MILWAUKEE — With the Republican National Convention (RNC) less than a week away, top leaders from both the national and state parties want supporters to focus on election integrity as they held a "Protect the Vote" rally in Waukesha this week — an effort that comes as Wisconsin elections officials spoke out about 2020.
Elections officials, past and present, gathered for a Milwaukee Rotary Club panel Tuesday. Among them is former GOP State Sen. Kathy Bernier, who previously served as Chippewa County clerk. Bernier, who now serves as Wisconsin state director for Keep Our Republic, insisted there is always room for improvement.
“The majority of the election worked quite well,” Bernier explained. “There were errors, and there were issues, and there were problems, but there was also COVID, and COVID caused a lot of those issues that we are not going to repeat.”
This November, elections officials hope voters don’t repeat false claims about how absentee ballots are counted or why the process takes so long.
“The law also says the clerks, they can’t start processing absentee ballots until the polls open on Election Day,” Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe said.
“Here in Wisconsin, if you are hearing those things, just remember all ballots have to be returned by 8 p.m. on election night to be counted, and once we start counting, we can’t adjourn until the counting is finished, and that there are three layers of checks of canvass to make sure that the results are right," she added.
Meanwhile, more than 100 people gathered at the Wisconsin Young Republicans headquarters in Waukesha on Monday to listen and learn.
“We want poll watchers, we want poll workers, we want legal experts on the ground so we’re not waiting days, weeks, or months later to address a problem,” Lara Trump, who serves as co-chair of the Republican National Committee, told the crowd.
The party rolled out what it called an “election integrity program” with the hopes of getting 100,000 volunteers across the country, including 5,000 from Wisconsin, to be ready to help when early voting starts.
“We want every American, whether you are voting for a Republican, a Democrat, or a third-party candidate, to feel like when you go vote, your vote matters, your vote counts,” Trump told reporters afterward. “That is what this entire program is about.”
This week, the RNC Platform Committee passed its vision, which includes pushing for voter ID, paper ballots, and same-day voting. Despite those priorities on paper, the national and state party chairs still want supporters to take advantage of the current law even if they prefer it be changed.
“If there’s early voting, we want to participate. We want to engage. If there’s mail-in voting, we want to participate. We want to engage,” RNC Chairman Michael Whatley said during a press conference.
Monday’s rally came just days after the Wisconsin Supreme Court overturned a ban on ballot drop boxes, which WisGOP Chairman Brian Schimming said is an “opportunity for potential mischief,” but did not elaborate on why he believes they are less safe than U.S. Postal boxes.