The attorney who led a monthslong review of the 2020 election for Wisconsin Republicans called on lawmakers Tuesday to dissolve the state’s election agency and urged them to consider decertifying the results — a move that scholars have called legally impossible.
Michael Gableman, the former state Supreme Court justice who led the GOP review, faced immediate blowback for his contention that lawmakers have the power to revoke the state’s 10 electoral votes, which went to Joe Biden over Donald Trump. A top Republican in the Assembly and one of the GOP candidates for attorney general said there was no way to do that.
Gableman was unbowed, saying he disagreed with legal experts who have weighed in on the issue over the last year and a half. While Gableman offered support for the idea, he wrote in a 136-page report released Tuesday that the move would not “on its own” end Biden’s presidency.
“There appears to me to be very significant grounds for such an action,” Gableman said of decertification during nearly three hours of testimony to the Assembly Elections Committee.
Few agree with him, including the nonpartisan attorneys who work for the Legislature.
“The amount of misinformation and faulty legal opinions circulating makes it difficult for many to know who or what to trust but the fact is there is no constitutional or legislative mechanism to decertify the 2020 presidential election,” said a statement from Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney, a Republican running for attorney general. …
Also testifying before the committee Tuesday was Erick Kaardal, an attorney with the Thomas More Society’s Amistad Project. The Thomas More Society and Kaardal’s law firm share office space with Gableman in Brookfield.
Kaardal and Gableman have both focused on $8.8 million in grants the nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life provided to Wisconsin’s five largest cities to help them run their elections during the coronavirus pandemic.
Gableman’s report contended the grants amounted to election bribery. No court has agreed with such claims despite ample litigation.
Three courts and the state’s bipartisan Elections Commission have thrown out challenges to the grants brought by Kaardal. One federal judge has asked a court committee to review whether Kaardal violated ethics rules with one of his lawsuits.
…
Gableman’s team questioned voting at nursing homes, saying they found some facilities where all registered voters cast ballots. Gableman played videos for the committee of nursing home residents who he said weren’t mentally fit to vote.
Only a judge can find someone incompetent to vote. Kaardal said he had identified two instances of people voting after they were found incompetent, but he and Gableman questioned the ability of others to vote.
The videos Gableman showed included exchanges Kaardal had with nursing home residents where he asked them what they thought of candidates who took various political positions. Ann Jacobs, the Democratic chairwoman of the Elections Commission, scoffed at the videos.
“People in nursing homes are not required to complete push-polls to exercise their constitutional right to vote,” she wrote on Twitter.