Speakers during a panel discussion at the GOP state convention today encouraged activists to become poll workers for the November 2022 election.

“Wisconsin is going to be a target with Ron Johnson running,” said Rep. Janel Brandtjen, R-Menomonee Falls and chair of the Assembly Campaigns and Elections Committee. “We cannot sit back and assume that voting is going to be enough anymore. Election Day cannot just mean you get out your friends to vote, it now means, ‘I need four hours at the polls’.”

Brandtjen also called for each county to have 100 poll workers ahead of the November election.

Wisconsin Elections Commission member Bob Spindell encouraged Republican activists to be poll workers, saying “you get paid” and “you cannot get kicked out of there.”

While Brandtjen called for Republicans and Dems to be present during all election operations, she accused Dems of infiltrating clerks’ offices during the 2020 presidential election.

“COVID was the perfect excuse to make sure that in that clerk’s office, they put these volunteers who were paid by third party dollars,” she said.

Brandtjen also claimed Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg infiltrated election operations in Green Bay. The Zuckerberg-funded group, the Center for Tech and Civic Life, provided a $1.6 million grant to the city to help run its election. Conservatives have complained a consultant hired with the funds was given too much authority.

“Zuckerberg wrote it all off,” said Brandtjen. “He paid these people to work in the office of the clerks and help them cure ballots.”

Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich has said the consultant did not cure ballots.

Brandtjen also spoke of her visit with other Republican lawmakers to Arizona, where they observed an ongoing audit of the 2020 presidential election. She said “everything you see in the media is simply not true” and praised Arizona’s audit, noting that the effort will determine if ballots had been improperly erased or duplicated.

Brandtjen also praised state GOP Chairman Andrew Hitt and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos for their promises of an election investigation in Wisconsin.

“An audit is nothing but an investigation,” Brandtjen said. “It allows us to make sure that our transparency is there in our elections in Wisconsin, and that I can guarantee you, is worth fighting for every day that we get up.”

Spindell claimed the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud. He called on the Legislature to end certain elections precedents, including one allowing ballot harvesting in some scenarios.

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