Chair of Wisconsin Assembly elections panel calls for voiding 2020 results

MADISON, Wis. - The leader of the Wisconsin Assembly's elections committee called Friday for invalidating Joe Biden's 2020 election victory in the state — an idea that constitutional scholars and Republican legislative leaders have called legally impossible.

"Fair and honest elections are the cornerstone of our democracy and we know that the 2020 presidential election was neither fair, nor transparent," state Rep. Janel Brandtjen said in a news release. "Tyranny is at Wisconsin's door."

She said she planned to sign onto a resolution led by another Republican, state Rep. Tim Ramthun, to decertify the election, making her the first legislator to join his cause. Ramthun is running a long-shot bid for governor on a decertification platform.

Brandtjen's statement could influence other legislators to sign up for the decertification effort, but she and Ramthun face long odds in getting a floor vote.

Biden beat President Donald Trump by more than 20,000 votes out of 3.3 million cast in Wisconsin. Recounts and a string of court rulings upheld those results. A legislative audit and a review by a conservative group found no evidence of widespread fraud in the state.

Brandtjen, like many other Republican legislators in Wisconsin, has argued that the election was nonetheless fundamentally flawed. She questioned the results Friday because local officials had used ballot drop boxes and accepted grants to help run their elections from a group largely funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Brandtjen also criticized the way the election was run because the Wisconsin Elections Commission told clerks to immediately mail absentee ballots to residents of nursing homes in 2020 instead of following a state law that requires them to first dispatch poll workers to those facilities. The bipartisan commission made that decision because nursing homes were not allowing visitors during the coronavirus pandemic.

Brandtjen did not explain why she thought decertification was possible.

"We have been told for months now that decertification is impossible, meaning there is no downside to cheating in Wisconsin elections," she said in her news release. "How many more times do we need to endure this election injustice? I will join Rep. Ramthun's call for decertification, as I see no other means of justice for Wisconsin voters."

Brandtjen did not immediately return a phone call Friday. Brandtjen, who has long railed against how the election was run, detailed her criticisms this year in "Rigged," a film made by the conservative group Citizens United about the 2020 election.

The film, which premiered in April at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, also included an interview with Michael Gableman, a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice hired by Vos last year to review the 2020 election.

Gableman in March told Brandtjen's committee that legislators should consider decertifying the election result. In a private meeting in May with legislative leaders, Gableman backed away from the idea, according to Vos and another leader who attended the meeting.

"She's just making a name for herself," Bernier said. "I think it's a dang joke."

State Rep. Mark Spreitzer, a Democratic member of Brandtjen's committee, called the attempts to reverse the election troubling.

"Ultimately, when voting starts, if we can't come together as a state, as a country, and say, 'Whether we like the rules or not, we're all going to try to get our people out to vote under them, we're going to count the votes, and whoever gets the most votes is going to win' - if we can't agree on that, then we don't have the core foundation of a democratic form of government, and that is dangerous," he said.

Ramthun, Brandtjen and others have renewed their push to overturn the 2020 results after the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled this month that state law does not allow the use of ballot drop boxes. The court's 4-3 ruling affects future elections, not past votes.

Vos told WISN television in Milwaukee on Tuesday that he received a call from Trump "within the last week" about the Supreme Court decision, seeing it as a new opportunity to overturn the 2020 results.

Trump then attacked Vos in posts on Truth Social, Trump's social media platform, saying that the speaker's inaction was "a waste of a brilliant and courageous decision by Wisconsin's Highest Court."

"This is not a time for him to hide," Trump wrote, "but a time to act!"