A whopping eight elections-related bills that Republicans in Wisconsin’s state legislature passed have now been vetoed by the state’s Democratic Governor Tony Evers, who effectively ended the legislative pushes, for now, because the Republicans behind the efforts do not have sufficient support for their proposals to override his vetoes. The bills would’ve made a variety of changes to the electoral process in Wisconsin, reports Bipartisan Report.
One, for instance, was set to bar anyone other than individual voters themselves, their immediate family members or legal guardians from returning absentee ballots to authorities. Another measure, as explained by the Associated Press, would have provided state legislators with “control over guidance delivered to local election clerks by the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission” — potentially allowing partisans to take control at a crucial juncture in conducting elections.
Wisconsin has been among the states targeted by former President Donald Trump and his allies in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election. Joe Biden won there, and there’s never been any meaningful evidence that Biden’s victory in Wisconsin or any other state was the result of fraud — but among other examples of the Trump team’s machinations, Wisconsin was one of the states where allies of the now ex-president assembled supposed alternate electoral votes for Trump despite Biden’s victory.
Evers, meanwhile, remarked to state legislators that the “right to vote is fundamental to our democracy; it should not be subject to the whim of politicians who do not like the outcome of an election.” The lack of evidence for widespread election fraud means certain proposed changes to the handling of elections aren’t based in realistic concerns — in reality, they’re tied to craven political posturing. It’s not as though there was widespread fraud connected to the usage of drop boxes for mail-in ballots or expansive fraud tied to voters’ ballots being returned by people other than themselves — no systematic election fraud was present, so these Republicans are essentially purporting to solve non-existent problems.
