‌‌‌‌‌Wisconsin Republicans Are Getting More Aggressive With Their Election Attacks

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As the 2022 midterms make their slow approach to relevance, voting rights activists are once again taking their frustrations with the Biden White House public — urging a more aggressive push to end the filibuster and address Republican attacks on the franchise head-on.

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Alright, let’s dig in.

Wisconsin’s The Latest Battleground For Republicans’ Election Attacks

We headlined this newsletter with the developments out of WISCONSIN just three weeks ago, and yet the news from that state is coming fast and heavy. 
 

Most prominently, the special counsel hired by legislative Republicans to “investigate” the 2020 elections had threatened to jail two big-city mayors, even though they say he’s wildly distorting the situation and not responding to their communications. 
 

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg: Republicans in the state seem increasingly open to the idea of simply replacing the Wisconsin Election Commission, which they themselves created six years ago when the previous elections body got on their nerves. 
 

The commission, a bipartisan body, has come under attack following a report from the state legislature’s Legislative Audit Bureau. The report, the commission says, is riddled with errors.

Dean Knudson, a Republican election commissioner, said the shoddy report was a “black mark” on the audit bureau’s record, and memorably compared it to a French soccer fan watching half of a Green Bay Packers game and determining he could best Aaron Rodgers.

Voting Rights Activists Growing Frustrated With Their Backburner Status

After a frustrating voting rights meeting last month with the WHITE HOUSE, voting rights activists vented publicly last week.

As the 2022 midterms draw closer without any federal action on voting rights — stymied by unified Republican opposition and a Democratic unwillingness to change the Senate filibuster — activists are wondering if the Biden administration has any intention left ofto addressing the Republican-imposed restrictions and increasingly partisan nature of election administration across several states, The Guardian reported.
 

Multiple people who attended the November meeting told the paper “they didn’t hear any kind of plan from the White House,” in The Guardian’s words.

Vice President Kamala Harris read six minutes of prepared remarks and left without taking questions, according to the report.

In this light, The Atlantic’s Barton Gellman — who wrote presciently about the risk of Donald Trump trying to steal a second term back in the fall of 2020 — adds his voice to the chorus: “Biden knows better than I do what it looks like when a president fully marshals his power and resources to face a challenge,” Gellman wrote in a lengthy dispatch Monday. “It doesn’t look like this.” 

Around The States

The Department of Justice has sued TEXAS over its allegedly discriminatory, newly-drawn congressional and state House maps. 

More than half of YOUNG PEOPLE think U.S. democracy is either “in trouble” or “failed,” according to a new Harvard Institute of Politics poll. 
 

Al Schmidt, the lone Republican on PHILADELPHIA’s election board, who spent a great deal of energy defending the integrity of the 2020 elections, is resigning from that position. He’ll move to become the president and CEO of Committee of Seventy, a Philly-based good government group. 
 

Proposed congressional redistricting maps in FLORIDA would make reelection an uphill battle for Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-FL) 
 

Also in that state, the Department of Justice has weighed in on a lawsuit against the state’s new voting restrictions. 

The conservative majority on the WISCONSIN Supreme Court says it will stick with the Republican-dominated status quo maps, and simply won’t take partisan advantage into account on this year’s district changes… which is good news for Republicans, who rule the state currently, with the exception of Gov. Tony Evers (D). 
 

Meanwhile, Trump administration alumni are pushing for a ballot measure to get new election restrictions passed Evers’ veto.
 

The MINNESOTA Supreme Court heard a lawsuit seeking to extend the franchise to more than 50,000 people convicted of felonies and now on probation. 
 

The WASHINGTON Supreme Court voted unanimously to accept the proposed redistricting maps of the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission, despite the commission missing its deadline for sharing the maps publicly. 

The Latest In Audit Mania

Two GEORGIA election workers who were put through a year of hell after the Trump campaign accused them of processing thousands of illegal ballots have sued the outlet they blame for spreading the lie far and wide, the conspiracy-theorizing website Gateway Pundit. 
 

The MONTANA attorney general's office acknowledged having met with MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell about his outlandish voter fraud assertions. 

Lin Wood, Sidney Powell and seven other attorneys behind a bogus lawsuit to overturn the 2020 election were ordered to pay $175,000 in legal fees to the governments of Detroit and MICHIGAN.
 

POWELL’s trouble hardly ends there: The Guardian compiled several instances where she allegedly listed co-counsels and plaintiffs without their full consent, and separately, a federal grand jury demanded financial records from fundraising groups she launched.
 

The Republican Party is kick-starting a full-time “election integrity” program in 15 states, including NEW HAMPSHIRE. 
 

Republican election attorney Ben Ginsberg is pleading with fellow conservatives in Congress to reform the ELECTORAL COUNT ACT – or else risk the chance that Kamala Harris "does what Trump couldn’t persuade Mike Pence to do.”

New York Daily News: “This democracy we can’t be proud of: Eric Adams, nonpartisan elections and New York City” 
 

CNN: The attacks on the 2024 election are already underway
 

Washington Post: ‘Politics is still local. When incumbents face off in redrawn districts, community ties make a big difference.
 

New York Times: Voting Battles of 2022 Take Shape as G.O.P. Crafts New Election Bills
 

Reuters: Special Report: Pro-Trump news site targets election workers, inspiring wave of menace

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