Full video of interviews with WI nursing home patients who voted in 2020 released

The Amistad Project released the full video on Friday of Wisconsin nursing home patients who had absentee ballots cast in their name for the 2020 presidential election.

The video shows Amistad Project attorney Erick Kaardal interviewing seven Wisconsin families of nursing home patients who had absentee ballots cast for them during the 2020 presidential election despite the fact that they are in poor health. The patients’ families attested that they are unable to vote.

In the case of one nursing home resident, Walt Jankowski, he has been institutionalized since the 1970s. The 2020 presidential election is the only one with a record of him voting since being in a home, his son told Kaardal.

Retired state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who is heading the special counsel for the Wisconsin state Assembly, found that 91 nursing homes in the counties of Milwaukee, Racine, Dane, Kenosha, and Brown had voter turnout rates ranging from 95% to 100% in 2020.

For that election, the Wisconsin Election Commission bypassed the state's Special Voting Deputy process, according to the Racine County Sheriff's Office, under which the clerk of each municipality brings "enough ballots to each residential care facility to vote" and "assist the voters with the voting process."

Instead, the commission had absentee ballots sent to nursing home residents by mail. The sheriff found that facility staff, under the guise of "helping" residents to vote, coaxed votes from some whom family members believed incapable of voting.