Comment MADISON, Wis. — A Wisconsin man this week ordered absentee ballots for himself in the names of a mayor and top state lawmaker in an effort to expose vulnerabilities in the state’s election system. Harry Waite, who leads a group in southeastern Wisconsin focused on voting issues, said Thursday he was willing to go to jail to prove his point. The stunt angered many state election officials, especially those who have spent the past several years fighting unsubstantiated allegations of widespread voter fraud. “I would be willing to take that hit for the country,” Waite said of facing a prison sentence. “You can’t have ballots everywhere, uncovered.” “I committed a crime when I did it,” he said, “but do you think criminals care when they do it?” Waite said he used the state’s online election portal Tuesday to request that absentee ballots be mailed to his home for the Aug. 9 primary in the names of Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R) and Racine Mayor Cory Mason (D). . Wait clashed with both officials repeatedly as chairman of the HOT Government group, which takes its name from an acronym for “honest, open and transparent”. Shortly after making the requests, Waite explained his actions in an email to Vos and Mason as well as to Racine County District Attorney Patricia Hanson (R) and Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling (R), who promoted the former of President Donald Trump for a voter. fraud and called for the arrest of five state election commissioners. Wait said he and others requested about a dozen ballots in total. In addition to the ballot requests for Vos and Mason, Wait said he had permission from voters to request their ballots. He said he had not received ballots for Vos and Mason and did not expect to because he had notified authorities of what he had done. ‘A real wildfire’: Wisconsin emerges at the forefront of the 2020 ballot war Hanson said she was looking into the matter. Under Wisconsin law, it is a misdemeanor to make a false statement to obtain a ballot and a felony to make a false statement to an election official. In a Facebook post about the incident, Schmaling made no mention of Wait’s investigation — and instead called for an investigation the state’s online election portal, MyVote Wisconsin; Ann Jacobs, who sits on the state Board of Elections, said the district attorney should charge anyone involved in trying to get ballots meant for others. “They intentionally went in and stole somebody’s ballot,” said Jacobs, a Democrat on a council that is evenly divided politically. “It’s like walking into Walmart and getting a big screen TV and walking out the door with it and then going to the cops and saying, ‘It’s too easy to steal this.’ You still stole it.” Jacobs and the commission’s nonpartisan director, Megan Wolf, said the attempts to illegally obtain ballots revealed no vulnerabilities in the state’s system. “Deliberately using someone else’s identity to subvert the system does not demonstrate a flaw in MyVote, but rather a flaw in that person’s behavior,” Wolfe said in a written statement. “A malicious person who chooses to impersonate someone else to obtain official documents of any kind — whether for election use or for any other purpose — is in clear violation of state and federal law and may face consequences.” The issue prompted the electoral commission to convene an emergency meeting on Thursday night. Vos issued a statement condemning Wait’s move and noting that Wait is supporting Vos’ primary opponent. “His actions are deplorable,” Voss said in his statement. “If election integrity means anything, it means that we all have to follow the law — Republicans and Democrats.” Mason said he wants Wait to face charges. “He clearly took the law and tried to take away my right to vote, as well as Robin’s,” he said. “You can argue that there should be more security at the local bank. You can’t go rob a bank to make your point.” Mason said he is concerned that Waite’s actions will create unfounded suspicions of voter fraud just before the fall election. “It’s plainly wrong and, you know, with all kinds of irony of people who are so desperate to prove a conspiracy that doesn’t exist that they’re willing to commit the very crime they claim they’re trying to prevent,” he said. . Wisconsin’s online portal allows registered voters to request absentee ballots after logging in using their names and dates of birth. They can send the ballots anywhere so that those temporarily living somewhere other than their home have the opportunity to vote. A similar process can be followed by sending a hard copy by post. Most voters must provide a copy of a photo ID the first time they request an absentee ballot, which the election official can keep on file. Voters who claim to be homebound due to age or disability do not need to show identification, but making a false claim is a crime. When voters submit ballot requests online, their clerk receives an email notifying them of the request. The clerk makes the final call on whether to issue ballots. Waite said he recently explained to a reporter for the conservative Epoch Times how to request an absentee ballot in Waite’s name and mail it to Michigan. A short time later, he received a call from his employee to notify him of the request, he said. Wait said the system worked in that case, but he was concerned that officials in other parts of the state would not be as diligent. “I want MyVote shut down,” Wait said. “I want all absentee ballots closed until they can secure the ballots.” Ballots are not allowed in Wisconsin, according to Supreme Court rules Wait made his ballot requests two weeks before the primary, when Vos faces a challenge from Adam Steen. The primaries will also narrow the field for governor and the U.S. Senate. Wait, who supports Steen, has long battled Vos for the 2020 presidential election. Joe Biden beat Trump by about 21,000 votes in Wisconsin — results that have been upheld by courts and independent reviews. Waite said he doesn’t think Voss has done enough to look into the election, even though Voss hired a former state Supreme Court justice to conduct a yearlong investigation. Schmaling last year asked that Jacobs and four other election commissioners be charged with felonies over policies they set for nursing home voting in 2020. Because nursing homes did not allow visitors during the coronavirus pandemic, the election commission told officials to ignore a law that required them to send poll workers to those facilities and instead send absentee ballots to residents. Hanson and two other district attorneys declined to charge the commissioners. Two other prosecutors have not said whether they plan to file charges in this matter. Schmaling did not return a call Thursday, but Wait said the sheriff told him he did not plan to arrest him during a call they had Wednesday. “He said, ‘Thank you so much for going through with it,’” Wait said of his conversation with Schmaling. “So I said, ‘does that mean you’re not going to arrest me?’ And he said, “hell no.” “ That same morning, Schmaling posted a message on Facebook that said: “I am dismayed by the apparent vulnerabilities in My Vote Wisconsin that are ripe for fraud, and everyone – regardless of their political leanings – should join in calling for a thorough, nationwide investigation into this important issue of electoral integrity.” As of Thursday afternoon, the post had generated hundreds of comments and been shared nearly 1,000 times.
