GOP targets Wisconsin elections system, nonpartisan director

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin Republicans are working to discredit the bipartisan system they created to run elections in the state after President Joe Biden narrowly won last year’s presidential race, making the political battleground the latest front in the national push by the GOP to exert more control over elections.

Wednesday will bring a flurry of election-related developments in the state, with both the Wisconsin Elections Commission and a partisan legislative panel dissecting the 2020 presidential election. At the same time, Republican lawmakers are continuing to attack the state’s well-regarded election administrator in a pressure campaign to have her resign, an apparent attempt to install a GOP partisan in the position ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

“This is really just the politics of fear and vengeance,” said Kevin Kennedy, who was Wisconsin’s top elections official for 34 years before retiring in 2016. “This is not about ideas. … They have effigies they want to burn and that’s it.”

 

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