For decades, Wisconsin’s Legislative Audit Bureau served as an important check and balance, keeping politicians honest and financial books clean. It prides itself on being nonpartisan, independent and accurate. But the bureau’s recent “Election Administration” report fails to live up to that mission. Its erroneous analysis and consistent failure to include the complete story was a disservice to both election officials and the Legislature. The flawed report also predictably encouraged overreaction from legislators intent on continuing to sow unfounded doubt about the integrity of Wisconsin elections. The LAB’s errors and this overreaction can be largely traced to one fact. For the first time since the Audit Bureau’s creation in 1965, it did not allow the state agency which was audited — the Wisconsin Elections Commission — to review and provide feedback on the report before it was released. As a result, the audit contains embarrassing errors that could have easily been corrected. It also mischaracterizes Wisconsin’s election administration in dangerous ways. Its analysis and recommendations feed public perception and are likely to become the basis of misguided legislative proposals that are not connected to the facts.
Wisconsin: Gableman report calls for decertifying 2020 election. The Legislature’s nonpartisan lawyers say that’s not possible. | Shawn Johnson/Wisconsin Public Radio
The special counsel hired by Wisconsin Republicans to investigate the 2020 presidential election told lawmakers Tuesday that they “ought to take a very hard look” at decertifying the election, a move that has been widely dismissed as legally impossible. Former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman also said private grants used to run the election constituted “election bribery” and called on lawmakers to “eliminate and dismantle” the Wisconsin Elections Commission. The commission’s administrator, he said, should be fired. The suggestions to lawmakers come a week after the state Assembly held what Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said was likely the final session day of the year. Vos, who hired Gableman last year, had also billed these recommendations as Gableman’s final report. But Gableman, who acknowledged some uncertainty over his own contract with the Legislature, vowed that his investigation would continue. “This will not end today,” Gableman said at the start of the hearing. “This is an important topic, and there’s a lot of work to do. And I will be back.” Gableman’s assertion that the Legislature should — or even could — decertify the presidential election has next to no support, either in the judicial system where he once served, or among lawmakers from either party in the Wisconsin Legislature.
