What Happened in Milwaukee?

 

On November 5 Americans catapulted Donald Trump back into the Presidency of the United States with a decisive victory that included a sweep of the 7 so-called battleground states and the majority of the populist vote. It was a sharp rejection of the extreme liberal ideology that is destroying the fabric of our lives and threatening our freedom. While the electorate across the country breathed a collective sigh of relief, this is just the beginning of the long fight ahead to take our country back.

 

While the nation as a whole experienced a red wave, Wisconsin’s presidential result was the closest in the country and the only one decided by less than a percentage point. Last Wednesday, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (JS) headlined with “State Vote Showed Purple Ripple” in an extensive article intended to make Wisconsin’s variance from the rest of the country seem believable. They declared, “What we are witnessing in these voting trends and patterns is the most extended period of partisan parity and stability in the history of the Wisconsin electorate.” Despite the fact that Donald Trump received 90,000 more votes than he received in 2020 and 290,000 more votes than he received in 2016, the JS attributes the result, in part, to Trump only receiving 1% more of the vote in Milwaukee, the state’s most populous city. Wisconsin and Georgia are the only states where Kamala Harris received more votes than Joe Biden did in 2020.

 

In the race for Senate, Tammy Baldwin was declared the winner over Eric Hovde by .9%. The JS found this easily understandable because in 2022, Tony Evers, a Democrat, was re-elected Governor and Ron Johnson, a Republican, was re-elected Senator. This rationalization defies the logic of any thinking person. This election was a rebuke of ideology and the real harm done to the American people by the Biden/Harris administration and their enablers in Congress. Tammy Baldwin has a nearly perfect record of voting for the Biden/Harris agenda and her liberal extremism was clearly exposed throughout the election cycle. In this particular election with these specific issues, it is inconceivable to people willing to use their own good judgment that voters would split their ticket between Trump and Baldwin.

 

The bottom line for the JS is that there were no big swings in either direction in most counties and “Wisconsin played perfectly to type, splitting the two big statewide races, giving the nation its closest presidential contest, barely deviating from its 50/50 baseline, but turning out like mad”.

 

Last week Eric Hovde posted a thoughtful video expressing his plan to pause to consider what happened in Milwaukee and what, if any, next steps are appropriate. He immediately and predictably came under fire from the media and leadership from both parties for “baseless claims” though citizens from across the state who are outraged by the well documented vulnerabilities in our election system share his concerns.

 

What happened in Milwaukee?

Prior to the election, a group of citizens concerned about election integrity, evaluated requested absentee ballots against established databases to determine their legitimacy. The United States Postal Service database was one of those used. The analysis revealed 5,000 requested absentee ballots in Milwaukee with one or more of 15 potential issues that are violations of the law. The analysis was then expanded to include 755,000 requests for absentee ballots statewide and revealed 155,000 that contained issues that, if confirmed, would be violations of the law. Ultimately, about 1.4 million absentee ballots were requested in the state.

 

These citizens notified the Milwaukee Elections Commission they would be attending their meeting at City Hall the Wednesday before the election to challenge the 5,000 absentee ballots and request the eligibility of these voters be verified. When they arrived at the meeting, there were 9 attorneys from the Democratic Party in attendance, leading the citizens to the conclusion that they had been notified by the Commission of the challenge.

 

The Milwaukee Elections Commission showed no interest in the findings of these citizens, nor did the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) when alerted to the 155,000 potential issues statewide. Having no other recourse, these citizens have filed a lawsuit in Milwaukee County against the City of Milwaukee and Wisconsin Elections Commissions.

 

We know from reporting throughout the early voting period that Democrats were very concerned about turnout being far lower than expected in Milwaukee. We also know that voter registration was down in Milwaukee. At 4:00 a.m. the Wednesday after election day approximately 108,000 absentee ballots were delivered to the central counting location to be tallied. Of those, Baldwin received nearly 90% of the votes. Some Milwaukee precincts had greater than 100% turnout, which officials explained as attributable to same day registration. Same day registration surged by 50%.  According to the City of Milwaukee Elections Commission website, voter turnout in Milwaukee was 85%, more than 20% higher than the national turnout and significantly higher than Wisconsin as a whole.

 

In a Marquette Law School blog about Wisconsin voter turnout published on the website on November 12, John Johnson reported that about 125,000 more people voted in 2024 than 2020. The number of votes in Milwaukee County grew by 4,346 despite the adult population falling by about 11,900 between 2020 and 2023. He reported “Voter turnout in Wisconsin this year was very high—among the highest ever in presidential elections in Wisconsin. Unofficial returns show 3,422,802 votes cast for president, up from 3,298,041 in 2020”. He goes on to explain that the University of Florida Election Lab estimates that 76.4% of eligible voters cast a ballot in Wisconsin compared with 63.5% nationally.

 

So what really happened in Milwaukee? We will never know because our elections are not verifiable.

 

The top priority in cleaning up our election system is the Registered Voters list that contains more than 4 million names of ineligible voters. The WEC, along with legislators in both houses of state government, have steadfastly refused to purge the rolls of ineligible voters despite citizen demands that they do so. Also high on the list are 250,000 driver’s licenses that have been issued to non-citizens who are here legally. Those licenses are identical to citizen licenses and can easily be used to vote illegally. The legislators and WEC have refused to address this potential source of voter fraud.

 

Donald Trump’s victory did not reduce the importance of the continued fight for election integrity in Wisconsin. We have a critical Supreme Court election next spring and must continue to demand system flaws are addressed with more rigor than ever. Until we reform our current system, we cannot verify that every ballot cast has been cast by an eligible voter. Recounts are a waste of time and money. Miscounting the ballots that are cast is not the problem.

 

The movement to inform and mobilize the electorate to demand election integrity in Wisconsin continues undeterred. Along the way there will be many attempts to deflect from the truth by those who are invested in the status quo. They will demand that concerned voters prove there is election fraud. It is not the responsibility of the voters to prove that fraud has occurred. It is the responsibility of the legislature and the WEC to make sure the system is designed so fraud cannot occur. The correct response to these deflections is to demand proof that every ballot cast has been cast by an eligible voter. This is the meaning of verifiable.