Political parties do not serve the people. They use the people, fueling division at every opportunity.
Driven by the lust for money and power, political warfare is a useful tool for maintaining a stranglehold on the political process. If they can convince the voters they are the defenders of the “right” political viewpoint, the money pours in. Donald Trump recognized the Republican Party was a problem and not a solution and began cleaning house at the national level when he replaced Ronna McDaniel, Chair of the Republican National Committee, with Michael Whatley in 2024. The Republican Party of Wisconsin (RPW) and Republican state legislators are standouts at the state level when it comes to ignoring the will of the people. Ideally, Trump’s continued focus on election integrity will bring him directly and swiftly to the leadership of the RPW and the state Legislature and his aggressive housecleaning will continue.
On May 8th, 2 liberal groups filed lawsuits asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to rule Wisconsin’s Congressional maps are unconstitutional. Their goal is to create districts they believe the Democrats would have a greater chance of winning, resulting in a more evenly split state. Currently, Republicans hold 6 out of 8 seats in the House. In 2023, after the Wisconsin Supreme Court flipped to a liberal majority, it declined a liberal request for Congressional map review in an obvious attempt to calm fears of activism until they could secure the court majority for 3 more years with a win in 2025. There is little doubt they will take up these suits in one of the many acts of judicial activism we can expect from them. It is unclear whether they will have the last word in this matter, as it may find its way to the United States Supreme Court because of recent precedent. In 2023, a United States Supreme Court decision ruled that state courts do not have “free rein” to strike down maps and elections laws that have been passed by state legislatures, especially when several elections have passed.
The same day the suits were filed, the Republican Party of Wisconsin leadership sprang into action with what they saw as a fundraising opportunity. An urgent call was sent out to its members: “Democrats are resorting to RIGGING the maps because they can’t win with their Congressional Candidates.” “We must STOP their politically motivated lawsuits and DEFEND our Republican Congressional Delegation”! “Stop Democrats gerrymandering! DONATE today!”
The obscene amount of money that flows into our elections has been a major contributor to corruption. The response to these lawsuits is offensive but not unexpected from Party leaders who, along with the elected Republican members of the state legislature, have ignored the demands of constituents for nearly two years to address serious problems with the state’s election system that make our elections unverifiable.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) maintains the Registered Voter List which contains more than 8.2 million names. There are about 5.9 million people residing in Wisconsin. The Registered Voter List contains the names of nearly 4.4 million people who are ineligible to vote for various reasons, creating a vast reservoir of names that can be hacked to produce fraudulent ballots and commit election fraud. There is no defensible reason to maintain a registered voter list that contains any names other than those who are currently eligible to vote, yet the legislators and Party leaders have ignored calls to clean up the rolls.
Wisconsin has issued 250,000 driver’s licenses to non-citizens who are here legally. These licenses are identical to citizen licenses and can easily be used to commit voter fraud. A driver’s license is all that is required to register to vote or cast a ballot. Legislators and Party leaders have ignored demands from their constituents to require non-citizen licenses to be clearly marked “not for voting”.
Verifiable elections are the obvious, urgent priority for everyone seriously concerned about election integrity. Once Wisconsin’s election systems are secured against cheating to the extent humanly possible and elections can be verified, voters will have to accept even the results they are not happy with as the legitimate will of the people. Until the results of every election can be verified, the voters have no reason to trust them. The absolute refusal of the legislators and Party leaders to address this problem leads to the only logical conclusion: unverifiable elections serve their purpose.
Yesterday, at the RPW annual convention in Wausau, there was an opportunity to make election integrity a serious top priority. A resolution to “call on the Wisconsin Legislature to require the Registered Voter List of the state of Wisconsin be restricted to only the names of currently eligible voters” and a resolution to “call on the Wisconsin Legislature to require that any driver’s license lawfully issued to a non-citizen be clearly designated as not for voting” were both approved unanimously at the Republican Party of Waukesha County caucus earlier in the year. Subsequently, they survived editing by the RPW 5th Congressional District Resolution Committee with the essence of the resolutions intact, and passed unanimously at the Republican District 5 caucus in April.
The statewide Resolutions Committee of the RPW approved 7 Resolutions related to election integrity that went to the Convention floor for a vote. The Committee did not include the resolution requiring driver’s licenses issued to non-citizens to be clearly designated “not for voting” – a serious omission. The resolutions that came to the floor for a vote included: requiring all communities to have their votes tabulated and ready to report within 2 hours of polls closing; requiring the Voter Registration List to contain only the names of currently-eligible voters and making the list available to citizens who request it free of charge; eliminating same-day registration and closing voter registration at least one week prior to election day; banning drop boxes; protecting the rights of election observers to fully participate in the process; ensuring equal access of rural areas to early in-person voting; and banning the use of central counts to process and tabulate absentee ballots.
The spirited discussion among those assembled at the Conference left little doubt that conservative voters at the grassroots understand the election integrity problems in Wisconsin are a real threat to our freedom and they want them fixed. All 7 election integrity resolutions passed with comfortable margins. Cleaning up the Registered Voter List passed unanimously.
As a first-time attendee at the statewide Convention, I wondered if passing resolutions, beginning at the county level, is mechanism used by Party leaders to lull those at the grassroots into believing they have meaningful voice or an authentic process for setting Party priorities. Rule #10 of the Convention states, “Resolutions are not binding and cannot compel an agent of the Republican Party of Wisconsin or an elected official to take a certain action”. Passing these resolutions has the potential to be the beginning of dealing with the serious threat of unverifiable elections. If they go nowhere at the discretion of “agents” of the Republican Party or “elected officials”, it will have been a meaningless exercise in futility.
Donald Trump stands out among career politicians and political party leaders in his understanding of, and commitment to, “public service”. It’s why the American people feel such strong allegiance to him. Everything he does reflects the will of the people, though his political enemies work hard every day to brand him as concerned only with self-enrichment.
Trump has his team working 24/7 on behalf of the American people and last Monday he emerged from a full weekend’s work to announce the last American hostage would be released from Gaza that day, India and Pakistan had agreed to a cease fire, Putin and Zelensky had agreed to begin to negotiate an end to the Ukraine/Russia war, China and the United States had agreed in principle to open the Chinese markets to US manufacturers and “equalization” of the markets with authentic fair trade, and, in perhaps the most incredible monumental change Presidents and members of Congress have only talked about for years, the United States will no longer accept fully funding the cost of pharmacy research and development and will not pay more for drugs than the lowest price paid by any other developed nation. (Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Bobby Kennedy explained the US is 4% of the world population but provides 70% of pharmaceutical revenue with the American people paying up to10 times more for the same drugs as other nations.)
After these announcements Trump was off to the Middle East with his sights set on another $1 trillion in economic investment in the United States. By Wednesday he had secured $1.2 trillion in investment commitments from the leaders of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, lifted sanctions that had been in place in Syria for over a decade to give its people a chance at a good life after overthrowing the brutal Assad regime, and made it clear he wants to negotiate Iran into relating peacefully and constructively with the rest of the world but stressed they will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.
Trump is the embodiment of public service. American citizens should start demanding political parties and elected officials, who shamelessly call themselves “public servants”, respond to, and reflect, the will of the people. We aren’t even close. When it comes to political parties and career politicians, “public service” is self-service.
