With just under six months until the 2024 presidential election, wrangling over the rules that will guide voting this year — and the officials who will enforce them — has begun to intensify in Wisconsin.
The swing state has had numerous statewide elections decided by tiny margins in recent years and in 2020 was a major focus of former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results. Leading into the 2024 presidential contest, multiple lawsuits have been filed while the officials who will be responsible for upholding the rules are changing.
This week, Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson announced that Claire Woodall would no longer serve as executive director of the Milwaukee Elections Commission. Woodall is being replaced by her deputy, Paulina Gutiérrez, who has never administered an election.
On Monday, Johnson said it was a normal personnel change and that Woodall had not been fired.
“Paulina’s integrity and capabilities are ideally suited to this position. She will lead the office at an important juncture when public scrutiny of the work of the department will be extremely high,” Johnson said in a statement. “I have confidence in her, and I will make certain the department has the resources it needs to fulfill its duties.”
In previous elections, Milwaukee’s election administration has been at the center of Republican claims of fraud. Allegations have frequently stemmed from the operation of the city’s central count location where absentee ballots are tallied. In the recently concluded legislative session, Republicans in the state Senate refused to advance legislation that would allow the city to start processing ballots ahead of time, leading to concerns that if the city again takes a long time to count those ballots, conspiracy theories will once again emerge.
Woodall had been in charge of the agency through the tumultuous 2020 election, becoming the target of harassment and threats from election conspiracy theorists. She had also previously sparred with Johnson over her response to the conspiracies and personal attacks.
Earlier this year, Woodall testified in the trial against former commission employee Kimberly Zapata, who illegally requested military absentee ballots and had them sent to state Rep. Janel Brandtjen (R-Menomonee Falls). Last week, Zapata was sentenced to one year of probation for the offense.
Outside of Milwaukee, state and national groups continue to fight over election administration.
This week, a conservative legal firm filed a lawsuit against the Wisconsin Elections Commission and its administrator, Meagan Wolfe, for access to personal identifying information in the state’s voter rolls. The firm, Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), is known for its aggressive lawsuit seeking to purge the state’s voter rolls. Cleta Mitchell, a former attorney for Milwaukee-based Foley and Lardner who played a role in Trump’s attempts to overturn the election, is on the PILF’s board.
On Tuesday, Republican legislative leaders held a vote to intervene in a lawsuit in which the state Supreme Court is considering overturning a previous decision that banned the use of absentee ballot drop boxes.
And on Monday, the Court accepted a case appealing a Racine County court decision in which the city of Racine’s use of a mobile absentee voting ban was declared illegal.
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originally published at https%3A%2F%2Fwisconsinexaminer.com%2F2024%2F05%2F07%2Fsix-months-from-election-day-in-wisconsin-wrangling-over-rules-heats-up%2F by Henry Redman
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