Wisconsin lawmaker questions why military ballot voting dropped over 80% in 2022

There are new questions about the 2020 election after the latest numbers from the 2022 election.

Rep. Janel Brandtjen, R-Menomonee Falls, on Tuesday said this year’s military voting numbers show something happened between the two elections.

“We have learned that the number of active military members voting in the 2022 election dropped by over 83% since the 2020 election!” Brandtjen said in a statement.

Brandtjen is at the center of the story about military ballots in Wisconsin.

She received three fake military ballots ahead of Election Day. Those ballots, it turned out, came from a Milwaukee election manager.

“When Milwaukee deputy election clerk Kim Zapata created three military members out of thin air and sent requests for legitimate ballots to my home address, the vulnerability of the military ballot process was exposed,” Brandtken added.

Military voters in Wisconsin don’t have to actually register, and never have to show voter ID in order to get an absentee ballot in the state.

Brandtjen said there were nearly 10,000 military votes in the 2020 election, and not even 2,000 in the 2022 election.

“The 2022 active military voters dropped to 1,573 after a 2020 high number of 9,876, 4,966 in 2018 and 6,736 in 2016," she said. Referencing the Wisconsin Election Commission, Brandtjen continued: "The substantial drop should have been noticed by WEC, and inquiries should have been made. Once again, WEC failed to do their job.”

Wisconsin law requires local election managers track military voters on a list, and Brandtjen said many clerks did not do that.

Brandtjen is not saying whether she thinks the shift in military voting numbers point to more shenanigans from the 2020 election or a lack of shenanigans in the 2022 election.

Brandtjen has, of course, led one of the investigations into the 2020 election. She also was a supporter of the investigation conducted by former Supreme Court Justice Mike Gableman, and has said the questions first raised in that probe have not yet been answered.