GOP Legislators’ Response to Request for Proof of Widespread Improper Voting: ‘We Got Nothing’

MADISON, Wis. — The results are in, and the 65 Republican state legislators One Wisconsin Now asked for copies of “all evidence in possession by your office of voter fraud in the state of Wisconsin” under the state open records law have failed to produce any documents proving significant, widespread voting impropriety in Wisconsin.

One Wisconsin Now Executive Director Scot Ross commented, “It turns out the emperor has no clothes when it comes to state legislative Republicans’ complaints of widespread voting impropriety in Wisconsin. When challenged to produce the proof to back up their claims and justify their efforts to make it more difficult for legal voters to participate in elections, they were forced to admit they’ve got next to nothing.”

Of the 65 GOP offices to which requests were made, 50 responded that they had no documents matching the request. The remaining 15 offices provided copies of various newspaper accounts reporting the fewer than two-dozen case of voting impropriety found since 2004, a widely discredited, anonymously written “report” on voting impropriety in Milwaukee and a handful of unconfirmed constituent complaints.

In addition to the latest overwhelming failure of GOP legislators to produce actual evidence of voting impropriety, powerful Republicans leading the charge to eliminate same day voter registration in Wisconsin, Joint Committee on Finance co-chair Senator Alberta Darling and Assistant Senate Republican Leader Glenn Grothman, publicly admitted, when challenged, that they too lacked any proof of voting impropriety to justify their attempt to restrict voting.

Ross concluded, “The only proof to come from our request is that the real fraud in Wisconsin is being committed by the politicians who are perpetuating a baseless myth of widespread voting impropriety to justify their attempts to rig elections.”