Leaked emails published this week show how Wisconsin Republicans attempted to promote questionable voter fraud claims to mobilize GOP voters.
The Guardian on Wednesday
published 1,500 leaked documents that were obtained as part of a so-called “John Doe investigation” into Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s reelection campaign.
Election Law Blog’s Rick Hansen
noted that some of the leaked emails showed how Republicans plotted to gin up their base by using talk radio to push claims of voter fraud in case Republican-backed Justice David Prosser lost to the Democratic favorite, Judge Joanne Kloppenburg.
In one 2011 email chain, former Republican legislative staffer
Steve Baas asks if “we need to start messaging ‘widespread reports of election fraud’ so we are positively set up for the recount regardless of the final number?”
School voucher lobbyist Scott Jensen, who is a former GOP Assembly Speaker, suggested using conservative radio hosts to push the idea.
“Anything fishy should be highlighted,” Jensen replied. “Stories should be solicited by talk radio hosts.”
Writing for Election Law Blog on Wednesday, Hansen said that the email discussion “shows that all this talk of fraud is all about manipulating Republican public opinion to believe that if Democrats won a close Supreme Court race, and the recall went to a recount, that the election was stolen by Democratic voter fraud.”
“This cynical ‘messaging’ is sadly validating of what many of us have said,” he concluded.
