Here & Now

Tracking Wisconsin's Ongoing Elections Inquiry

Frederica Freyberg:

Earlier this week in a blow to Republican attempts to find wrongdoing in the 2020 elections, the Wisconsin Elections Commission unanimously threw out a claim alleging illegal funding was distributed to more than 200 municipalities, including the five largest cities in Wisconsin. But hold the phone because just after that, two Republican members of the commission changed their minds saying they do in fact want to consider the complaint. And there is more, Wednesday, an Assembly elections committee called a number of people to testify whose credentials as experts were questioned including by our next guest Professor Barry Burden, director of the UW-Madison Elections Research Center. And professor, thanks very much for being here.

Barry Burden:

Thanks for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

What is going on here? It really feels like these election probes are kind of spinning out of control.

Barry Burden:

It is a bit of a three ring circus. We are more than a year from the presidential election and still there are probes, investigations and audits underway in one form or another. All of them seem to be essentially open-ended with no clear goals, unclear who was involved, what deadlines are set for producing some kind of report or conclusion. So my fear is that they are unfortunately doing the opposite of what the proponents say they are doing. Instead of building confidence in the election system, they are continuing to raise suspicions, make allegations and leave questions on the table that are likely to lower public trust in elections.

Frederica Freyberg:

However do you believe that’s by design and if so, what would be the motivation for that?

Barry Burden:

I don’t know if it’s by design. It could be by incompetence, lack of experience. Michael Gableman has said himself he doesn’t know how Wisconsin elections operate so there is a learning curve I think for some of the legislators and investigators who are involved. But I think there is also a kind of sympathy for President Trump and the concerns he has raised about the integrity of the election in Wisconsin specifically. Speaker Vos introduced Michael Gableman as the head of the investigation after meeting with President Trump at a rally in Alabama. So there is clearly external pressure being put on some Republican leaders to keep these issues alive.

Frederica Freyberg:

Would you regard it as more than sympathy and potential political necessity?

Barry Burden:

Well, it’s true the base of the party, the core supporters, at least of President Trump are still highly skeptical of the election. Doubtful that President Biden deserves his position and want it uncovered and investigated. That’s despite the fact dozens of lawsuits, including I think seven or eight in Wisconsin, have confirmed the result. Judges have thrown those cases out. In Wisconsin we have also done a full recount of Dane County and Milwaukee County at President Trump’s request. That validated the result. That doesn’t seem to matter. So it doesn’t appear to be an investigation looking for facts, it seems to be an investigation trying — or investigations, plural, trying to find support for an assumption or conclusion that’s already been reached.

Frederica Freyberg:

In the latest informational hearing this week held at the Capitol from Republican lawmakers investigating the 2020 election, it had you tweeting, “I don’t have the time to live tweet correct the nonsense that so-called election experts are giving state legislators at their invitation.” Why did you characterize those who testified in front of Representative Brandtjen’s committee Wednesday as experts in quotation marks?

Barry Burden:

Well the people who were invited this week and in a prior hearing the committee held, are mostly election doubters. Either conspiracy theorists or people who have filed lawsuits to try to overturn the election results. They already have a conclusion about what they think about the validity of the election and they are presenting to the committee what look like authoritative analysis that involve statistics and charts and references to statues, but the truth is they’re all amateurs who are Donald Trump supporters as are the people working on the Gableman investigation. It’s not the kind of bipartisan, serious look that I hope the Legislature would do after every election to try to make improvements and tweaks. Instead it’s sort of feeding into this fringe narrative about the questions about the validity of the election itself.

Frederica Freyberg:

In your expert opinion, how should voters take this? What should they do with all of this information that’s being generated from all of these investigations?

Barry Burden:

You know, the people to trust are those who are in positions of authority who actually administer elections and understand how they are run. Those are mainly the county and municipal clerks across the state. Every city, town and village has its own clerk. They are happy to answer your questions and will tell you they have confidence in the election. They won’t say it was perfect. It’s a complicated human process that has some errors and some inconsistencies, but they are people who know from firsthand experience how these things operate as opposed to these outside observers who is are flown in to offer kind of outlandish speculation.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right Professor Barry Burden thank you for joining us.

Barry Burden:

Glad to be with you.