Wisconsin Senate Votes to Fire Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator

Saturday, September 16th, 2023 -- 10:00 AM

(By Anya van Wagtendonk, Wisconsin Public Radio) The Wisconsin Senate voted Thursday to fire Meagan Wolfe, the Wisconsin Elections Commission administrator, immediately setting off a legal challenge from the Democratic attorney general.

According to Anya van Wagtendonk with Wisconsin Public Radio, the decision Thursday will test the application of a recent state court decision suggesting appointed officials can stay in office after the expiration of their terms if they do not step down.

Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul has said that applies to Wolfe, so Senate confirmation proceedings, up to and including Thursday's vote, are illegal. Immediately following the Thursday vote, Kaul announced that the state Department of Justice had filed a lawsuit aimed at rejecting the Senate's actions.

"We are going to court to minimize the confusion resulting from today's stunt and to protect a pillar of our democracy, the fair administration of elections," he said in a statement.

Wolfe told reporters hours after the vote that she will continue to serve as elections administrator as the legal matter is resolved. "Unless a final determination of a court says otherwise, I will continue to serve as the administrator of the (Wisconsin Elections Commission)," she said.

Republicans have said they were upholding a process laid out in the state Constitution that compels them to replace appointed officers at the end of their terms. Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, said that replacing Wolfe would help restore faith in Wisconsin elections.

"If a key component of fair and honest elections is that the electorate have confidence in our elections, and if they don't have confidence in our elections, we're disenfranchising voters," he said. "They're not going to go out and vote if they don't feel that their vote is not going to be stolen, or that there's fraud going on." 

Gov. Tony Evers immediately blasted the day's proceedings in a statement, saying Legislative Republicans are attempting to "sow distrust and disinformation about our elections, denigrate our clerks, poll workers, and election administrators, and undermine basic tenets of our democracy, including the peaceful transfer of power."

He added he was calling on the Wisconsin Department of Justice to provide legal representation for expected legal proceedings challenging the vote. Elections commissioners, Democratic lawmakers and Kaul have all cited a case decided last summer by the former conservative majority in the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which found that Fred Prehn, an official appointed to the Department of Natural Resources by former Gov. Scott Walker, could remain in his post after the expiration of his term.

LeMahieu previously told local Republican leaders the Prehn decision meant ousting Wolfe was unlikely, according to emails obtained by the Wisconsin State Journal. The Prehn ruling suggests the expiration of a term does not create a vacancy to be filled.

Only a departure from office, for example, by resignation or death, creates a vacancy, the court found. In an August letter to the state's nonpartisan Legislative Council, Kaul said that this applies to Wolfe, and that any subsequent confirmation action by the state Senate was therefore illegal.

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