After a year of relentless disinformation about the 2020 presidential election, Sen. Kathy Bernier, R-Chippewa Falls, has had enough. Earlier this month Bernier, who chairs the Senate’s elections committee, organized an informational session to explain how Wisconsin’s elections work. The hearing offered something rare in Wisconsin’s hyper-partisan political environment: a crash course in Wisconsin elections administration conducted by a nonpartisan panel of state and local election officials. Bernier at the outset barred attendees or participants from grandstanding. Several Republicans attended the hearing to ask questions, including Rep. Janel Brandtjen, R-Menomonee Falls, who has unsuccessfully tried to seize ballots and election materials from Milwaukee and Brown counties to aid in her own election investigation. Bernier’s hearing came in the wake of news that former conservative state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman — hired by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, to conduct a probe of the election — spent days at a conspiratorial election rally sponsored by MyPillow’s chief executive and traveled to Arizona to observe its flawed election review. His investigative team includes a former Trump campaign official, The Associated Press reported last week.
Pennsylvania Senate Democrats sue Republicans to block election review subpoena | Jonathan Lai/Philadelphia Inquirer
Democrats in the Pennsylvania Senate sued their Republican colleagues Friday evening to block them from subpoenaing voter records as part of a review of the 2020 election. The lawsuit argues that the Republican effort unconstitutionally tramples on the separation of powers by stepping on the courts’ power to investigate and rule on election disputes and on the executive branch’s power, given specifically to the state auditor general, to audit how elections are run. The lawsuit also contends that the subpoena violates state election law because it requests voters’ private information, including driver’s license numbers and the last four digits of Social Security numbers. Senate Democrats “ask this Court to prevent violation of the Pennsylvania Election Code and the Pennsylvania Constitution through [Republican lawmakers’] untimely election contest and to protect the rights of the approximately 6.9 million Pennsylvanians who cast votes in the 2020 General Election, including protection from the unlawful disclosure of their private information” in the state voter database, the suit reads.
Full Article: Pa. Senate Democrats sue Republicans to block election review subpoena