This Local Investigation Led to the Special Counsel

The fraud uncovered by the special counsel’s office mirrored that revealed late last year by the Racine County Sheriff’s office. This local investigation led to the broader special counsel investigation.

In the Racine County case, the sheriff’s office received a complaint of potential violations of state election law occurring at the Ridgewood Care residential facility. After conducting a thorough investigation of the complaint, Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling held a press conference on October 28, 20221, in which lead investigator Sgt. Michael Luell methodically presented his findings.

As Luell explained during an hour-long press conference, Section 6.875 of the Wisconsin election code provides the “exclusive means” of absentee voting in residential care facilities. That law requires local municipalities to dispatch two special voting deputies, or “SVDs,” to such facilities.

Under the election code, those SVDs must personally deliver ballots to any residents of the facility who wish to vote and then witness the voting process. By law, only a relative or a SVD may assist the voter in the process, and after the ballot is completed, the SVD must seal the ballot envelope and deliver it to the elections clerk.

The Ridgewood Care Center in Racine County violated every one of those mandates, Luell explained, with the Wisconsin Election Commission (WEC) holding blame for the blatant disregard of state election law taking place at residential facilities because the commission had directed municipalities not to “use the Special Voting Deputy process to service residents in care facilities,” and to instead “transmit absentee ballots to those voters by mail….”

District Attorney Refuses to Prosecute

Less than a week after his press conference, the Racine County Sheriff’s Office announced it had forwarded its conclusions to District Attorney Patricia Hanson and had recommended election fraud charges be filed against five members of the WEC, including two felony counts….

After reviewing the referral for several months, in February Hanson announced she would not be filing criminal charges against the five WEC members because she lacked jurisdiction over the commissioners. Hanson explained in her letter announcing her decision that because the commissioners do not live in Racine County and did not issue the allegedly illegal directive doing away with SVD, she lacked the authority to prosecute the commissioners….

Racine’s Fraud Wasn’t Isolated At All

Luell’s referral to the other prosecutors concerns only the Ridgewood Care Center. But as Sheriff Schmaling stressed during his late October 2021 press conference, Racine County is just “one of 72 counties,” and “Ridgewood is one of 11 facilities within our county….”

The illegalities seen at Ridgewood in Racine County were repeated at more than 90 other nursing homes in five counties vetted by the special counsel’s team. The fraud and abuse, Gableman concluded in his report, resulted ultimately from the unlawful acts of WEC’s members and its staff.

The special counsel stressed that, despite the clear mandates of Wisconsin law that SVDs be used at residential facilities, the WEC on June 24, 2020 “directed clerks not to send SVDs to facilities, and to instead mail ballots to voters in those facilities,” then further stated that “the regular rules for absentee voting by mail will apply to ballots sent by mail to care facility voter.” The report then detailed, as the Racine County sheriff had, how that directive constituted fraud under the Wisconsin Election Code.

Not Accidental Or Technical Errors

Further, the special counsel’s report showed that fraud found was not merely “technical” fraud but resulted in ballots cast and votes counted contrary to the intent of the nursing home residents. The “improbably high voting rates” alone creates a strong inference of fraud, but the special counsel also gathered evidence of fraud, such as suspected forgeries of residents’ signatures and situations in which the residents who “cast” a vote had been adjudicated mentally incompetent, meaning they no longer had a legal right to vote. Other residents, while not adjudicated mentally incompetent, “were unaware of their surroundings, with whom they are speaking at any given time, or what year it is….”

Someone Else Voted For Her, But Who?

The report backed up these conclusions with specifics, such as the case of Resident D. Resident D lived in a facility in Brown County, Wisconsin. Her family took Resident D to vote at her assigned polling location, but when she presented herself to vote on election day, the election workers informed her she had already voted.

After questioning from her family, Resident D recalled someone at the nursing home had talked with her about voting, but she denied voting at the residential facility. Nonetheless, records from 2020 show Resident D cast an absentee ballot….

Well Within the Election’s Margin of Error

With about 92,000 people in Wisconsin who reside in these facilities, the failure of Wisconsin election officials “to prevent wards and incapacitated persons from voting in the 2020 Presidential election” casts “doubt on the election result,” according to the report. Those 2020 general election results showed the midwestern state breaking by 20,682 votes to Joe Biden….

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(Excerpt from The Federalist. Photo Credit: Georg Arthur Pflueger on Unsplash)