I am a big believer in states’ rights. There are vast differences in how the citizens choose to live and govern themselves from state to state and the last thing many of us want is federal interference in our way of life. Our Founders established a clear balance between federal and states’ rights by specifying in the Constitution which powers belong to the Federal Government and designating everything else as belonging to the States.
This separation of power, called Federalism, is the guiding principle to safeguard against the kind of centralized tyranny that drove the colonies to break from Britain while simultaneously providing a check against rogue states. Anticipating disagreements from time to time, Article VI of the Constitution, known as the “Supremacy Clause,” establishes that federal laws and the Constitution take precedence over state laws. The Federal Government has the power to intervene when it suits the national interest.
Wisconsin has a serious problem with its election system. Our elections are unverifiable, meaning every vote cast cannot be tied to the name of a currently eligible voter. Over the past 2 years, through the investigative reporting of John Ellis, published in On Wisconsin Outdoors (OWO), voters have been educated about the flaws in the system and the voices demanding that they be corrected grew louder. Those who have a role and a responsibility to correct the problems – elected officials, the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC), the media – through silence, deflection and unabashed lying have all sent the same message: There’s nothing to see here.
Now the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is getting involved. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the Civil Rights Division has requested Wisconsin’s Voter Registration List for inspection as authorized by the Civil Rights Act of 1960 to ensure the integrity of federal elections. Wisconsin has refused to cooperate leaving the DOJ no option but to sue. Dhillon recently commented on the Department’s position: “Many state election officials are choosing to fight us in court rather than show their work. We will continue to verify that all states are carrying out critical election duties.” Every Wisconsin voter should welcome the assistance of the Department of Justice. Here’s why.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission is a Threat to Freedom
On April 30 the WEC convened a special meeting to determine that in the spring election, 23 ballots were counted that should not have been in Madison and 5 ballots were not counted that should have been in Mequon. Both findings were inconsequential in the outcome of the election. This is a classic example of how the WEC deceives the public, pretending to pay rigorous attention to election details while deflecting from the real and serious threat to Wisconsin elections.
The WEC attempted to inflate the importance of their insignificant focus on a handful of votes with members of the Commission referring to the vote count in Mequon as “an absurd error” and an “epic failure’ while designating the Madison miscount “equally astonishing.”
The real epic failure is the WEC maintaining the statewide Registered Voter List that includes 8.2 million total names in a state with only 4.6 million voting aged citizens. The Commission refuses to purge the more than 4 million names of ineligible voters on the List and offers no defense for its indefensible position.
The Brennan Center, a public policy institute based at the NYU School of Law, recently warned, along with other similar organizations, that artificial intelligence (AI) may lead to more cyberattacks on elections. As new models of AI are developed, they “can pinpoint vulnerabilities that even the most experienced human experts would miss.” While the WEC digs in to preserve the vast reservoir of ineligible names on the Voter Registration List, many other states’ election officials are incorporating improved cybersecurity practices at every step of the election process.
Meaningless “Bipartisan” Voices
Growing numbers of so-called bipartisan voices are cropping up in defense of Wisconsin’s election system – another way to deflect and distract Wisconsin voters from the serious problems that make it impossible to verify that election results accurately reflect the will of the people.
A recent opinion piece in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel authored by Tom Barrett (former Democratic Congressman and Mayor of Milwaukee), Scott Klug (former Republican Congressman), Mike Tate (former Chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin), and JB Van Hollen (former Republican Attorney General) was an attempt to convince Wisconsinites that President Trump wants the federal government to take control of our elections (a lie) and that “Wisconsin elections are safe and decentralized” (another lie).
President Trump is pushing hard for a standard set of principles across the country that will ensure the integrity of federal elections. Included are proof of citizenship, voter ID, banning universal mail in voting (automatically mailing ballots to all eligible voters), requiring ballots to be received by election day, and requiring that voting systems use voter verifiable paper ballots. These commonsense measures hardly merit the title “Wisconsin doesn’t need Trump running our elections” that was chosen by these “bipartisan” authors.
