MADISON, Wis. — A vote on the future of Wisconsin’s top elections official ended in a partisan deadlock Tuesday amid Republican calls for the nonpartisan administrator of the state election commission to resign because of how she conducted the 2020 presidential race.
An impasse among election commissioners over whether to reappoint Meagan Wolfe creates uncertainty about who will run the race in a battleground state so divided that four of the last six presidential elections in Wisconsin have been decided by less than one percentage point. Wolfe strongly defended the decisions he made and fought false claims of voter fraud, including those made by former President Donald Trump.
“When your constituents challenge you about the integrity of the Wisconsin election, tell them the truth,” he wrote to lawmakers just days before his re-election vote. “When people perpetuate false claims about our electoral systems, publicly push back. Election officials cannot carry the burden of educating the public only about the election.”
The six members of the Wisconsin Election Commission are evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. Republican commissioners voted to reappoint Wolfe, but Democrats abstained on Tuesday’s vote for fear that reappointing her would allow the Republican-controlled state Senate to reject her confirmation. Commission actions require a majority of at least four votes.
“Meagan Wolfe is the best person to run our agency, which is why I abstain. I will face the court instead of the Senate,” said Democratic commissioner Mark Thomsen.
The deadlock means it could be months before commissioners or lawmakers choose someone to run the election agency during the 2024 presidential race and beyond, if at all.
A recent Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling appears to allow Wolfe to continue as administrator, even after her term ends on Saturday. But relying on that decision, which has allowed Republican appointees to stay on state boards, raises unanswered legal questions.
“We are in unprecedented territory,” Wolfe said at a news conference after the vote. “I have a very clear intent here, and that is to make sure that our commission, our agency, our local election officials, have the stability that they need as we move forward.”
Committee chairman Don Millis, a Republican, warned that having a holdover trustee would only lessen stability by encouraging conspiracy theorists and raising questions about Wolfe’s authority during the 2024 election.
“It’s more than just a bad look. It’s going to create problems for us and for election officials across the state,” she said.
Wolfe has served as the state’s election administrator since 2018 and has become one of the most respected election leaders in the nation. Before defending his record in a letter to state lawmakers, he asked commissioners to vote for the option they believe offers the most stability for Wisconsin elections, even if that’s not it.
If the commission ultimately names Wolfe or someone else to replace her, they will need to be confirmed by the Republican-controlled state Senate.
Some Republican state senators have vowed to vote against the re-election of Wolfe, who has argued with them about election conspiracy theories on numerous occasions. If the Senate rejects a commission appointee, then the commissioners would have to make a new appointment within 45 days or else a Republican-controlled legislative committee could choose the next administrator.
Relatively few people meet the legal requirements or have the experience necessary to serve as Wisconsin’s chief election official. An election administrator appointee may never have worked in a partisan office or donated to a partisan campaign in the past year, and the state’s electoral system is one of the most decentralized in the country.
The committee’s vote comes as a divided Republican Party struggles to overcome the electoral lies that Trump and his supporters have promoted since his loss to President Joe Biden in 2020. Republican state lawmakers across the country have sought to expand their control over elections in recent years, and Far-right candidates have won local government seats on platforms based on electoral skepticism.
But overall, the denial of the election has hurt the Republican Party. Most of the 2022 candidates in swing states, including Wisconsin, who supported overturning Trump’s defeat, lost. A draft Republican National Committee report obtained by The Associated Press earlier this year reviewing the party’s performance in recent elections called on candidates to stop “relitigating past elections.”
In Wisconsin, the 2020 election result topped two partial recounts, a nonpartisan audit, a review by a conservative law firm, numerous state and federal lawsuits, and a Republican-ordered review that found no evidence of widespread fraud before that the investigator was fired. The GOP-controlled Legislature has rejected attempts to decertify the results.
