Senate Republicans fire elections chief, setting the stage for a legal fight heading into the 2024 elections
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MADISON – Fueled by lingering outrage over the 2020 election within the Wisconsin GOP, Senate Republicans voted Thursday to fire the state's top election official — a move that catapulted Wisconsin's election agency into a legal battle over who oversees voting in this battleground state heading into the 2024 presidential election.
The state Senate in a party-line vote rejected the appointment of Wisconsin Elections Commission administrator Meagan Wolfe, the nonpartisan leader of the state's elections agency who has become a target of those who harbor intense distrust of election officials amid a baseless campaign by former President Donald Trump to sow doubt in the legitimacy of his 2020 election loss.
Minutes after the vote, Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul filed a lawsuit in Dane County Circuit Court asking a judge to block Republican legislative leaders from appointing a new administrator and to declare Wolfe administrator, arguing the Senate did not have the power to oust her. Meanwhile, Wolfe said she would not leave her job until a court told her to do so.
"During my 12 years as a nonpartisan election official, I've learned when politicians on either side of the aisle are upset with me, it's usually because I will not bend to political pressure," Wolfe told reporters.
"It’s unfortunate that political pressures have forced a group of our lawmakers to embrace unfounded rumors about my leadership, my role on the commission and our system of elections."
Republicans argued they must fire Wolfe in order to address the lack of confidence, concerns Trump first fostered without evidence to back up his claims. Critics of Wolfe, many of whom in 2022 supported impossible efforts to decertify the 2020 election called for by Trump, applauded from the Senate Gallery following the vote.
"When (voters) don't have confidence in our elections, we are disenfranchising voters," Senate Majority Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, said on the floor before voting to fire Wolfe. "We need to rebuild faith in Wisconsin's elections."
Sen. Mark Spreitzer, D-Beloit, said the move would instead inject unnecessary uncertainty into the administration of elections heading into the next presidential cycle, when Trump is favored to be on the ballot. Spreitzer said the Senate was "relitigating the 2020 election" to appease Trump.
Sen. Rob Cowles, R-Green Bay, said he voted to reject Wolfe because of a 2021 state audit that found 84 instances of ballots being counted twice when voting machines jammed, and 11 people who had likely died between the time they cast absentee ballots and Election Day. In addition, auditors found eight people who may have illegally cast ballots while still serving felony sentences.
But overall, the audit concluded the election was administered without widespread issues. At the time of the review, Cowles said in a tweet the review reveals election officials and lawmakers "have work to do" but that the audit "showed us that the election was largely safe and secure."
When asked whether firing Wolfe would lend credence to Trump's false claims about Wisconsin's 2020 election, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said "I guess I hadn't thought about it from that perspective."
"I think if Meagan Wolfe stays there, it will be even more problematic for people to believe whatever occurs in 2024 is fair," Vos said. "So for the good of the system, I think that we need to say that in any job, there is always more than one qualified person who could do it."
Wolfe to stay in her job during court fight
Even though lawmakers voted Wolfe out, she plans stay in her job as litigation swallows the issue for weeks or even months. That's because Thursday's proceeding isn't being recognized by Wolfe or many Democrats as legitimate because the Republican-controlled state Senate forced a vote on Wolfe's future even though the bipartisan elections commission charged with hiring her did not put forward a nomination of Wolfe to consider.
Following the vote, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers said he asked Kaul to represent Wolfe in a lawsuit aimed at keeping her in her job.
"Wisconsin Republicans’ attempt to illegally fire Wisconsin’s elections administrator without cause today shows they are continuing to escalate efforts to sow distrust and disinformation about our elections, denigrate our clerks, poll workers, and election administrators, and undermine basic tenets of our democracy, including the peaceful transfer of power," Evers said.
Kaul told reporters on Thursday he anticipated the legal challenge to be resolved before the next election in February. He said if it's not, a dispute over who oversees elections could invite lawsuits from candidates seeking to invalidate an election loss.
"The longer this waits the more it can call any action that the commission takes into question," Kaul said. But he added he did not think any challenges would be successful.
LeMahieu said if elections commissioners don't appoint a new administrator to replace Wolfe, "the Senate will explore all available options to restore Wisconsinites' faith in elections."
When Wolfe's term expired in June, the six members of the commission agreed Wolfe should stay in her job but failed to find consensus on how to respond to an effort by Senate Republicans to oust her amid pressure from the GOP base over the 2020 election.
Ultimately, the commission did not put forward the four votes required by law to reappoint Wolfe, with Democratic commissioners arguing a recent state Supreme Court ruling that allows such officials to stay in their positions beyond the expiration of their terms protects Wolfe's job. Senate Republicans decided to move forward anyway.
Wisconsin Elections Commission chairman Don Millis, a Republican, blamed the unstable situation on Democratic members of the commission for suggesting Wolfe skip testifying at a Senate committee hearing on her future. Millis argued doing so made it easy for Republicans to vote to fire Wolfe.
