MADISON, Wisconsin (LifeSiteNews) — The Wisconsin Legislative Audit Bureau (WLAB) released its final report on the 2020 presidential election this week, finding systemic issues with the reliability of the final results enabled by the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC).
President Joe Biden officially defeated former President Donald Trump by 20,682 votes in Wisconsin, for the Dairy State’s ten electoral votes, though significant questions remain as to the legitimacy of the results, thanks in large part to last year’s dramatic expansion of voting by mail, among other irregularities.
The 168-page report surveyed all of the state’s 1,835 municipal clerks and 72 county clerks, and reviewed 14,710 absentee ballot certificates, the findings of 175 tests of electronic voting equipment, and 45 sworn complaints about the election, though it “did not directly observe Election Day practices, including how poll workers processed ballots and how electronic voting equipment operated,” and auditors were not allowed to handle physical records from Milwaukee County, the City of Madison, or the Town of Little Suamico, which together account for 623,700 votes, or almost 19% of the votes cast in Wisconsin last November.
The report identifies 30 “recommendations for improvements” in Wisconsin’s election system, 18 of which would have to be taken up by the legislature.
Writing for the Wisconsin conservative policy think tank MacIver Institute, Dan O’Donnell says the report confirms that those “tasked with administering the election willfully ignored and openly violated state law while doing so,” with the WEC “downright derelict in its duty to fairly and impartially oversee” the election.
The issues identified in the report include:
- WEC allowing municipal clerks to “cure” mail ballot errors (such as missing information) themselves rather than mailing them back to the voter for correction as required by state law
- Ballots being counted with only partial voter or witness information, such as addresses and signatures
- WEC largely failing to use the multistate Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) system to verify voters who may have moved, registered to vote in, or died in another state
- WEC not obtaining electronic copies of signatures used for voter registration from the Department of Transportation as required by state law
- 169,901 voters citing “indefinite confinement” (due to age, illness, disability, etc.) to avoid having to produce a photo identification as required by state law, 48,554 of whom did not have valid photo IDs on file
- 45,665 first-time voters whose information not matching drivers’ license records — and WEC making “no attempts” to match data for 13,800 of them
Despite Madison officials’ non-compliance, WLAB was still able to learn that 1,022 (or 6.9%) of the city’s ballot certificates “had partial witness addresses because they did not have one or more components of a witness address, such as a street name, municipality, state, and zip code,” fifteen “did not have a witness address in its entirety,” eight “did not have a witness signature,” and three “did not have a voter’s signature.”
“While this does not at first blush sound like a major problem with incorrectly filled-out ballot certificates, when those numbers are extrapolated to the 1,963,954 total mail-in votes cast, it reveals a significant issue,” O’Donnell notes. “Using the LAB’s numbers, it may be reasonably estimated that across the state 135,512 absentee ballot certificates only had a partial witness address, 2,002 did not have a witness address at all, 1,068 did not have a witness signature, and 401 did not have a voter signature.”
While the report does not prove who really won the election, it confirms that the number of at least questionable votes far exceeds Biden’s margin of victory. When combined with previously known issues, such as waiving the criteria for voting by mail via executive fiat and left-wing activists accessing mail ballots and influencing vote-counting in Green Bay, Wisconsin, it casts serious doubt on the validity of Wisconsin’s election results.
Additionally, on Thursday Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling revealed the findings of an investigation into Ridgewood Care Facility, a nursing home where eight families say their loved ones were found to have voted despite lacking the cognitive ability to do so. “Election statute was in fact not just broken, but shattered by members of the Wisconsin Elections Commission,” Schmaling said, calling on Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat, to investigate.
Similar concerns about the 2020 presidential election remain unresolved nationwide, including in Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland has threatened to take action against states for investigating the election and enacting new election security measures, calling such claims “refuted.”
The prevailing mainstream media narrative holds that stolen election fears are a “debunked conspiracy theory” on the grounds that legal challenges to the election results failed in court. But while some of the legal briefs filed on Trump’s behalf were flawed, many others were dismissed over process issues without a judge ever considering their contents.
Wisconsin Senate Republicans announced Monday an investigation into WLAB’s findings; another election investigation by Assembly Republicans remains ongoing.