Star Tribune:
The cash bar was open for business, the Lilydale Dance Hall decked out in holiday garland, but Michael Gableman wasn’t here with good tidings.
The attorney stood in front of Republican activists to share horror stories he’d heard in his investigation of the 2020 election: ballot harvesting, dead people left on state voter rolls and private grants to operate COVID-era elections used to get out the vote for Joe Biden, some claims misleading, some unsubstantiated. Gableman admitted he doesn’t think China or Russia hacked into voting machines, but they easily could have.
“I don’t think there’s anything too confusing about taking the dead people off of the voter rolls,” Gabelman said under the holiday lights, a stark reminder that more than a year had passed since Donald Trump lost the presidency.
Scenes like this are playing out across Wisconsin in the most aggressive effort by Republicans in any battleground state to pump new life into scrutinizing the last election. While some of the players are the same, their aim is different than it was a year ago, when groups unsuccessfully tried to overturn results that elected Biden. Republicans’ focus now is trying to subvert election boards and long-standing voting protocols in Wisconsin ahead of the critical midterm and 2024 presidential race.
“What you are seeing are people literally advocating for maybe having an election but allowing the state Legislature to override it regardless of who wins and install their own preferred candidate,” said Ann Jacobs, the Democratic chair of the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission, which is under attack by Republicans. “For a while it was sort of done quietly, and now it is just out in the open, this advocacy for the elimination of democratically elected representatives.”
Gableman’s taxpayer-funded investigation into the election has stretched on for months, flooding the state’s large cities with data requests. He’s asked to jail the mayors of Madison and Green Bay if they don’t comply with requests for private interviews. Some Republicans are calling for mass resignations from people who run Wisconsin elections. The Racine County Sheriff wants criminal charges brought against most members of the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
“On the one hand, it’s absolutely laughable because there’s no legal basis here. They clearly don’t know what they’re doing,” Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said. “On the other hand, it’s terrifying because it illustrates the lengths they are willing to go to cast doubt on our elections.”