A Wisconsin judge — Dane County Circuit Judge Ann Peacock — has ruled in favor of Meagan Wolfe continuing to serve as administrator at a state agency termed the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
In that agency’s own description on its website, it “fulfills several statewide election responsibilities, such as helping ensure compliance with federal and state election laws, ensuring election accuracy, and maintaining the statewide voter registration database.” And elections are coming up, with that agency also participating in practical policy-making around balloting.
Wolfe has faced attacks from right-wingers amid nationwide conspiracy theories from Trump’s corner about the handling of recent elections. She is now serving in an essentially interim capacity after the six commissioners helping lead her agency ended up with a 50/50 split in a vote on whether to give her another term. The three Democrats on that panel abstained from the vote on Wolfe in order to stop her prospective re-appointment from heading to Republicans in the state Senate, where legislators are tasked with confirming the panel’s choice and could have sunk her tenure.
In addition to backing Wolfe’s continuing stint as administrator at that agency, Peacock said there was no legal compulsion for the six-member panel responsible for initial selections to keep working on a pick.
Republican state Senators held an official vote for the ostensible purpose of pushing Wolfe from the role despite the commission itself never sending her selection for their consideration, but the legal team for the GOP leader in the state Senate eventually admitted in court that the state body “has no power to act on an appointment where there is no pending appointment,” undercutting the past vote the chamber undertook. That admission was previously highlighted by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The judge expressed frustrations with Republicans in the state Senate. “The Legislature has fanned the hyper-partisan flames by engaging in several high-profile unequivocal official acts to purportedly remove Administrator Wolfe without publicly disclosing for months that their acts were ‘symbolic’ rather than supported by the law,” she said, as highlighted by that same Wisconsin outlet.
