MILWAUKEE (CN) — The Republican National Convention asked for an emergency injunction against the Milwaukee Election Commission on Monday, claiming it set unreasonable limits on poll observers at five polling locations.
The RNC claims in its lawsuit — filed in Milwaukee County Circuit Court, just one day before Election Day — the Milwaukee Election Commission allowed chief election inspectors, those in charge of polling places, to “arbitrarily limit” poll watchers during early voting days to one person from each of the two major parties, thus obstructing the people from their right to observe the election process.
“If the commission is allowed to continue to prohibit plaintiff and the public from observing all public aspects of the voting process and in a manner contrary to law, it will only cast doubt on the administration of our elections and cause a lack of voter confidence in our electoral process,” the RNC writes.
Wisconsin state law requires that election observation areas be positioned three to eight feet from where voters check in to retrieve a ballot or register to vote so that an observer has eyes on every part of the voting process. The statute also gives the chief inspector the right to reasonably limit how many members of the same organization may be present.
Election observers can be anybody interested in the election process, and they do not have to be affiliated with a party or organization, according to state law.
They must sign in and refrain from partisan attire or campaigning, otherwise the chief inspector is obligated under the same statute to remove them from the location. However, the statute doesn’t offer much guidance in the way of pre-determined limits.
The RNC wants a judge to decide if the state statute they say is relatively vague means that chief inspectors are allowed to limit observers without consideration of venue capacity.
“The commission could have easily designated a second or third area for observers to see and hear the voting process in all of the above polling sites … but the commission did not do so,” the RNC says in the suit.
The RNC says both it and voters from both sides will be irreparably harmed if the commission is allowed to limit poll watchers on Election Day, and it claims relief can only come in the form of a restraining order and injunction prohibiting the commission from restricting any member of the public from viewing the voting process,
The committee also asks for a judicial declaration that the commission broke the law by allowing chief inspectors to turn poll watchers away even though there was technically space in the building.
“Wisconsin voters deserve to know that there are poll watchers from both parties in the room as votes are being cast and counted on Election Day. The RNC has not recruited and trained thousands of volunteers in the Badger State simply to back down from misguided officials who want to prevent a full measure of poll-watching transparency. This lawsuit will compel officials in Milwaukee to ensure robust poll watcher access for the Republican Party,” RNC Chairman Michael Whatley and Co-Chair Lara Trump said in a statement.
In a declaration accompanying the suit, “Veteran poll observer” Kenneth Dragotta says he attempted to observe voting activity at four different locations across Milwaukee County and was informed at each one by the chief election inspector that only two election observers were allowed in the room at a time, one from each party. State Representative Janel Brandtjen joined Dragotta on his tour of voting sites, but did not file a declaration.
In his statement, Dragotta claims that there was room for six to 10 more observers at each location he visited, and that the limits were completely arbitrary.
The RNC points to guidance the commission provided to chief inspectors as evidence of a plan to limit poll watchers.
In a statement accompanying the suit, Michael Hoffman, the RNC’s election integrity director for Wisconsin, cited emailed guidance that reportedly instructs chief inspectors at 180 polling locations in the state of the three to eight feet rule laid out in the statute, and goes on to say that chief inspectors at smaller polling places should “limit the number of observers to two at a time, one from each political party.”
The RNC is represented in the suit by Wisconsin attorneys Kevin Scott and Kurt Goehre of Conway, Olejniczak & Jerry.
“This new lawsuit from Trump’s allies is nothing more than a press release to make noise and cast doubt on our election process. The truth is this election is safe and secure and the city of Milwaukee has poll observers from both parties witnessing it, despite the latest MAGA bluster. Like dozens of partisan RNC lawsuits this cycle, this one will fail,” Democratic Party of Wisconsin Communications Director Joe Oslund said in a statement.
With Wisconsin’s election process under close scrutiny — especially after extreme cases of election denialism in 2020 — the state is no stranger to eleventh hour lawsuits. In 2020, the Trump campaign filed several suits after Election Day with a swath of now-disproven claims of election interference and fraud.
The commission reports that over 1.5 million absentee ballots have been returned so far in Wisconsin, almost 950,000 of which were cast at early, in-person absentee voting sites, smashing 2020’s records. Those ballots will begin to be counted on Election Day at 7 a.m. and will be tallied continuously until every vote has been counted — a process which is expected to take until well past midnight.