Wisconsin House Speaker Robin Vos on Wednesday called for a forensic audit of the state’s 2020 election, marking a dramatic reversal after earlier resistance.
“Part of our discussion has been focused on hiring independent contractors to enhance our efforts,” said a statement from Vos’s office. “We believe a cyber–forensic audit is necessary to ensure issues did not happen in 2020.”
According to the Gateway Pundit, a flurry of recent developments seems to have portended—if not contributed to—the change of heart by Vos, who previously had resisted calls for an audit.
That included pressure from an election-integrity watchdog, Turning Wisconsin Red, which said executive committees in 31 counties supported the audit. The group’s map includes Vos’s phone number and those of two leaders in the state Senate.
The group Look Ahead America also released a recent analysis that showed some 157,000 illegal votes were cast in the state—where President Joe Biden officially claimed victory by a margin of 20,682 votes despite what appeared to be late-night shenanigans in Milwaukee and other major urban centers.
The state legislature had appointed a special counsel, Justice Michael Gableman, to examine the issue and pledged to provide his office with additional resources for the audit, despite strong resistance from Wisconsin’s Democrat Gov. Tony Evers.
“While our attempts to make common sense election reforms to close loopholes and standardize procedures were vetoed by Governor Evers, we have doubled down on our top-to-bottom investigation,” Vos said in a statement.
It is unclear whether Gableman’s findings had anything to do with the decision or if Vos ultimately caved to outside pressure. However, he reportedly flew with former President Donald Trump on Saturday to attend Trump’s evening rally in Alabama, WMTV reported.
Former Trump Chief of Staff Reince Preibus went on Real America’s Voice Tuesday to call for the audit, saying that “prolific fraud” had been found.
The development comes as Arizona comes close to concluding its audit, with some hinting that the findings there would be “earth-shattering.”
The addition of those two states would still be insufficient to have reversed the outcome of the 2020 election, however, leaving Trump with a deficit of 32 electors.
But at lease three others states—Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia—have faced intense pressure to conduct audits.
The addition of Pennsylvania, which has 20 electoral votes, would put Trump over the top.
While state Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman recently committed to holding investigative hearings on the issue, some doubt his dedication to taking up the issue, which state Attorney General Josh Shapiro has vowed to fight.
“We’re going to have some hearings this week to start the process,” Corman said during an interview with conservative radio host Wendy Bell. “We can bring people in, we can put them under oath, right, we can subpoena records, and that’s what we need to do, that’s what we’re going to do.”
The addition of either Georgia or Michigan, with 16 electoral votes, would have resulted in a tie that sent the outcome of the election to the US House where, by an unusual set of circumstances, Republicans would have had the advantage.
However, since the Electoral College already convened and declared Biden the election winner—a process certified on Jan. 5 by the joint session of Congress—there is little constitutional remedy should Democrats refuse to cede power voluntarily at this point.
