Special Counsel Mike Gableman, hired by Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos to investigate the November 2020 election, said he could soon be taking a hard look at voting machines.
In an interview aired Sunday on “UpFront,” Gableman told WISN-TV reporter Matt Smith that he might use subpoenas to “find out about the reliability of voting machines.”
“There have been a number of theories” about voting machines, Gableman said.
“Do you believe any of those theories?” Smith asked.
“I don’t have sufficient evidence to make up my mind one way or the other,” Gableman replied.
“But either way, I think it’s important that we do everything we possibly can to tell people whether (voting machines) are reliable or not. Whether they worked as they are supposed to work, or not,” Gableman said.
Gableman also said he would be “thrilled” to conclude his investigation and say “we took a very hard look at all these issues, and everything was fine.”
Gableman said he and his team would be spending this week looking at the documentation provided by the clerks in the state’s five largest cities and the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
Also on the program, two members of Milwaukee’s Common Council agreed that Milwaukee’s current surge in violent crime is “very bad” and “very serious,” but disagreed on the extent to which federal American Rescue Plan Act funds should be used to hire more police officers.
Common Council President Cavalier Johnson, who will succeed Mayor Tom Barrett when Barrett is confirmed as ambassador to Luxembourg, said violence prevention and crime reduction “needs to be a multi-pronged approach.”
Barrett proposed using $6 million in ARPA funds to hire 195 police recruits.
“I’m comfortable doing that,” Johnson said. “We’re in a position right now where we’re going to be losing nearly 200 officers potentially over the course of the next year. And we’ve already lost a number of officers in the past couple of years as well.”
Ald. Marina Dimitrijevic, who this morning announced her bid for mayor, said she favors using the ARPA funds for “a holistic, bold vision to move this city forward.”
Dimitrijevic said she wants to see ARPA funds used to get at the “root causes” of crime. She said that would include “core issues” like child care and housing.
She said the ARPA funds are a “one-time historic, generational opportunity” and should be used for “bold new ideas.”
In another segment, a member of Wisconsin’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Task Force said the panel is looking at ways to end violence against Native American women and girls.
“UpFront” host Adrienne Pedersen asked Kristin Welch about the statistics of missing and murdered Indigenous women and why so many of those cases go unsolved.
“I think Indigenous people definitely have an unfortunate understanding of why it’s happening. A lot of it is systemic. There were a lot of attacks on tribal sovereignty that made it really difficult for tribal nations to protect indigenous women, girls and two spirit. Jurisdiction is an issue, jurisdictional confusion, lack of data, lack of media coverage. That all just really adds up to the bigger problem,” Welch said.
“We really want to end the violence,” Welch said of the task force’s work. “End the human trafficking, end the silence of it all so it’s not this issue that just Indigenous people know about.”
See more from the program:
http://www.wisn.com/upfront
See Dimitrijevic’s campaign announcement:
https://www.wispolitics.com/
