Ron Johnson's internal polling numbers must really be tanking.
On Wednesday, RoJo met privately with top Republican state legislators and urged them to take over federal elections in the state. RoJo expressed concern about "voting irregularities" during the 2020 elections, in which Joe Biden defeated TFG by 20,000 votes.
Specifically, the Republicans' have focused their faux outrage on how the Wisconsin Election Commission (WEC) handled the voting process for residents in one nursing home. Under state law, election clerks are supposed to send polling workers to nursing homes to help residents vote. The poll workers are supposed to visit the nursing home twice before mailing absentee ballots. However, due to the pandemic and the fact that nursing homes were not allowing visitors as part of their COVID protocols, the WEC instructed the county clerks to immediately mail the absentee ballots to the residents to make sure they got there in time.
This went against two main Republican principles - allowing people to vote and protecting people from a deadly virus. This just couldn't be allowed!
Therefore, RoJo wanted the Republicans to take over federal elections - such as his - and telling county clerks to ignore the WEC:
The Oshkosh Republican on Wednesday met privately for an hour with GOP legislative leaders in the state Capitol, less than two weeks after telling the Journal Sentinel in an interview that lawmakers should set aside the commission's work. He repeatedly declined to say afterward whether he'd discussed his views on taking over elections, saying only that he had talked about many issues.
In the earlier interview, Johnson accused the state commission of "systematically" violating the law with the advice it gave to municipal clerks during the coronavirus pandemic last year.
He contended Republicans who control the Legislature could unilaterally take over federal elections and said Democratic Gov Tony Evers couldn't stop them.
"There's no mention of the governor in the Constitution" when it comes to running elections, Johnson said. "It says state legislatures, and so if I were running the joint —and I’m not — I would come out and I would just say, 'We're reclaiming our authority. Don't listen to WEC anymore. Their guidances are null and void.'"
He added: "I think the state Legislature has to reassert, reclaim this authority over our election system."
RoJo also whined about how the WEC allowed clerks to add witness addresses.
The problem with RoJo's complaints is that the Republicans created the WEC six years ago because they were so unhappy with the previous body that oversaw elections, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Board. Their displeasure was due to the fact that the Board kept catching Republicans trying to violate election and campaign finance laws. In contrast, the WEC consists of three Republicans and three Democrats and has very little authority.
And it was the WEC that authorized clerks to fill in the witness addresses in 2016, per the Republicans' request for them to do so.
Apparently, the GOP, as exemplified by RoJo, just want free rein to break all the election laws, and they want only the appearance of an oversight committee to rubber-stamp their criminal deeds as being OK. Damn the Constitution that prevents that!
It should also be noted that with less than a year to go, RoJo still hasn't formally announced whether he is even going to run for reelection. It sure seems like he wants others to commit his ratf*cking for him and guarantee him a win, or he's going to take his ball and go home, leaving the Republicans high and dry to find someone to run in his stead.
Pass the popcorn, would ya?
