Wisconsin AG Calls Attempt to Overturn Election ‘Undemocratic’
Wisconsin AG Calls Attempt to Overturn Election ‘Undemocratic’
(Bloomberg) -- An attempt by a group backing President Donald Trump to overturn the election results in Wisconsin is “fundamentally undemocratic,” the state’s attorney general said as he urged Wisconsin’s highest court to reject the request.
“The people of Wisconsin have been entrusted to select our state’s presidential electors, and they made their decision on November 3, 2020,” Attorney General Joshua Kaul said in court filing Friday. “In a representative democracy like ours, that choice must be respected.”
President-elect Joe Biden won Wisconsin by more than 20,000 votes. But Trump and his supporters have alleged, without evidence, that the vote was rigged.
The Wisconsin Voters Alliance, a pro-Trump group, petitioned the state’s Supreme Court earlier this week to stop the certification of the popular vote. It claimed various violations of state election law, including that election officials in two Democratic-leaning counties let voters skirt the state’s voter ID law.
The group also said voting officials in five counties violated state law when they allowed a non-profit, funded by Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, to donate $6 million to get-out-the-vote efforts in five Democratic-leaning cities, including Milwaukee and Madison.
Zuckerberg-Backed Group
In a separate filing the Zuckerberg-backed group, Center for Tech and Civic Life, noted similar claims have been rejected repeatedly.
“At this point, eight federal district judges, nine federal circuit judges, and two U.S. Supreme Court justices have rejected motions premised on allegations of impropriety or illegality in the operation of CTCL’s grant program,” the group said.
Kaul described the group’s other complaints -- which included absentee ballots that were sent but never requested, votes mistakenly uncounted and people who voted where they did not reside -- as the sort of “irregularities” that happen in every election.
“Wisconsin law provides an orderly procedure for addressing these types of irregularities and ensuring that votes are accurately counted: a recount,” he said.
Trump’s campaign had paid for a recount in two Wisconsin counties: Milwaukee and Dane.
Milwaukee’s recount ended Friday with Biden gaining 132 votes. Dane county’s recount is expected to end Sunday.
The case is Wisconsin Voters Alliance v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, 2020-ap-001930, Wisconsin Supreme Court (Madison).
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