Here & Now

Republicans Seek to Remove Meagan Wolfe as Elections Head

Frederica Freyberg:

Speaking of the Wisconsin Court, the question of whether the administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission will keep her job will likely be decided in the courts. Republicans in the legislature want to see Meagan Wolfe removed from her position. They held a public hearing this week on her renomination to run the Elections Commission, except she hasn’t technically been renominated. Democrats called the hearing a sham. The room was full of election conspiracy theorists like Mike Gableman, who was called an embarrassment to the state by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos after Gableman’s election investigation cost the taxpayers millions of dollars and produced no evidence of fraud or wrongdoing. As to Wolfe and the Elections Commission, earlier this summer, the six members of WEC held a vote to renominate Wolfe for the job. The three Republicans voted yes hoping to send her name to the Republican Senate where the GOP said they would vote her down effectively firing her. But the three Democrats on the commission abstained from voting and since state law requires four votes for a nomination, Wolfe is able to continue to stay on, even as her term has expired. Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul advised Wolfe not to attend the hearing, citing a case Kaul lost in the Supreme Court in 2022 in which the high court ruled Fred Prehn could stay on Natural Resources Board past his term. The Republican Senate passed a resolution saying they considered Wolfe renominated and called the hearing. Democrats say the fix is to change the law making it clear appointed officials have to step down when their term expires.

Mark Spreitzer:

I guess I would just say in terms of the legislature, giving away its authority, we are the ones that empowered the six-member bipartisan commission with the ability to have the first say in the process of appointing an administrator. They have taken a vote and they have not made a nomination. So if we don’t like that, we are welcome to change statute but that is the statute this legislature created.

Romaine Quinn:

Just unfortunate we are going to wind back up in court for trying to exercise our own authority. It was never intended this to play out this way. And if it was by some — we knew this was going to happen, then we purposely wrote really bad legislation, which I don’t think was anyone’s intention.