Elections commissioners plan to discuss Senate hearing on future of top elections official

MADISON – Members of the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission plan to meet this week to discuss whether to allow their agency administrator to testify before a Senate committee as key Republicans who control the state Legislature look to oust her as the state’s top election official.

Republican senators could vote this year on whether to reappoint Wisconsin Elections Commission administrator Meagan Wolfe despite commissioners failing to agree to recommend a new term for Wolfe — a prerequisite for such a legislative vote.

Commissioners deadlocked in June after the three Democratic commissioners abstained from voting on a motion to reappoint Wolfe to her job in an effort to protect her from Republican senators who had signaled they would fire her if the reappointment was forwarded to them.

With just three of six commissioners not voting, the motion to reappoint Wolfe failed without a majority.

Democrats argued there was no need for a vote because of a recent state Supreme Court ruling that sided with Frederick Prehn, a former Natural Resources Board chairman who decided to stay in his position nearly two years after his term expired.

The ruling's majority opinion said that the expiration of a term does not create a vacancy, meaning that holdovers in any position appointed by the governor can remain until a confirmation hearing is held by the state Senate. With commissioners failing to forward an appointment to the Senate, Democrats argued, Wolfe could remain in her job indefinitely.

But a day later, Senate Republicans moved forward anyway. Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu said the 3-0 commission vote that resulted in a failed motion to reappoint Wolfe was actually enough votes to reappoint Wolfe, even though state law says such votes require a majority of commissioners, or four votes.

Now, the commissioners are meeting Wednesday with an agenda that includes a discussion to determine whether to authorize Wolfe to testify before a Senate committee about a reappointment they did not recommend.

Senate Elections Committee chairman Dan Knodl, R-Germantown, will likely hold a hearing sometime over the next two weeks, according to an email from Wisconsin Elections Commission chairman Don Millis to commissioners circulating the meeting agenda. A spokesman for Knodl said the senator has not scheduled anything yet.

The ordeal, which will likely land in court, comes as election clerks across the state are preparing for the next presidential election.

Wolfe oversees the commission, which provides guidance to nearly 2,000 clerks in Wisconsin. That guidance is decided by six appointed commissioners, three from each major political party. Her job is to implement their decisions as rules governing how elections are administered.

Wolfe became administrator in 2018 at another inflection point in the agency's history, after Republican state senators fired the commission's previous administrator over a connection to a controversial investigation of former GOP Gov. Scott Walker and other Republicans by the Government Accountability Board, the agency that preceded the elections commission and the state ethics commission.

Now, Wolfe is at the center of another partisan firestorm surrounding the agency as commissioners have split on how to accomplish their goal of keeping her in her job amid a push from GOP lawmakers to oust her over discontent with the outcome of the 2020 election and practices the commission recommended to help voters navigate the coronavirus pandemic. Some of those practices were later deemed illegal by Wisconsin judges.

Ann Jacobs, a Democratic member and former chairwoman of the elections commission, said in June the Senate was engaging in a "nonsense attempt to avoid the applicable statutes" and the outcome of the Supreme Court case they sought by intervening to defend Prehn's right to stay on the DNR board beyond the expiration of his term.

"With no appointment, there’s no appointee before the senate," she said at the time.

Jacobs said "there wasn’t anything that the commissioners were going to do that was not going to be attacked if it resulted in Meagan Wolfe retaining her position as administrator."

"And it was important that we uphold the law and make clear that we did not have the authority to simply appoint someone when there wasn’t a vacancy," she said.

Millis, a Republican, said in June the events confirm he and the two other GOP commissioners were right to push for an up or down vote on Wolfe's reappointment.

"We should act like agencies normally act. We have a term expiring. We should appoint someone to the next term. That's the way government works," Millis said.

Molly Beck can be reached at molly.beck@jrn.com.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Elections commissioners to discuss Senate hearing on Wolfe's future