MADISON, Wis. (AP) – Wisconsin’s top election official, who has come under fire from the GOP for how she steered the battleground state’s last presidential election, on Wednesday pushed officials to vote to keep her. for another term or choose a successor who will support stability.
Meagan Wolfe, the nonpartisan administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, touted her experience but pledged to support the decision to appoint someone else to oversee the agency and guide the roughly 1,800 local clerks who organize the elections.
Wolfe’s term ends on July 1 and the path forward is uncertain. The commissioners are weighing the chances of their appointee surviving confirmation in the Senate, where some lawmakers have vowed not to back Wolfe. A recent Supreme Court ruling could leave the commission deciding whether to keep Wolfe in office without a Senate confirmation vote.
“While I ultimately support the Commission’s decision to go in the direction of appointing a new person, there is no substitute for my decade of experience running Wisconsin elections at the state level,” Wolfe said in a letter to the county and municipalities. clerks. “It’s a fact that if I weren’t selected for this role, Wisconsin would have a less experienced administrator at the helm.”
She called on the Senate to quickly confirm the appointment of the six bipartisan election commissioners.
Republican lawmakers have called for his resignation amid former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. The Wisconsin result withstood two partial recounts, a nonpartisan audit, scrutiny by a conservative law firm, numerous state and federal lawsuits, and a Republican-ordered review that didn’t found no evidence of widespread fraud prior to investigator’s dismissal.
Wolfe, one of the most respected election officials in the United States, has served as president of nationally recognized election organizations, including the National Association of State Election Directors and the Electronic Registration Information Center.
But some Republican lawmakers have already vowed to vote against her confirmation if she is reappointed, including Senate Speaker Chris Kapenga, who said “there’s no way” she would be confirmed.
Wolfe defended her work and the commission against what she called “misinformation” by “a vocal minority”, saying in her letter that she organized a successful election “in some of the most difficult circumstances in the world. history of our state and our nation”.
Don Millis, the Republican chairman of the Elections Committee, did not immediately return a call from The Associated Press on Wednesday, but told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he planned to call a vote on the nomination of a director and that it would be neglecting the duties of the commission not to do that.
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Harm Venhuizen is a member of the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places reporters in local newsrooms to report on underreported issues. Follow Harm on Twitter.