Lawmakers demand investigation following report on Green Bay Election outsourcing

(The Center Square) – There are more calls to review the November 2020 election in Wisconsin.

Republican lawmakers on Tuesday began calling for hearings and investigations after a report at Wisconsin Spotlight showed outside groups were essentially allowed to take over Green Bay’s election last fall.

That report relied on emails to show that former Democratic operative Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein served as a de facto elections administrator and had access to Green Bay’s absentee ballots days before the election, and that his interference frustrated both Green Bay’s city clerk and Brown County’s clerk during the election.

Green Bay’s clerk took a leave of absence just weeks before Election Day, and never returned.

Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, who is second on the Senate’s elections committee, on Tuesday said there needs to be a formal investigation into what happened.

“This story raises significant questions about how Green Bay, and possibly other communities in our state, handled the November election,” Darling said, “I urge Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul to conduct an investigation into these findings further to help restore confidence and integrity in our elections.”

She is not alone.

Sen. Roger Roth, R-Appleton, said in addition to an investigation, local leaders in Green Bay need to be held responsible.

“[Mayor Eric Genrich] ceded his responsibility to safeguard the integrity of our elections to an outside, partisan organization,” Roth said on Twitter. “I am calling on him to resign from office immediately.”

Republicans in Wisconsin have questioned the integrity and faith in the November election even before the votes were counted and Joe Biden won.

Republican lawmakers questioned the refusal to purge over 200,000 voters who hadn’t cast ballots in years, a decision made by the state’s Elections Commission to mass mail ballots, and the determination to not allow the Green Party on the ballot. There were also questions about ballot harvesting, particularly in Madison.

The “curing” of ballots in Milwaukee and Madison – a process in which members of a voting advocacy group assist a voter fix an individual ballot error to ensure it’s counted – is also among the Republicans’ concerns.

Republicans have said for months that those unanswered questions have millions of voters in the state wondering if the November election was fairly and legally managed.

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