"One lawsuit has been filed; more to follow. Uncertainty reigns and will continue for the foreseeable future as the Commission and 1,850 local clerks prepare for a monumental presidential election next year," he said in a statement to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
"Many claim the fault lies with the Republican Senate. To the contrary, we are in this mess due to the actions of the Democratic members of the Elections Commission with an assist from Attorney General Josh Kaul," Millis said, referring to an analysis Kaul released ahead of the committee hearing Wolfe skipped concluding the proceeding was illegal.
Ann Jacobs, a Democratic member of the commission who was chairwoman during 2020, in a series of tweets blasted the Senate's actions as illegitimate, citing an analysis from the Legislature's own attorneys.
Wolfe oversees a commission that has been under fire for three years because of false claims put forward by Trump to persuade supporters he actually won an election he lost and because of policies commissioners approved during the 2020 presidential election to navigate hurdles presented by the coronavirus pandemic.
President Joe Biden defeated Trump in 2020 by about 21,000 votes — a result that has been confirmed by two recounts paid by Trump, state audits, a partisan review, a conservative study and multiple lawsuits.
But Trump has continued to lie about the result of Wisconsin's last presidential election, bolstering the beliefs of those who do not believe Biden is a legitimate president, many of whom have made Wolfe the symbol of the false claims because of her position at the elections commission.
Elections Commission criticized for 2020 actions
At the same time, some Republican lawmakers have also targeted Wolfe because of actions the bipartisan panel of six commissioners voted to take during the coronavirus pandemic at a time when health officials were advising people to avoid crowds, and for some voting practices that have since been deemed illegal through lawsuits.
“There were decisions that were made that were not exactly appropriate or legal. If you want to make that argument, that's true, but for her to take the blame for it is inappropriate, to say the least," Kathy Bernier, former Republican Senate elections committee chairwoman, said in an interview.
Bernier is a former Chippewa County clerk and state senator who now leads the Wisconsin chapter of a nonpartisan group focused on election education efforts called Keep Our Republic. She said Wolfe could have reached out more to discuss issues facing voters during the pandemic in order to find legislative fixes, but overall, lawmakers held the most responsibility.
More: Outgoing Republican Sen. Kathy Bernier wants her party to move on, even if it's without her
"When (former state Rep.) Dean Knudson was the (commission) chair, he made it ever so clear that she was not to do anything, make any decisions or even attempt to write a scope statement for a rule without them directing her to do … I know that for a fact. And so if they want someone to blame they can blame themselves,” Bernier said.
“Number one, they set up the election commission for failure. And number two, they didn't go into session ... the leadership in the Assembly and in the Senate did not call us into session to deal with COVID-related issues where we could have made it a legal process to put your ballots in drop boxes. And so to blame someone, an individual person, for the failures of many is just plain wrong.”
The commission mailed absentee ballot applications to all voters, advised local officials on how to make ballot drop boxes secure and set new policies for voting in nursing homes. State law requires clerks to send poll workers to nursing homes, but the commission told the clerks to send residents absentee ballots because nursing homes weren't allowing visitors during the pandemic. The decision also ensured there was enough time for ballots to be returned and counted.
Few Republicans criticized the commission's decisions when they made them but called out the agency after Biden's victory. Last year, amid heightened scrutiny of election guidance from the commission, drop box use was deemed illegal by a conservative majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Thursday's planned vote comes after the Republican-controlled Senate elections committee earlier this week recommended to not give Wolfe another term as elections commission chief.
Two of the three Republican senators who voted Monday against her reappointment in committee said they were doing so because Wolfe did not appear to testify. Wolfe decided not to testify after Kaul concluded in a legal opinion that the recent Supreme Court ruling protects Wolfe's job and that the Senate was proceeding with an appointment that was not actually before them.
More: Elections chief Meagan Wolfe calls her position 'untenable' in commission's dispute with senators
"The effort to remove Wolfe appears to be almost entirely partisan and not based on facts about her actions or authority," said Barry Burden, a political science professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the Elections Research Center. "Trump supporters in particular who distrust Wolfe have blamed her for many things over which she does not actually have responsibility."
"The effort against Wolfe appears to be the continuation and escalation of a long-running distrust of those who run elections," he said.
Bernier said Senate Republicans were motivated by pressure from a vocal portion of the GOP base that refuses to learn how elections worked in 2020.
“The motivations are a bunch of hysterical Republicans that make all kinds of inaccurate election fraud accusations and that there is pressure for elected representatives to take some sort of action to vindicate themselves," she said.
Wolfe will likely choose to stay in her job following Thursday's vote.
Senate Republicans could choose to try to force her out through litigation or appoint an administrator through a process spelled out in state law that allows a legislative committee to make appointments when a vacancy languishes. Such a move will also likely attract litigation.
Election officials are already preparing for the 2024 election cycle and must finalize ballots for the presidential primary election in April beginning in February.
Molly Beck can be reached at molly.beck@jrn.com.
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin Senate Republicans fire elections chief Meagan Wolfe
