Frederica Freyberg:

The Racine County sheriff this week is recommending felony charges against five members of the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Last week Sheriff Chris Schmaling called on Attorney General Josh Kaul to investigate pandemic election guidance in 2020 that allowed nursing home staff to help residents vote rather than special voting deputies. Kaul said the sheriff is engaging in a disgraceful publicity stunt that shows an appalling lack of judgement. The investigation has been referred to the Racine DA.

Also this week, the elections commission administrator responded to Republican calls for her resignation in the wake of the sheriff’s allegations of election fraud.

Meagan Wolfe:

In terms of the calls for my resignation, you know, ultimately I think that it’s not productive. I think it’s baseless. And I think it’s just partisan politics. You know, I also think that it misrepresents my role and the role of the commission. I think that the claims about the commission, I think it really highlights a lack of understanding about how special voting deputies work in normal circumstances, yet alone how that process works during a pandemic. I think it overlooks the fact that special voting deputies were not being allowed into facilities last year. They were not being allowed into facilities as recently as this spring. And I also think it overlooks the fact that only a court can decide that somebody is incompetent to vote. I mean, the commission cannot force facilities, private facilities, to allow special voting deputies or anyone into a private care facility. The commission’s decision allowed voters in those care facilities to be able to participate. If we all think back to the April election, the pandemic started in the middle of an active election. The election had already started. Ballots had already gone out. If clerks had continued to try to accomplish their visits to facilities that they knew were not going to allow them in, what that would have meant is those voters in those care facilities would not have been able to vote. That’s not fair.