(The Center Square) – Wisconsin’s governor is making it clear he’s not going to sign off on the end of the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
Gov. Tony Evers was a guest on Upfront on Milwaukee TV over the weekend and said he will veto the Republican-backed plan to get rid of the elections commission and shift its powers to the secretary of state’s office.
“Under no circumstances, simple as that,” Evers said.
Republican Rep. Ty Bodden, R-Stockbridge, introduced the plan last week. He said moving the responsibility for managing Wisconsin’s elections to the elected secretary of state will help restore faith in the state’s electoral process.
“The Wisconsin Elections Commission and its makeup has been a disaster for the state of Wisconsin. The Government Accountability Board was a failed agency and WEC was another failed experiment that replaced it. Let’s not try to reinvent the wheel, but rather give the responsibilities back to the secretary of state, the position that administers elections in 38 other states,” Bodden said last week.
“Moving it to the secretary of state and having the secretary of state essentially be overseen by the Legislature, that’s a non-starter,” the governor countered. “We’ve got a good system. We’ve got a good leader in the system, and I’m going to veto anything that moves us in a different direction.”
Republican lawmakers have been pushing to fire Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe for years. Republicans have been furious with Wolfe since the 2020 elections, and the still unanswered questions about things like ballot drop boxes, the money from the Mark Zuckerberg-backed Center for Tech and Civic Life and for a string of other Election Commission decisions that all seemed to benefit Democrats in Wisconsin.
Evers defended Wolfe.
“I think she’s a very capable person, but we have a good system now,” Evers said. “I want to keep it.”
Bodden’s plan has support in both the Assembly and Senate, though it’s not clear if it has enough support to pass both chambers, especially with a promised veto hanging over its head.
