MADISON, Wis. — The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported last week that Rebecca Kleefisch voted as “indefinitely confined” in 2020. Kleefisch’s team called it “a mistake” — but a bill Kleefisch wants to sign into law would make that mistake a felony, punishable with a fine of up to $10,000 or up to three and a half years in prison.
Kleefisch’s campaign has been centered around promoting election lies, embracing conspiracy theorists as campaign surrogates, and extremist ideas like “hiring mercenaries” to help her campaign. It’s clear from Kleefisch’s hypocritical stance on elections and voting laws that she will say or do anything to win an election.
Kleefisch has a history of deceiving Wisconsinites. As lieutenant governor, Kleefisch spread several of Politifact’s candidates for “Lie of the Year” — including her claim that the Affordable Care Act was a “government takeover” of health care and her belief in debunked conspiracies about government “death panels.” Kleefisch and Walker also misled Wisconsinites about the price of the disastrous 2017 Foxconn deal, which later escalated to $4.5 billion.
Read more about Radical Rebecca’s hypocrisy below.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Rebecca Kleefisch used ‘indefinitely confined’ voting method she now wants abolished, says it was a mistake
Former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch used a method of voting in 2020 that Republicans have railed against and that she has promised to ban if she is elected governor.
The revelation could complicate Kleefisch’s bid for governor because she has centered much of her run on tightening the state’s voting laws. She has derided Democratic Gov. Tony Evers for vetoing Republican-backed voting legislation — including one bill that would have prevented her from using the voting method she did in 2020.
Kleefisch’s campaign chalked the situation up to a mistake.
[…]
Among those who claimed they were indefinitely confined was Kleefisch, according to the state Elections Commission and Kleefisch’s hometown of Concord.
She labeled herself as indefinitely confined in March 2020, just before the April presidential primary and general election for state Supreme Court.
Because she was considered confined that spring, she automatically received ballots for the August primary and November general election. She voted absentee in August but voted at the polls in November, election records show.
She is no longer considered indefinitely confined because she has now started voting in person, according to the Elections Commission.
[…]
Devin Remiker, interim executive director of the state Democratic Party, called Kleefisch hypocritical.
“Kleefisch’s hypocrisy here is stunning — the very bills she wants to sign into law as governor could have prevented her, and many other Wisconsinites, from accessing the ballot box in the last election,” he said in a written statement.
In a 5-second video Kleefisch posted on Twitter on March 30, 2020, Kleefisch held up a copy of the absentee ballot she had just received.
“I got my absentee ballot today!” she said. “Thank you, Town of Concord!”
That same month, Kleefisch posted a video online for the state Republican Party explaining to voters how they could upload a photo of their ID onto a state website so they could request an absentee ballot.
In that video, she said her municipal clerk had a copy of her ID on file. She stressed the importance of the voter ID law.
“They need to see your photo ID, which is a really good thing because we want to to make sure we’re protecting our votes, because we want to make sure that we are protecting our rights right now when we know that things are very uncertain,” she said in the video.
She did not mention the indefinitely confined law but used the word “indefinite” to describe how uncertain life was during the pandemic.
“I know one of the most frustrating things has been how indefinite our lives have felt,” she said. “You can get through anything as long as it is finite, but it feels like there are a lot of things that are indefinite right now.”
Despite officially calling herself indefinitely confined for the spring and summer, Kleefisch didn’t stick around her home.
On Aug. 5, 2020 — a week before casting an absentee ballot as a confined voter for the fall primary — Kleefisch posted photos of herself on Twitter speaking at a Republican gathering. Among those she said she appeared with was state Sen. Duey Stroebel of Saukville, who would go on a year later to write legislation that would dramatically scale back the law for indefinitely confined voters.
Kleefisch posted photos of herself at other GOP events throughout the summer.
By 2021, Kleefisch was on board with Stroebel’s idea of rescinding the heart of the indefinitely confined law.
In an October speech to Republicans, Kleefisch said conservatives needed to “hire mercenaries” and engage in voting practices they oppose to win in 2022. She said that approach would lead to her winning and allow her to approve several voting measures, including the one changing the indefinitely confined law that Evers had vetoed.
The Legislature “is going to pass all these bills again, and then I’m going to sign them all. And we will never do elections like that again, but this is how we win,” Kleefisch said in October.
Kleefisch is the best-known Republican in the race for governor. U.S. Marine veteran Kevin Nicholson, who lost a 2018 primary for U.S. Senate is expected to get in the Republican primary soon.
