Over the past year, you have no doubt heard an awful lot about election fraud, inaccurate voter rolls, and all manner of other election-related concerns. In some states, such as Georgia, that talk has even led to massive election integrity and law changes. But if you thought all that would end upon the completion of Joe Biden’s first year in office, you’ve been gravely mistaken.
In fact, in battleground states like Wisconsin, the debates are only heating up.
As you likely know, Wisconsin was one of quite a few states who seemed to boast an inevitable win for Donald Trump. On Election Night, for example, Trump was supposedly ahead of Biden in the state by some 109,000 votes. But in a matter of hours, that lead was allegedly lost.
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “Milwaukee County’s lump-sum contribution turned the race on its side. To that point, Donald Trump held a lead of 109,000 votes over Joe Biden, but once Milwaukee Country absentee and early-voting ballots were uploaded into the system, Biden took a lead of 11,000 votes.”
Naturally, this, as well as similar results in other counties and states, has led to unprecedented distrust for our election process nationwide. And it has given election leaders and officials some rather grave concerns about just what happened during the 2020 election.
So much so, in fact, that the Wisconsin Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections are increasing their demands for information, particularly where the state’s voting rolls are concerned.
Just days before Christmas, the committee’s chair and state Representative Janel Brandtjen joined five other members in writing a letter to the Wisconsin Elections Commission administrator, Meagan Wolfe, demanding some very key pieces of information to help them in their investigation.
Specifically, Brandtjen wanted to know all about the voter rolls, what servers they were held on, how they were processed, and who had access to those. In addition, she asked for any and all changes that were made to those rolls, including when, how, and by whom a person was registered in the system, as well as every change made to that voter’s account.
Now, to be clear, that’s a lot of information to sort through, considering there are some seven million voter records supposedly on file. However, Brandtjen and the rest of the committee believe it is key to understand if and how any wrongdoing was done throughout the 2020 process.
As it stands now, there are major concerns that partisan advocacy groups, such as the Center for Tech and Civic Life, may have played a not-so-legal role in determining the state’s presidential election.
As the Wisconsin Spotlight pointed out in March, the center sent some rather large “grants” to at least five of the state’s largest cities: Green Bay, Madison, Milwaukee, Racine, and Kenosha. Now, this wouldn’t be a problem, except that the funds for these grants were reportedly given to the center by Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, who has made no secret of his more liberal political affiliations.
And to make matters even worse, once the cities received those funds, it seems they allowed for even more partisan activity.
For example, in Green Bay, the Wisconsin Spotlight noted that the “grant mentor” for the city, Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein, was suddenly given full access to the absentee ballot process. Spitzer-Rubenstein has worked for a number of Democratic Party candidates over the years and is now the state lead for the National Vote at Home Institute.
As the Spotlight reported, thanks to the grant, Green Bay’s “highly partisan” Democrat Mayor Eric Genrich and staff essentially handed over control of the entire absentee ballot process to “the Zuckerberg-funded ‘grant team,’ making Spitzer-Rubenstein the “de facto city elections chief.”
Spitzer-Rubenstein even tried to help “cure” any and all returned absentee ballots. In an October email, he asked, “Can we help with curing absentee ballots that are missing a signature or witness signature address?”
As you can imagine, state election statutes prohibit such partisan action. And so, Green Bay City Clerk Kris Teske denied his request. But she was quickly overruled when the mayor’s office stepped in and forced her compliance.
And that’s just what happened in one city.
No wonder those like Brandtjen want some answers and more information. As it stands right now, recent polls say that some 71 percent of GOP voters don’t believe Biden is our rightful president. And some 46 percent of independents think the same.
If America is ever going to fully trust our election processes again, we have right the wrongs of 2020 or at the very least figure out the truth…
