New questions arise about possible Wisconsin nursing home voting violations

There are new questions about the opportunity for voter fraud in Wisconsin.

The Thomas More Society this week released its findings into people who are under “no vote” guardianship orders in the state. Those orders come from a judge after someone has been found “incapable of understanding the objective of the elective process,” according to state law.

The Thomas More Society’s Erick Kaardal said state law also requires courts to send those to “no vote” orders to election officials. Which he says is not happening.

“The most important question is the one that pertains to elder abuse,” Kaardal said. “Are these [people] with no voting rights registered, active voters? Are they sent absentee ballots automatically as ‘indefinitely confined’? And are they currently voting? Those are the big questions that need to be answered before the August 2022 primary.”

Questions about disabled voters and their absentee ballots surfaced after an investigation by the Racine County Sheriff’s Department found some incompetent seniors cast ballots in the 2020 election.

Kaardal said The Thomas More Society and the Wisconsin Voter Alliance asked several counties for the number of “no vote” orders on file. He said the results show the Wisconsin Elections Commission is likely under-reporting the number of “no votes” in the state’s WisVote system.

“In Vernon County, the WisVote record of “no vote” guardianships was only 39% of those issued by the county’s courts – and that was the county with most comprehensive recording of “no vote” wards,” Kaardal said. “In Marquette and Ozaukee Counties, there was not a single record of a “no vote” guardianship entered in WisVote, despite the attestation of the County Registers in Probate that 80 and 219 “no vote” orders had been issued respectively.”

Kaardal said overall, less than five percent of the ineligible voters, a mere 123 “no vote” designations, were reported in WisVote for the thirteen counties they looked at.

“Our investigative hypothesis is that the groups who inserted themselves illegally into Wisconsin’s election administration process have lined up nursing home directors in urban cities to elicit votes from every nursing home resident, even those who have been deemed ‘incompetent’ to vote,” Kaardal explained.

Rep. Janel Brandtjen, R-Menomonee Falls, who heads the Assembly’s committee on elections on Thursday said the Thomas Moore investigation went on to find “25,000 adjudicated voters remain eligible to receive ballots.”

“Knowing that these folks can be easily persuaded into voting for specific candidates. WEC is literally condoning elder abuse,” Brandtjen added.