Patrick Marley and Molly Beck, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
MADISON – President Donald Trump sued Wisconsin officials Tuesday in a last-ditch effort to reclaim a state he lost by about 20,700 votes.
The Republican president filed his suit against Democratic Gov. Tony Evers a day after the governor and the head of the state Elections Commission certified Joe Biden had won the state’s 10 Electoral College votes.
Trump has made little headway with lawsuits in other states and he faces an extraordinarily difficult path in Wisconsin.
Time is running short. Under the federal “safe harbor” law, the results determined by the state will be respected if challenges to the outcome are resolved by Dec. 8. The Electoral College meets on Dec. 14, and Congress is to count the electoral votes on Jan. 6.
State law says challenges to election results are to be filed in circuit court, but Trump brought his lawsuit directly with the state Supreme Court, where conservatives hold a 4-3 majority. The justices did not immediately say whether they would take the case.
Since the election last month, Trump has argued hundreds of thousands of ballots in Wisconsin should be thrown out, in many cases on technicalities. For instance, he alleges the process election officials have used for more than a decade to conduct in-person early voting is illegal.
His challenges were rejected by the boards of canvassers in Milwaukee and Dane counties during a partial recount that wrapped up on Sunday. But Trump is making those same arguments in his lawsuit.
The lawsuit challenges 221,323 absentee ballots cast in Dane and Milwaukee counties, alleging election officials broke the law by continuing the longstanding practice of early voting, allowing voters to label themselves indefinitely confined without further inspection, allowed clerks to fill in missing information on ballots, and allowed poll workers to collect ballots in Madison parks.
The campaign is challenging:
- 170,140 ballots cast early
- 28,395 ballots cast by voters who claimed to be indefinitely confined
- 17,271 ballots collected at “Democracy in the Park” events
- 5,517 ballots for which clerks filled in missing information
“With Gov. Evers’ premature certification, he is saying the president of the United States has no right to go to court in order to have illegal ballots examined,” Jim Troupis, lead attorney for the Trump campaign in Wisconsin, told Fox News in an interview. “He’s not saying we have a frivolous lawsuit — he is saying we have no right to judicial review — that’s another level of bad.”
Democrats have not said Trump can’t bring a lawsuit, as Troupis claimed.
Ann Jacobs, the Democratic chairwoman of the state Elections Commission, this week said Trump couldn’t file a lawsuit until the results were certified.
Troupis, who is seeking to throw out his own early vote along with hundreds of thousands of others, said he “will not back down when it comes to upholding the law or protecting the integrity of our elections.”
Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, claimed the lawsuit seeks to restore trust voters have in the electoral process in Wisconsin.
“As we have said from the very beginning of this process, we want all legal votes and only legal votes to be counted,” Giuliani said .
Separately, Trump’s allies last week brought two lawsuits that seek to have the Republican-controlled Legislature, rather than voters, decide how to cast Wisconsin’s electoral votes. Like Trump’s lawsuit, those cases were filed with the state Supreme Court, but the justices have not said whether they will take them up.
With his wide-ranging challenges, Trump has called into question an election system built by Republicans over eight years when they controlled all of state government. He has concentrated his challenges on liberal parts of the state, but has also sought to throw out ballots cast by Republican lawmakers.
In-person early voting
Wisconsin allows residents to vote early in person if they submit an application for a ballot and certify that they are the one who filled it out. For more than a decade, election officials have allowed voters to fill out a ballot in person, place it in an envelope and sign a form on the envelope that counts as both the application and the certificate.
Trump has argued that process is flawed, saying a separate application must be filed first. During the partial recount, he unsuccessfully sought to throw out all in-person ballots in Milwaukee and Dane counties, but not conservative counties.
Witness addresses
To be valid, absentee ballots in Wisconsin must come in an envelope that is signed by the voter and a witness and include the witness’ address. In cases where witnesses don’t provide their addresses, clerks have been allowed to fill the addresses in if they know that information from talking to the voter, talking to the witness or looking at voter rolls, tax databases or other information.
That policy was set four years ago under guidance pushed by Republicans on the Elections Commission at the time, including Stephen King, who Trump later named as the U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic. Trump didn’t dispute the state’s witness policy when he narrowly won Wisconsin in 2016, but he now says it is illegal. He argues only the voter or witness can write in the address.
Indefinitely confined voters
Most voters must provide a photo ID to get an absentee ballot, but those who identify themselves as indefinitely confined because of age or disability do not. This spring, Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell and Milwaukee County Clerk George Christenson suggested voters could label themselves as indefinitely confined if they were staying at home because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The state Republican Party sued and the state Supreme Court found the advice was faulty. The clerks rescinded their advice and pointed voters to guidance from the Elections Commission that noted it’s up to voters to determine for themselves whether they are indefinitely confined.
About 215,000 voters statewide called themselves indefinitely confined for the Nov. 3 election — up from 72,000 in a lower-turnout election for state Supreme Court last year.
Fox News reported the lawsuit will claim clerks “did not do their due diligence to remove voters fraudulently claiming” to be indefinitely confined. Clerks around Wisconsin sent letters before the November election to voters who had called themselves indefinitely confined asking them whether they met the criteria.
Trump has argued all ballots cast by indefinitely confined voters in Dane and Milwaukee counties should be thrown out because he believes some of them don’t meet the criteria.
‘Democracy in the Park’ events
Trump has also challenged thousands of ballots cast during Madison’s “Democracy in the Park” events, where poll workers were stationed at more than 200 locations in the city. The poll workers accepted absentee ballots that voters received through the mail and served as witnesses if they needed one.
Trump’s campaign has said the events amounted to allowing in-person early voting before the early-voting period began. City officials have said the poll workers served the same purpose as ballot drop boxes that were set up around the state.
Photo: Pro-Biden protesters outside the Wisconsin Center in Milwaukee before the recount in the presidential election started.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Donald Trump sues to try to reverse Biden’s election win in Wisconsin
