Some states appear to be punishing election watchdogs.
QUICK FACTS:
- Voter integrity groups reporting irregularities in the 2020 election are receiving pushback from the states where problems have been detected.
- Wisconson’s election regulators have fined independent election watchdogs and Washington state’s Democratic attorney general submitted a bar complaint against an election integrity lawyer.
- Wisconsin data analyst for the Wisconsin Center for Election Justice, Peter Bernegger, was fined $2,403 by the Wisconsin Elections Commission for “frivolous complaints.”
- The Washington Election Integrity Coalition United (WEICU) was ordered to pay $9,600 by the state Supreme Court.
- Attorney Virginia Shogren of the WEICU was ordered to pay almost $18,800 following the election integrity group’s petition to find whether the state allowed noncitizens to register to vote.
STATE VIOLATION DETAILS:
- Four separate complaints were filed with the Wisconsin Center for Election Justice (WEC) on the issue of the state’s seemingly inaccurate voter rolls by attorney Peter Bernegger.
- The WEC replied to the complaints, but dismissed them and fined the attorney $1 per claim in the complaints, saying that “each complaint fails to provide reasonable suspicion of a violation.”
- Bernegger, however, rejected the replies, saying, “The system is completely defective. I told them that, and they hit me with a fine for filing a frivolous complaint. I’m going to hit them back with a civil rights suit.”
- In Washington, WEICU claimed that by reportedly pushing, or at the very least permitting, the state Department of Licensing to register noncitizens to vote, Gov. Jay Inslee (D) allegedly broke the state constitution.
- The state Supreme Court granted the Democratic state Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s motion to impose sanctions on WEICU for the petition, in an unusual move.
- Ferguson’s office called the complaints “so devoid of legal merit that there was no reasonable possibility that it would have been successful.”
BACKGROUND:
- Peer-reviewed research has found evidence of voter fraud in 2020, including evidence that hundreds of thousands of excess votes were counted in the last general election.
- The research points out that while the 2020 election might be too far past to vacate, there is a problem, particularly in swing states, that must be dealt with if Americans are expected to have confidence in upcoming elections.
- An estimated 52% of voters believe that “cheating affected the outcome of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, as of the spring of this year.”
