G.O.P. Dysfunction and Turmoil Over Wisconsin Elections Commission Entirely Predictable

Thursday - May 26, 2022

Fortunately, There is a Solution to the Problem -- 

Reconstitute the G.A.B.

 

 

The seeds of the chaotic turmoil and dysfunction among Republicans over the resignation of Republican Wisconsin Election Commissioner Dean Knudson yesterday evening were planted almost seven years ago in late 2015, when Wisconsin state legislative Republicans and then-Governor Scott Walker engineered the completely partisan destruction of the independent, non-partisan Wisconsin Government Accountability Board (GAB) and replaced it with the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) in a deliberate attempt to gain partisan control over the administration and outcome of elections in this state.

 

Now, because their plans to be able to dominate and control the outcome of elections has not gone quite the way they had hoped and expected, Republicans are engaged in the wholesale undermining and destruction of the WEC and in replacing it with a newly empowered, partisan office of Secretary of State whom they are betting will be occupied after November by a partisan Republican state legislator now running for that office.

 

Instead of moving ahead to try to cast greater doubt, uncertainty and out right manipulation in the administration of Wisconsin elections by undermining election administrators, clerks and WEC Commissioners by exerting even more hyper partisan control, Republicans should, return to the model that every single Republican State Senator and State Representative voted for in the Wisconsin Legislature in early 2007 -- the creation of the non-partisan, independent GAB -- which, instead of partisan appointments to the GAB Board to oversee Wisconsin's elections, ethics and campaign finance laws -- had six retired judges making sound decisions based on the law, not on partisan positioning and advantage that is currently the case.

 

The GAB, during the time of its existence from 2008 to 2015, was considered a model for integrity, independence and impartiality for the administration of elections in the nation. A return to the establishment of the GAB would go a long way toward re-establishing the trust and confidence of Wisconsin voters in our elections and our democracy.

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Jay Heck

608/256-2686 (office)
608/512-9363 (cell)

Common Cause in Wisconsin
152 Johnson St, Suite 212
Madison, WI 53703
www.commoncausewisconsin.org