by Erik Gunn, Wisconsin Examiner
Voting rights advocates joined the calls Thursday for Republican Senate candidate Eric Hovde to again away from accusations he made earlier this week that one thing went flawed with vote-counting within the election Hovde misplaced to Sen. Tammy Baldwin.
“This is a direct attempt to cast doubt on our free and fair elections. And this is not only disappointing, it’s unnecessary,” stated Sam Liebert, Wisconsin state director for All Voting is Native at a information convention Thursday morning. The nonpartisan, nonprofit group advocates for insurance policies to make sure voting entry, significantly for voters of colour and different marginalized teams.
“The rhetoric of questioning our democracy is more than just words, but it contributes to chaos and confusion, which undermines public trust in our elections and the officials who administer them,” Liebert stated.
The information convention, held outdoors the state workplace constructing that homes the Wisconsin Elections Fee, was organized by the Wisconsin Democracy Marketing campaign, a nonpartisan voting rights and marketing campaign finance reform advocacy group.
Audio system emphasised Wisconsin’s historical past of ticket-splitting and the close to equal division of Republican and Democratic voters. For that motive, they stated, victories final week by Republican Donald Trump within the presidential race and Baldwin, a Democrat, within the Senate race shouldn’t be considered as exceptional or suspicious.
“Donald Trump won, Tammy Baldwin won, Kamala Harris lost, and Erik Hovde lost,” stated Scott Thompson, an lawyer with the nonprofit voting rights and democracy legislation agency Legislation Ahead. “The people of Wisconsin know it, and I think Eric Hovde knows it too.”
“What you’re doing is creating divisions, and that cannot be accepted here in Wisconsin,” stated Nick Ramos, government director of the Wisconsin Democracy Marketing campaign.
Through the marketing campaign, Hovde “said all the right things — he talked about how he would honor the election results, talked about … there’s no time for us to continue these types of conspiracies and lies,” Ramos stated. However because the election, he added, Hovde has shifted his angle.
Hovde thus far has declined to concede the U.S. Senate election, though The Related Press known as the race for Baldwin, the Democratic two-term incumbent, early Wednesday, Nov. 6. With 99% of the vote counted, Baldwin had a 29,000-vote lead over Hovde, a margin of barely lower than 1%. She declared victory after the AP name.
Hovde’s first public assertion got here every week after Election Day. In a video posted on social media Tuesday, he stated he was ready for the vote canvass to be accomplished earlier than he would touch upon the result.
“Once the final information is available and all options are reviewed, I will announce my decision on how I will proceed,” Hovde stated.
Nonetheless, Hovde questioned the vote totals that have been reported from Milwaukee’s central rely facility, the place the town’s absentee ballots are consolidated and tallied.
About 108,000 absentee and provisional ballots have been counted within the early hours final Wednesday, with Baldwin garnering 82% of these votes, in accordance with the Milwaukee Election Fee. In Milwaukee ballots forged in-person Tuesday, Baldwin received 75% of the vote.
Each Republican and Democratic analysts have identified that Democrats have disproportionately voted absentee during the last a number of elections and that the result Milwaukee reported final week was consistent with these traits.
In his video, nevertheless, Hovde highlighted the late-counted ballots. He falsely known as Baldwin’s lead in that tally “nearly 90%,” claiming that was “statistically improbable” compared with the in-person vote rely.
Hovde stated that due to “inconsistencies” within the information, “Many people have reached out and urged me to contest the election.”
Ramos identified Thursday that Wisconsin lawmakers had launched a invoice with bipartisan help that may have allowed election clerks to start counting absentee ballots the day earlier than Election Day — ending the late-night tally change from absentee votes which have develop into an everyday function in Milwaukee.
The laws handed the Meeting however died within the state Senate. “We have folks in the state Legislature that would rather play political games and would rather see moments like this than actually fix the problem,” Ramos stated.
Whereas Hovde spoke skeptically concerning the vote rely in his video, in a chat radio interview after it was posted he described the election final result as a “loss.”
Hovde is “talking out of both sides of his mouth right now,” Ramos stated. “And so, on the one hand, we get to hear him say things like, you know, ‘It’s going to take me a while to get over this loss,’ and then we get to watch a video that gets broadly disseminated across X and Facebook and Instagram, where … he’s literally talking about how he does not believe what happened in Milwaukee and how the numbers shifted [in the ballot counting] aren’t accurate.”
In his video Hovde stated that “asking for a recount is a serious decision that requires careful consideration.”
Counties should ship their remaining vote canvass studies to the Wisconsin Elections Fee by Tuesday, Nov. 19. Candidates then have three days to make a recount request.
State legislation permits candidates to hunt a recount in the event that they lose by a margin of lower than 1%, nevertheless it requires the candidate to pay the fee if the margin is greater than 0.25%.
“He certainly can pursue a recount, although it looks like he’s going to have to pay for it himself,” stated Thompson. “[But] Eric Hovde does not have the right to baselessly spread false claims and election lies.”
Recounts don’t often change who wins
Election recounts are uncommon, however recounts that change the unique election final result are rarer nonetheless.
In a evaluation of recounts in statewide elections during the last quarter-century, the group FairVote discovered solely a handful during which the result modified, all of them during which the margin of victory was only a fraction of the less-than-1% margin that separates Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin, who leads Republican Eric Hovde by 29,000 votes.
FairVote checked out almost 7,000 statewide elections from the yr 2000 by means of 2023 and located a complete of 36 recounts. Recounts modified the result of simply three of these elections, nevertheless, FairVote discovered, and none of these have been in Wisconsin.
In every of the three recounts the unique margin of victory was lower than 0.06%.
