Fight Over Wisconsin's Top Election Official Could Have 2024 Implications

Thursday, July 6th, 2023 -- 11:00 AM

(AP) A fight over whether Wisconsin’s top elections official will keep her job has potential implications for the 2024 presidential contest in a perennial battleground where statewide margins are typically razor thin.

Meagan Wolfe, the nonpartisan administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, has been a target of conspiracy theorists who falsely claim she was part of a plan to rig the 2020 vote to secure President Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump in the state.

Republicans who control the state Legislature have called for Wolfe to resign over how she ran the 2020 contest, even though multiple reports and reviews found the election was fair and the results accurate.

Democratic election commissioners are attempting to work around lawmakers to keep Wolfe in office indefinitely after her term ends Saturday. Both sides rely on arguments that raise unanswered legal questions and could take months to resolve through the courts.

Meanwhile, election observers say the stakes are high for a presidential contest that will be fiercely contested and where election officials and workers still face unrelenting pressure, harassment and threats over the 2020 election.

“The conspiracy theorists are going to jump at anything,” said Kevin Kennedy, who was Wisconsin’s top elections official for 34 years before retiring in 2016 from the board that preceded the elections commission. If Wolfe’s position as administrator remains disputed next year, it could become the basis for lawsuits and challenges to the guidance she issues to local clerks.

Even though Wolfe has little authority to do more than carry out decisions from the bipartisan commission, she has taken the brunt of the blame for commission actions in 2020.

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