February 21, 2024

Even before The Big Lie of 2020, Wisconsin Republicans have been complaining about the length of time it takes Milwaukee County election officials to count the absentee ballots, saying it seems like ballot dumps are being done in favor of Democratic candidates. This is of course, pure projection, since the only ballot dump in recent history in Wisconsin happened in 2011 when Waukesha County clerk Kathy Nickolaus "found" thousands of uncounted ballots, giving the election to ultra conservative Supreme Court Justice David Prosser.

The cry about ballot dumps escalated greatly after the 2020 elections when Donald Trump and all of his MAGAts tried to spread The Big Lie.

In an effort to stem off such concerns, the state legislature came up with a bipartisan bill that would allow clerks to start counting absentee ballots on the Monday before Election Day. However, that bill is now stuck in the state senate. Republican Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu says that there isn't enough votes to pass it:

"I'm not sure that we have enough votes to pass that this session," LeMahieu told WISN-TV's 'Upfront' host Matt Smith.

Without a final vote in the Senate, election officials will not have the ability to start processing absentee ballots a day early for the upcoming 2024 elections. Wisconsin is one of only a handful of states that don't allow clerks to begin processing absentee ballots prior to Election Day.

Clerks and bipartisan lawmakers have pushed for the change to prevent voter confusion and conspiracies that result from large amounts of ballots being processed late and added to totals, sometimes changing which candidate is in the lead.

LeMahieu even tacitly admits the late counts are a problem by saying he authored a similiar bill in a previous attempt. But then LeMahieu gets really insulting with his stupidity, saying that Milwaukee officials will simply need to count faster and that other communities get it done without a problem:

When asked if Republicans will be to blame in November if Milwaukee again reports results late at night, LeMahieu said other large cities in Wisconsin count their ballots on time, such as Dane County.

"If this bill doesn't go through, it's incumbent on Milwaukee to count their ballots fast enough," LeMahieu said. He added he doesn't believe the city is counting ballots quickly enough.

That is pure, unmitigated bullshit! Milwaukee County is the most populous county in Wisconsin and has about twice as many residents as Dane County, the second most populated county. Hell, even just the City of Milwaukee itself has more residents than all of Dane County.

In December, Milwaukee Election Commission executive director Claire Woodall testified that even with extra staff and extra resources in 2016, it seill took officials until 1:30 am the next day to count all the ballots. Woodall also pointed out that when you have people working that long and that hard, it greatly enhances the chances of human error occurring.

But much like federal level Republicans don't want to resolve the border crisis because they are using it as an election issue, Wisconsin Republicans don't want to fix the concerns about ballot dumps because they want to use it as an excuse for losing and to cast further doubt on election integrity.

Regardless of what level of government, Republicans consistently prove that they are unwilling and/or unable to govern.

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.
Mastodon