The authors describe Wisconsin elections as “among the most decentralized in the nation” while completely ignoring the centralized Registered Voter List containing more than 4 million names of ineligible voters. They expose their ignorance and/or corruption when they proclaim Wisconsin’s elections “are resilient against outside interference,” a ridiculous and unprovable assertion with cybercrime being the fastest growing type of crime in the country and the world, costing an estimated $10.5 trillion annually with one million cyberattacks attempted daily.
In another example of “bipartisan” voices defending Wisconsin’s election system, a Republican and Democratic member of a group called Pillars of the Community wrote an opinion piece in last Sunday’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel entitled “Don’t believe what the polls say about elections. This is the truth.” They describe a recent sit down with local election officials that left them confident that the election system is “accurate, reliable, secure and administered by dedicated public servants.” They contrast their experience with a recent Marquette University Law School poll that found 1 in 4 of those surveyed are not certain votes will be accurately counted and 44% believe local officials falsify vote counts “some of the time.”
These perhaps well-meaning authors were led astray by the Marquette poll which failed to ask the real questions at the heart of the integrity of our elections. The poll led them to the conclusion that many Wisconsin voters believe local election officials are corrupt, incompetent or both. Barry Burden, Director of the Election Research Center at the University of Wisconsin Madison, is often consulted as an expert on elections. He recently commented that when it comes to polls, “…the wording of questions matters a lot.”
Charles Franklin, Director of the Marquette poll, masterfully avoids the election question that Wisconsin voters would surely answer in the affirmative nearly 100% of the time:
“Should the Wisconsin Registered Voter List contain only the names of currently eligible voters?”
No Justice for Harry Wait
Harry Wait is a 71-year-old Wisconsin man who loves freedom. He is concerned about the vulnerability of our elections to fraud so in 2022 when a trusted source told him that anyone could request an absentee ballot without voter ID on Wisconsin’s MyVote website, he decided to test it. He logged in and requested a dozen absentee ballots including those of Robin Vos, Speaker of the Assembly, and Cory Mason, Mayor of Racine, to be delivered to his home address. All he needed was a date of birth. Wait promptly informed Vos, Mason, and others of what he was doing and why, and when the ballots of Mason and 10 others arrived (Vos’s never did), he immediately returned them to Racine County Sheriff Chris Schmaling, who did not charge him. Josh Kaul, Wisconsin Attorney General, however, did charge him.
Wait should have been celebrated for exposing this grave threat to Wisconsin elections but instead was convicted of 2 counts of voter fraud and 1 count of identity theft in March of this year. Vos and Mason both testified against him, despite fully understanding that he had no intention of committing either of these crimes.
Read the details on page 27 of OWO. https://onwisconsinoutdoors.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/On-Wisconsin-Outdoors-May-June-2026-Issue.pdf
On May 4 Jay Stone, President of the patriot group HOT (Honest, Open and Transparent) Government announced filing a Help America Vote Act (HAVA) complaint with the WEC and a separate federal HAVA complaint with the Department of Justice. The complaints expose the MyVote website violation of federal security standards for online voter registration and absentee ballot requests and seek multifactor authentications for all online processes.
Looking for Fraud in all the Wrong Places
The ever-increasing pushback from those who are telling us there is nothing to see here is encouraging. We are making our voices impossible to ignore. The enemies of freedom want Wisconsin voters looking for fraud in all the wrong places – places they will never find it. Honest, conscientious local election officials and accurate ballot counts are not the problems. Corruption, cowardice, arrogance, incompetence, and ignorance have our elected officials shunning their responsibility to secure verifiable elections and members of the media shunning their responsibility to investigate and expose the problems. They’ve had their chance. Now is the time for Wisconsin voters to warmly welcome the U.S. Department of Justice into the Wisconsin voting quagmire. They will look for fraud in all the right places. And they’ll find it.
