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MADISON, Wis. – A Wisconsin man this week ordered absentee ballots for himself on behalf of a mayor and top state lawmaker in what he says was an attempt to expose vulnerabilities in the state’s voting system.
Harry Wait, who leads a group in southeastern Wisconsin that has focused on voting issues, said Thursday he was willing to go to jail to prove his point. The stunt angered many state election officials, especially those who have spent the past few years fighting baseless claims of widespread voter fraud.
“I would be willing to take that hit for the country,” Wait said of facing prison. “You can’t have ballots everywhere, without insurance.”
“I committed a crime when I did it,” he said, “but do you think criminals care when they do it?”
Wait said he used the state’s online election portal Tuesday to request that absentee ballots for the Aug. 9 primary be sent to his home on behalf of the Speaker of the Assembly Robin Vos (R) and Racine Mayor Cory Mason (D). Wait confronted the two officials repeatedly as chairman of the HOT Government group, which takes its name from the acronym for “honest, open and transparent”.
Shortly after making the requests, Wait explained his actions in an email to Vos and Mason, as well as Racine County District Attorney Patricia Hanson (Dr.) and Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling (R), who has promoted former President Donald Trump’s claims about the voter. fraud and called for the arrest of five of the state’s election commissioners.
Wait said he and others requested about a dozen ballots in total. Aside from the ballot requests for Vos and Mason, Wait said he had permission from voters to request their ballots. He said he hadn’t received ballots for Vos and Mason and didn’t expect to because he had alerted authorities to what he had done.
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Wait’s group posted a video on their Rumble.com page Thursday of Vos and Mason’s vote requests.
Hanson said he was looking into the matter. Under Wisconsin law, it is a misdemeanor to make a false statement to obtain a ballot and a felony to make a false statement to an election clerk.
In a Facebook post about the incident, Schmaling did not mention Wait’s investigation and instead called for an investigation. from the state’s online election portal, MyVote Wisconsin.
Ann Jacobs, who serves on the state’s election commission, said the district attorney should charge anyone involved in the effort to try to get ballots cast.
“They intentionally went and stole somebody’s ballot,” said Jacobs, a Democrat on a board that is politically divided. “It’s like walking into Walmart and taking a big screen TV and walking out the door with it and then going to the police and saying, ‘It’s so easy to steal this.’ You still stole it.”
Jacobs and the commission’s nonpartisan director, Meagan Wolfe, said the attempts to illegally obtain votes did not expose any vulnerabilities in the state’s system.
“Intentionally using another person’s identity to subvert the system does not demonstrate a flaw with MyVote, but rather a flaw with that person’s conduct,” Wolfe said in a written statement. “A nefarious person who chooses to impersonate another person to obtain official documents of any kind, whether for election use or any other purpose, is clearly violating state and federal law and could face consequences” .
Vos issued a statement denouncing Wait’s move and noting that Wait supports Vos’ main opponent.
“His actions are sad,” Vos said in his statement. “If electoral integrity means anything, it means that we must all abide by the law, Republicans and Democrats alike.”
Mason said he wants Wait to face charges.
“He clearly violated the law and tried to take away my right to vote, as well as Robin’s,” she said. “You can argue that there should be more security at the local bank. You can’t go rob the bank to make your point.”
Mason said he is concerned Wait’s actions are raising unfounded suspicions of voter fraud just ahead of the fall election.
“It’s plain wrong and, you know, with all kinds of irony of people so desperate to prove a conspiracy that doesn’t exist that they’re willing to commit the very crime they say they’re trying to prevent,” he said. .
Wisconsin’s online portal allows registered voters to request absentee ballots after logging in with their names and dates of birth. They can send ballots anywhere so that those who live temporarily away from home have the opportunity to vote.
A similar procedure can be followed by sending a paper form by post.
Most voters must provide a copy of a photo ID the first time they apply for an absentee ballot that the election clerk can keep on file. Voters who say they are homebound due to age or disability do not have to show ID, but making a false claim is a crime.
When voters make online requests for ballots, their clerk receives an email informing them of the request. The clerk makes the final call on whether the ballots are issued.
Wait said he recently told a reporter from the conservative Epoch Times how to request an absentee ballot on Wait’s behalf and mail it to Michigan. A short time later, he received a call from his secretary to notify him of the request, he said.
Wait said the system was working in this case, but he was concerned that employees in other parts of the state were not as diligent.
“I want MyVote shut down,” Wait said. “I want all absentee ballots closed until they can secure the ballots.”
Ballot boxes are not allowed in Wisconsin, the state Supreme Court has ruled
In response to Wait’s disclosure of the ballot solicitation, the election commission held an emergency meeting Thursday, where some commissioners asked to formally seek charges against Wait.
The commission unanimously agreed to send postcards to all voters who requested absentee ballots to be sent to a different home address to ensure they are aware of the requests. About 4,000 voters have made these requests since April, according to the commission.
Wait made his ballot requests two weeks before the primary, when Vos faces a challenge from Adam Steen. The primaries will also narrow the field for governor and the US Senate.
Wait, who supports Steen, has long battled Vos in the 2020 presidential election. Joe Biden beat Trump by about 21,000 votes in Wisconsin, results that have been upheld by courts and independent reviews.
Wait said he doesn’t think Vos did enough to investigate the election even though Vos hired a former state Supreme Court justice to conduct a yearlong investigation.
Schmaling last year called for Jacobs and four other election commissioners to be charged with crimes over the policies they put in place for voting at nursing homes in 2020. Because nursing homes did not allow visitors during the coronavirus pandemic , the election commission told employees to disregard a law requiring them to send poll workers to those facilities and instead send absentee ballots to residents.
Hanson and two other district attorneys declined to indict the commissioners. Two other prosecutors have not said whether they plan to file charges in the matter.
Schmaling did not return the call Thursday, but Wait said the sheriff told him he did not plan to arrest him during a call they had Wednesday.
“He said, ‘Thank you so much for breaking this up,” Wait said of his talk with Schmaling. “Then I said, ‘Does that mean you’re not going to arrest me?’ And he said, ‘Hell no.’ “
That same morning, Schmaling posted a message on Facebook that said, “I am disheartened by the apparent vulnerabilities in My Vote Wisconsin that are ripe for fraud, and everyone, regardless of their political leanings, should stand up for themselves ·request a comprehensive statewide investigation into this important election integrity issue.”
As of Thursday afternoon, the post had generated hundreds of comments and been shared nearly 1,000 times.