, the report’s authors contend that, while states have been entrusting that responsibility to popular votes, lawmakers can always reclaim it.

“An election of presidential electors that violates Wisconsin (or any other state legislature’s relevant laws) is both void and voidable,” it reads.

In his presentation, Gableman presented evidence that clerks had gone to nursing homes and taken votes from incapacitated people despite the election committee guidelines exempting clerks from going there due to COVID-19. Gableman showed several videos of attorney Erick Kaardal questioning nursing homes residents who evidently voted but seemed to have trouble understanding questions he was asking them about the election.

The commission’s guidance was issued in March 2020 shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic was declared. The directive remained in place for the November 2020 presidential election and the February 2021 primary.

Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell criticized the videos, which he described as “using seniors as political props,” adding that families concerned a relative may be incompetent should have a judge make that finding.

“You wouldn’t want special voting deputies to be determining that on their own,” he said.

Moreover Gableman claimed that private grants issued by the Mark Zuckerberg-funded Center for Tech and Civic Life, which were distributed around the state but went primarily to the state’s five largest cities, were aimed at boosting turnout in areas more likely to go for Biden.

In taking the money, Gableman said, Milwaukee, Madison, Racine, Kenosha and Green Bay engaged in what he called “election bribery,” defined in state law as accepting “anything of value,” such as money, to “induce any elector” to “go to or refrain from going to the polls” or “vote or refrain from voting.”

His report also points to provisions in the CTCL and the cities’ “Wisconsin Safe Voting Plan” that, among other things, encourage the use of ballot drop boxes and reaching out to “historically disenfranchised” voters such as racial minorities and the poor, “which not-coincidentally, matched that of the Biden-voter profile.”

Following the hearing, committee chair Rep. Janel Brandtjen, R-Menomonee Falls, and member Rep. David Murphy, R-Greenville, did not rule out the possibility of pursuing decertification, though Murphy said “that bar needs to be extremely high.”

“To undo an election would be extremely detrimental to our republic. This is a very destabilizing act,” Murphy said. “On the other hand, elections that are stolen, that’s also destabilizing for the republic so we have to look at this with an open mind from both directions.”

However the commission’s nonpartisan administrator Meagan Wolfe blasted the report, saying it was based on mischaracterizations and that almost every item flagged by the review has already been litigated or addressed.

“The opinions in the Special Counsel’s latest interim report were fixated on topics that have been thoroughly addressed,” Wolfe said. “The integrity of the November 2020 election, and of the WEC, has been shown time and time again through court cases and previous investigations.”

Justice Michael Gableman: Our recommendations are fairly predictable considering what we just covered… The elimination of WEC (Wisconsin Election Commission)… At this point, I believe the legislature ought to take a very hard look at the option of decertification of 2020 Wisconsin Presidential Election.