The weather may have dampened their numbers.
Multiple court decisions, recounts, audits and assurances from people from across the political spectrum — including from former President Donald Trump’s administration — have not dampened their ardor.
A couple hundred people showed up for a soggy “election integrity” rally at the state Capitol Saturday to hear speakers including Wisconsin special counsel Michael Gableman and former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn trumpet the baseless claim that the 2020 election was marred by widespread fraud.
People gather Saturday at the state Capitol for an "election integrity" rally featuring speakers alleging widespread fraud in the 2020 election. There is no evidence of such fraud.
“We like to say elections have consequences. Well, fraudulent, fake elections have grave consequences,” Flynn, speaking by video link, told a crowd that eventually dwindled into the dozens with repeated bouts of rain.
Gableman earlier contended that state elections officials “threw the rules away in an effort to defeat Donald Trump and elect Joe Biden.”
The Saturday rally at the state Capitol started out with a few hundred people, but numbers dwindled with a series of rain showers. The event continues at 11 a.m. Sunday.
The former state Supreme Court justice, appointed by Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos to conduct a $676,000 review of the 2020 election in Wisconsin, has been among those who since Trump lost have been critical of decisions the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission made to help people vote in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, when public health officials were warning against large gatherings, such as at polling places.
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But decisions including approving the use of ballot drop boxes, keeping special voting deputies out of nursing homes and allowing outside funding to help pay for pandemic-related elections administration were either approved by the courts or by unanimous or near-unanimous votes of the commission.
Organized by a group including the head of the Stevens Point-based Freedom Fighters of Central Wisconsin, the “United We Stand We the People” rally was originally pitched as a $100,000-plus affair spanning two full days and including food carts, live music and more. Expected attendance was put at 5,000.
Michael Gableman, right, former state Supreme Court justice and current special counsel, was among the speakers at an "election integrity" rally Saturday at the state Capitol.
But after the state Capitol Police nixed a permit for Saturday morning and early afternoon due to conflicts with the Dane County Farmers’ Market and Crazylegs Classic fundraising race, and the city of Madison raised questions about everything from parking to portable toilets to security needs, rally organizers agreed to start later on Saturday and keep their activities confined to the Capitol grounds. The event is scheduled to continue at 11 a.m. Sunday.
While speakers and rally-goers were clearly not in the Democrats’ camp, some federal and state Republican leaders took a rhetorical beating as well, especially Vos, who some feel is insufficiently committed to either the cause or to Trump.
Vos has said he opposes decertifying Wisconsin’s election results, as Gableman has suggested.
“I believe that the election was stolen,” said Kristi Sparks, 61, of Adams-Friendship. “Because I watched the election until 2 in the morning and finally went to bed and woke up to a total different story.”
Election officials said prior to the election that coming up with a final tally was likely to be delayed, due to the crush of absentee ballots, state law that prohibits counting ballots before Election Day, and the need to transport ballots to central counting locations in some of the state’s largest population centers. Final tallies were delayed in other states as well, and major media outlets didn’t call the election for Biden until four days after Election Day.
Michael Flynn, former Trump administration national security adviser, appears on a screen Saturday at an "election integrity" rally on the state Capitol grounds. He addressed the crowd via video link.
Gableman’s work has been slowed by lawsuits challenging Gableman’s subpoenas and seeking records from Gableman’s work. It so far has turned up no evidence of the kind of widespread fraud that would have tipped the result of the election, which Joe Biden won by nearly 21,000 votes.
A nonpartisan review of the election by the state’s Legislative Audit Bureau and one by the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty similarly discovered no such evidence but did suggest changes to better secure and formalize election processes related to absentee voting, maintaining accurate voter rolls and other matters.
Vos said last week that Gableman’s probe would continue beyond the April 30 end date in Gableman’s contract.
The 2020 election is over. Here’s what happened (and what didn’t)
The 2020 election was “the most secure in American history,” according to the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which coordinates the nation’s election infrastructure.
While a handful of voters risked going to prison by attempting to vote twice or in the name of a dead relative, as happens in any election, no evidence of widespread fraud has ever been produced in Wisconsin or elsewhere.
Yet, many continue to question some of the practices clerks relied on to encourage eligible voters to cast ballots and make sure their votes were counted amid the first election in more than 100 years held during a pandemic.
The Wisconsin State Journal has covered every twist and turn of this debate in scores of stories. But here are a few that offered some broader context about what happened, and didn't happen, in the election of 2020.
The state has multiple, overlapping safeguards aimed at preventing ineligible voters from casting ballots, tampering with the ballots or altering vote totals.
Nothing in the emails suggests there were problems with the election that contributed in any meaningful way to Trump's 20,682-vote loss to Joe Biden.
"Despite concerns with statewide elections procedures, this audit showed us that the election was largely safe and secure," Sen. Rob Cowles said Friday.
The grants were provided to every Wisconsin municipality that asked for them, and in the amounts they asked for.
"Application of the U.S. Department of Justice guidance among the clerks in Wisconsin is not uniform," the memo says.
YORKVILLE — The Racine County Sheriff’s Office announced in a Thursday morning news conference that it has identified eight cases of what it believes to be election fraud at a Mount Pleasant nursing home.
The memo states that state law gives the Audit Bureau complete access to all records during an audit investigation and federal law and guidance does not prohibit an election official from handing over election records.
Drop boxes were used throughout Wisconsin, including in areas where Trump won the vast majority of counties.
Thousands of ballot certifications examined from Madison are a window onto how elections officials handled a pandemic and a divided and unhelpful state government.
"I don't think that you instill confidence in a process by kind of blindly assuming there's nothing to see here," WILL president and general counsel Rick Esenberg said.
The Associated Press reviewed every potential case of voter fraud in six battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvan…
The report is the latest to show that there was not widespread fraud in Wisconsin.
The clear insinuation was that someone not qualified to conduct an election improperly influenced these vulnerable voters. But the Wisconsin State Journal could not confirm the data.
The turnout at nursing homes in Brown, Kenosha, Milwaukee and Racine counties in 2020 was not much different from the turnout in 2016.
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