Time for AG Kaul to hold Wisconsin’s fake electors accountable

Is Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul preparing to file charges against Wisconsin’s fake electors? So far he still won’t say.

The question came up again last week, when Arizona became the fourth state to indict its fake electors. A grand jury returned indictments of conspiracy, fraud and forgery against 18 people including two state senators and the former head of the Arizona Republican Party.

So far the only accountability Wisconsin’s fake electors have faced came five months ago with the settlement of a civil lawsuit filed by Law Forward, Georgetown University Law Center and Wisconsin’s Stafford Rosenbaum law firm. 

Under the terms of the settlement, Wisconsin’s 10 fake electors — including former state Republican Party chair Andrew Hitt and current elections commissioner Robert Spindell — acknowledged that they took part in an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, promised not to serve as electors in 2024 or to pose as fake electors in the future, and committed to fully cooperate with any ongoing or future investigations launched by the Wisconsin Department of Justice.

So now it’s Kaul’s move.

Wisconsin is the only remaining state that still might charge its fake electors with crimes. USA Today reported last week that New Mexico and Pennsylvania, the other fake elector states that haven’t done so are unlikely to press charges. In those states, unlike Wisconsin, the fake electors covered their rear ends by making clear that their votes were provisional, and would only be counted if it turned out Biden didn’t really win. 

In Wisconsin, Republicans were much bolder in their impersonation of fake electors. The trove of evidence released as part of the settlement in the civil suit includes video of them clapping and celebrating after casting their fraudulent votes in the Capitol. Today, Wisconsin Republicans who continue to campaign on the Big Lie are as emboldened as ever.

“Of the five states where fake electors signed papers fraudulently asserting they were the duly qualified electors, Wisconsin is the only one where no criminal charges have been filed,” Law Forward’s Jeff Mandell wrote in a text message. “And Wisconsin is, as shown in the documents Law Forward brought to light, the epicenter of the fraudulent-elector scheme; if it hadn’t been for the actions of a handful of people  here in Wisconsin, this scheme would not have been carried out anywhere in the country.”

What does it take to alert people anyway to the sheer recklessness and dangerousness of the people who are still working to advance Trump’s cause?

Not only are they not chastened by being caught red-handed trying to steal the presidential election in 2020, this year, Republicans at the national and state level appear to be getting more organized than they were in the failed fake-elector scheme. As States Newsroom’s democracy reporter Zachary Roth reports, they are ramping up efforts across the nation to challenge the results more effectively in 2024. 

In Wisconsin, Republicans are holding training sessions for volunteers they say they’ll send to Democratic-leaning cities Eau Claire, Madison and Milwaukee to scrutinize voting.

GOP officials continue to repeat the lie that Democrats stole the last election to rile up the Trump base, creating a lot of noise and smoke to cover up the reality that it is Republicans who are resorting to fraud to try to steal the next election.

On Tuesday, civil rights groups All Voting is Local, Action Wisconsin, Black Leaders Organizing Community (BLOC), and Community Consulting LLC are launching a petition drive to call for the removal of Spindell from the Wisconsin Election Commission. 

In addition to signing a certificate falsely claiming Donald Trump had won Wisconsin, Spindell bragged in an email to fellow Republicans about helping to keep Black and Hispanic turnout low in Milwaukee in order to help Republican Sen. Ron Johnson win reelection in 2022.

It’s outrageous that Spindell continues to oversee elections.

Last week Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Dan Bice reported that Andrew Iverson, the new executive director of the Wisconsin Republican Party, directed a staffer to coordinate a flood of Election Day calls to Souls to the Polls — a nonprofit organization dedicated to uniting “Milwaukee faith leaders and their congregations to strengthen the voting power of the Black community.”  The scheme, former GOP staffer Carlton Huffman told Bice, was to get so many Trump voters to request rides that it would tie up the group and thwart its efforts to help Black Milwaukeans get to their polling places. 

Sounds like the kind of stunt Spindell would appreciate.

This year, watch out for these tactics to escalate. 

We need our state’s top law enforcement officer to join his colleagues in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Nevada in cracking down on the election fraud perpetrated by Republican officials. 

“More than two years ago now, Law Forward asked WisDOJ and the Dane County DA to hold these folks accountable and ensure nothing like this happens again in Wisconsin,” says Mandell. “If they were so inclined, they could accomplish both goals by bringing criminal charges against these bad actors who tried to subvert the will of the voters.”

But if there are no consequences, there’s no reason they won’t try to steal the election again. And this time they might even pull it off.