This post originally appeared at https://wisconsindailystar.com/news/former-assembly-elections-committee-chair-urges-no-vote-on-controversial-wisconsin-elections-commission-administrator/mkittle/2023/06/27/

State Representative Janel Brandtjen (R-Menomonee Falls) is urging the Wisconsin Elections Commission to fire Meagan Wolfe, WEC’s controversial administrator.

The commission meets at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday to take up Wolfe’s re-appointment to a four-year term. Her current term ends Friday.

Brandtjen, the former chairwoman of the Assembly Campaign and Elections Committee, in a statement issued Monday said Wolfe is “eager to reclaim her job,” and so “desperate to own the narrative, she released notices and the agenda over the weekend, hoping the meeting would go unnoticed.”

“Wolfe knew there had been massive criticism over the 2020 elections, so she put out a 6-page document defending her decisions. It might be the most laughable document from the Wisconsin Elections Administrator to date,” the lawmaker said.

Brandtjen has been a leading critic of Wolfe. The Assembly committee investigated election integrity allegations and irregularities surrounding the 2020 presidential election in which Democrat Joe Biden narrowly defeated then-President Donald Trump in battleground Wisconsin.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) removed her from the committee and the leadership post late last year, punishment for Brandtjen’s countenancing allegations of so-called 2020 “election deniers.”

Wolfe’s “Setting the Record Straight: Fact Checks About Wisconsin Election Administration” document sent to lawmakers, for instance, asserts widespread and legally suspect use of drop boxes to collect absentee ballots in the 2020 election and those of a more recent vintage was justified because drop boxes had been used for years. But the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling last year found that drop boxes are a new creation of executive branch officials and were never authorized by the Legislature, Brandtjen said. There is no mention of drop boxes in state law, “only in memos prepared by WEC staff who did not cite any statutes to support their use.” <

A Legislative Audit Bureau report on the 2020 elections found myriad examples of the Elections Commission and Wolfe issuing guidance, advice and rules contrary to state law. In some more glaring instances, Wolfe issued broad guidance on ‘curing” or correcting ballot information and on ballot drop boxes that violated election law.

Twice, Wolfe created guidance documents disregarding the Legislature’s Rules Committee and her own commissioners, Brandtjen said

“Evidently, this was not an oversight but a deliberate plan to deceive clerks about the law and present herself as being on par with the Legislature. She did not adhere to the legal procedures that were established,” the lawmaker stated.

Wolfe did not return a request for comment.

In her “fact check” document, however, she insists the agency and the administration of elections are “not above fair and honest criticism.”

“We are always glad to answer questions about our processes, whether the questions are from Commissioners, legislators, or members of the public. In return, we ask that those who have questions about elections will engage with those facts before perpetuating unsubstantiated rumors,” she wrote.

But Brandtjen claims Wolfe is playing fast and loose with the historical record.

Wolfe repeatedly lays the responsibility for WEC actions at the feet of the six-member partisan commissioners, evenly appointed by Republicans and Democrats. She’s correct the commissioners have ultimate authority, but the “experts” in the administrative state often lead those decisions with their election law recommendations.

In the case of guidance on local election clerks curing or correcting absentee ballot envelopes, Wolfe asserts that guidance was established by commissioners in the 2016 election — three years before Wolfe took the administrative post. But Wolfe was WEC’s deputy administrator at the time and is a long-time staff member at the controversial agency. A Waukesha County court in 2022 ruled WEC had to stop its guidance on corrections to absentee ballot envelopes with missing witness addresses. As an experienced election law attorney, it could be argued that Wolfe should have seen the legal problems with the long-standing guidance.

Wolfe’s assertion that she had nothing to do with municipalities applying for so-called “safe election grants” from the left-leaning Center for Tech and Civic Life before the 2020 election doesn’t withstand scrutiny of the records. CTCL received hundreds of millions of dollars in election grant funds from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and, as has been widely reported, the lion’s share of the funding to presidential battleground states such as Wisconsin went to the largest, Democrat-heavy cities. Emails and other communications also show liberal activists and a long-time Democratic Party operative extensively involved in election offices in Green Bay, Milwaukee, Madison, Racine and Kenosha.

An email from Wolfe to local election officials in the so-called “Wisconsin- 5” cities shows the election administrator passing along a “recommendation and resource.” The recommendation was for the elections officials to work with Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein, a New York Democratic Party activist who, according to several emails, was embedded in Green Bay’s Democrat-controlled election office and with Milwaukee’s election office.

Wolfe will need four of the six commissioners to keep her job in Tuesday’s vote. She would seem to have the Democrat-appointed commissioners in her column; the question is will the Republican appointees back Wolfe?

Sources say Wolfe does not have enough support in the Republican-controlled Senate to survive a confirmation vote, which will ultimately decide whether the administrator stays or goes.

Brandtjen is urging the Wisconsin Elections Commission to end Wolfe’s tenure in state election administration.

“Wolfe has abused her powers, misleading clerks and the WEC into her fantasy that she can create election law,” the lawmaker said. “Please vote ‘no’ on her reappointment and instead seek an administrator willing to uphold election laws as established by the Legislature.”

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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Photo “Janel Brandtjen” by Representative Janel Brandtjen. Photo “Meagan Wolfe” by Wisconsin Elections Commission. Background Photo “Wisconsin State Capitol” by 12019.

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