(Headline USA) The Republican head of the Wisconsin Assembly elections committee said Monday she will ensure there is a “comprehensive, forensic examination” of ballots cast in the 2020 presidential election at the same time the state’s nonpartisan audit bureau conducts a review.
The broadened investigation comes as the result of widespread evidence of fraud as President Donald Trump and other national Republicans take a closer look in Wisconsin, a state President Joe Biden was awarded by an alleged 20,000 votes. Democrats have derided calls for more investigations.
One of the loudest critics of how the election was run is Rep. Janel Brandtjen, chair of the Assembly elections committee. She said in a statement Monday that her committee will request additional materials to conduct a deeper review.
The committee’s investigation is in addition to a review ordered by Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, being done by three retired police detectives and overseen by a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, and the independent review by the audit committee.
Another separate, independent investigation is being done by several individuals convinced there was widespread fraud in Wisconsin.
The type of probe Brandtjen describes mirrors an audit being done in Arizona. Brandtjen and three other Wisconsin Republicans traveled to Arizona last month to observe that review.
“The people of Wisconsin deserve to know the truth about the 2020 election,” Brandtjen said in a statement.
She said her committee will look into “broader issues that have been raised” in the “most transparent and coordinated way possible.”
Trump’s loss to Biden in Wisconsin withstood a partial recount ordered by Trump in Milwaukee and Dane counties, the two most heavily Democratic counties. But ballots were not scrutinized for their veracity and mail-in votes were not compared with envelopes to confirm they were allowed under state law.
Brandtjen repeated concerns about absentee voting by people who said they were “indefinitely confined,” which under state law meant they did not have to show a photo ID to obtain their ballot, and about election officials filling in missing information on the envelopes that contained absentee ballots. That practice was done for prior elections under guidance from the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
She also raised concerns about how ballot counting machines work.
“Voters have made it clear that they want a thorough, cyber-forensic examination of tabulators, ballot marking devices and other election equipment, which I will be helping facilitate,” Brandtjen said. “IP addresses, chain of custody on ballots and audit trail logs must be thoroughly inspected by cyber-audit technicians in order to provide confidence for voters in our elections, both completed and upcoming.”
Democratic state Rep. Mark Spreitzer said Brandtjen was “reviving dead conspiracy theories and making up new ones about tabulation machines.”
“Wisconsin deserves better than right-wing extremists pretending to have insight into elections that they lost,” Spreitzer tweeted.
Adapted from reporting by Associated Press.
