(June 15, 2022 – Madison, Wisconsin) Wisconsin voters have filed a formal complaint with the Wisconsin Elections Commission against its Administrator Meagan Wolfe for violating her duties under Wisconsin election law. The complaint filed June 14, 2022, in the State of Wisconsin before the Elections Commission by Thomas More Society attorneys, details how Wolfe issued illegal instructions to municipal clerks across the state that was in direct opposition to Wisconsin’s voting statutes.
The complaint revolves around Wolfe’s illegal advice to the municipal clerks to use legally unauthorized unmanned absentee ballot drop boxes. Her failure to cite specific legal authority in her two informal advisory opinions was, according to the filing, a “violation of her statutory duties.”
Thomas More Society Special Counsel Erick Kaardal points out that Wolfe could not actually have cited any legal authority to use those unmanned absentee ballot drop boxes because Wisconsin’s statutes read the opposite – that such boxes are “legally unauthorized,” a situation which has since been validated and reinforced by the Waukesha County Circuit Court January 2022 decision.
“Wolfe’s willful neglection or refusal to do her duty under Wisconsin Statutes Chapter 12 is an abuse and violation of her post as Wisconsin Election Commission Administrator,” explained Kaardal. “Twice, in informal advisory opinions issued March 3, 2020, and August 19, 2020, she failed those duties. The suspicious timing of these opinions coincides with the simultaneous negotiation and agreement to receive private money from the Center for Tech and Civic Life to fund election activities.”
The Center for Tech and Civic Life is a non-profit Chicago-based organization, led and staffed by former Democratic activists and funded by billionaire Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, to influence the 2020 election. This partisan, special interest organization’s so-called Safe Voting Plan, dated June 15, 2020, agreed to pay $216,500 to Wisconsin’s five largest cities for absentee ballot drop boxes, in direct violation of the state’s election statues. The absentee ballot drop boxes are just one line item in the total funding of $6,324,567 promised to these cities for abiding by the illegal plan to focus on delivering votes from certain targeted demographic groups.
Kaardal described the complaint as revealing one segment of a massive scheme on the part of the Center for Tech and Civic Life, to usurp the administration of the election, a core traditional governmental function. Under the guise of COVID-19 prevention and via the illegal dumping of private money into the municipal election process, the Center for Tech and Civic Life handed control of the 2020 election in Wisconsin over to private partisan interests, in the form of its “partners.”
“We can’t undo the wrongs of the 2020 election,” Kaardal observed, “But it is incumbent upon us to ensure that the corruption that infected Wisconsin’s voting process is rooted out and that the state’s election integrity is preserved. It is especially important that the Administrator of the Wisconsin Election Commission, the entity charged with safeguarding the state’s election integrity, be above reproach. Wisconsin’s voters deserve to know the truth and they need to be assured that the corruption has been eliminated, allowing for fair and honest elections from this point forward.”
The complaint filing accusing Wolfe of violating her duties as Administrator is the latest before the Wisconsin Election Commission, following previous complaints against Green Bay, Kenosha, Madison, Milwaukee, and Racine, which asserted violations of election law and bribery of election officials by the Center for Tech and Civic Life. Several Wisconsin counties, including Walworth County and Brown County, have passed, or are considering such bans on what is being labelled “dark money” in elections.
“We are winning nationwide and will win in Wisconsin. Since the November 2020 election, twenty states have passed legislation to ban or regulate the acceptance and use of private funds by public election officials,” added Kaardal. “It’s the election equivalent of pay to play and Wisconsin law designates it as election bribery. The other twenty states have banned it too.”
Thomas More Society attorneys, prior to the 2020 election, were the first to litigate the issue of privately-funded election administration. Thomas More Society lawyers filed election litigation in nine states. All of this litigation led to successful legislative action to ban this ‘dark money.’ Arizona, Georgia, and Texas passed legislation banning or regulating private money in election administration; and, in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, the legislature passed laws regulating this conduct, but those laws were vetoed by Democratic governors. Three other states, Minnesota, Iowa, and South Carolina have passed bills regulating this conduct, and are now waiting for those bills to be enacted.
Read the Complaint filed June 14, 2022, in the State of Wisconsin before the Elections Commission by Thomas More Society attorneys, on behalf of a Green Bay, Wisconsin voters against Meagan Wolfe, Administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, alleging violations of Wisconsin Statutes §§ 5.05(6a), 6.84, 6.855 and 6.87(4)(b)(1) and 12.13(2)(a), here [ https://thomasmoresociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Drop-Box-Complaint-Against-Administrator-M-Wolfe.pdf ].
