A Wisconsin Republican Party leader on Friday accused Milwaukee County election officials of breaking the rules on how absentee ballots can be counted by telling workers to fill in missing names and addresses if they are missing.
The bombshell claim comes as the Trump campaign is challenging vote totals in several key states where Joe Biden has moved ahead since Election Day. Waukesha County Republican Party executive Kenneth Dragotta, who directed a 2016 recount in Waukesha and Milwaukee counties, told the Washington Examiner the Wisconsin Elections Commission instructed workers to write in the names and addresses of witnesses if ballots were not completed properly.
“They’re telling the City of Milwaukee, ‘Go ahead and just write down the witness name and address if you can find it,’ where the statute specifically says that it must be the elector and the witness that comes back in or provides a signature, not just the witness that comes in, but the witness and the elector have to come back in and complete that certification envelope,” Dragotta said.
“We’ve got an administrative body that is usurping the authority of the Legislature,” he added.
Dragotta called for legal action against the commission for providing improper guidance to the City of Milwaukee elections director.
Cynthia Warner, a Republican and an Election Day volunteer at Milwaukee County’s ballot processing center, confirmed that she and other volunteers were told that if the address of a witness was missing, they could look it up and add it, allowing the ballot to be counted.
For Ward 92, one of the wards that Warner worked, dates certifying that the voter had resided in his or her ward for a certain number of days had been crossed out and changed in red. She said that over 30% of envelopes had these markings.
“According to the training, we were told that this could not be done,” Warner told the Examiner. “When one of the ballot counters challenged it, he was told that he was only there to count, and if he didn’t sit down and continue counting, he could leave.”
Warner said the supervisor of Milwaukee County’s absentee ballot processing facility, known as Central Count, made this announcement.
Democratic nominee Joe Biden led President Trump in the Wisconsin vote count by about 20,000 ballots as of Friday, with 99% of the state reporting.
Some media outlets, including the Associated Press, called the state’s 10 electoral votes for Biden on Wednesday. Trump campaign officials quickly began calling for a recount, while on Friday, Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said a review of voting processes was needed, citing reports of voter fraud.
Dragotta also pointed to a “knock and drag” strategy, in which volunteers go door to door to identify people in their political party who haven’t voted yet and are instructed not to leave the doorstep until that person heads to the polling site.
“They have 30 days to identify if you voted, and if you haven’t voted, then they come to your house and get you — that concept is alive and well,” he said.
In 2008, both former President Barack Obama and his Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain, used the tactic, with McCain calling on volunteers in Colorado to “knock on doors, get your neighbors to the polls, drag ‘em there if you need to,” in the waning days of his campaign.
Obama and Democratic Party volunteers in Michigan that year sent out their final shift of volunteers one hour before the polls closed to do the same.
Dragotta said that Democrats may have also benefited from keeping the Green Party candidate and Kanye West from appearing on the Wisconsin ballot.
He said that the Elections Commission claimed that both parties were late in their filings, even though the doors to the building were locked on the final day to file and both were inside the building at the 5 p.m. deadline. It went to court but failed, he said.
“The bottom line is that the Green Party would most likely have done the same as in 2016, taking about 33,000 votes from the Democrats,” Dragotta said. “In the end, that would have given Republicans a 10,000-vote edge, similar to the 2016 results.”
He said the Wisconsin Elections Commission “was acting as a tool” for the Democratic Party.
