Former Supreme Court Justice Gableman, head of Republican review of Wisconsin election, says he does not understand how elections work
GREEN BAY – The attorney leading a partisan review of Wisconsin's 2020 election acknowledged this week that he doesn't understand how elections are supposed to be run.
The admission by former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman comes as he subpoenas mayors and election officials.
His comment raises fresh questions about how long Gableman's taxpayer-financed review will take. He called an Oct. 31 deadline set for him by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos of Rochester unrealistic.
"Most people, myself included, do not have a comprehensive understanding or even any understanding of how elections work," Gableman said in an interview late Tuesday before addressing the Green Bay City Council about his plans.
Gableman's acknowledgment that he does not know how elections work comes 10 months after he told a crowd of supporters of former President Donald Trump without evidence that elected officials had allowed bureaucrats to "steal our vote." Recounts in the state's two most populous counties and court decisions determined Joe Biden won by more than 20,000 votes, or 0.6 percentage points.
Vos this summer hired Gableman and gave him a $676,000 budget to review the election. In the interview, Gableman said he planned to write a report that started by comparing what happened in 2020 with what should have happened.
"Section one: What should have occurred during the election? How do these things work? Most people don't know about that," he said. "Election laws are unlike, say, laws about don't kill me — they're not intuitive. No one can call elections laws common sense. Once you understand them, it may be common sense but it's not intuitive. And so most people, myself included, do not have a comprehensive understanding or even any understanding of how elections work."
A spokeswoman for Vos did not say why the speaker hired someone who does not know the ins and outs of elections, rather than an expert on the issue.
Democratic Rep. Mark Spreitzer of Beloit, who sits on the Assembly Elections Committee, said Gableman needs to get up to speed.
"If you are going to investigate an election, you should start by educating yourself about how elections work," he said. "How can we trust the findings of a person who doesn't understand how elections work?"
Election officials for weeks have questioned Gableman’s competence to handle an election review, noting he has associated with conspiracy theorists, suggested clerks must prove their innocence and sent a subpoena to Milwaukee City Clerk Jim Owczarski, who has no election duties.
Gableman this summer met with officials conducting a partisan review of the Arizona election and attended a South Dakota forum hosted by MyPillow executive Mike Lindell, who has baselessly claimed China hacked the election. More recently, he has been in touch with Shiva Ayyadurai, who falsely stated Massachusetts destroyed a million ballots and claimed without evidence that votes were taken away from Trump based on the science-fiction novel "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy."
More subpoenas issued
In his report, Gableman also plans to discuss guidance the bipartisan state Elections Commission gave to clerks around the state and grants the Center for Tech and Civic Life gave to Wisconsin cities to help them run their elections.
Those grants, which were funded by donations from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, have frustrated Republicans because large, Democratic-leaning communities received more than rural and suburban ones that tend to vote for Republicans.
Gableman said he plans to also review voting machines, but he did not provide specifics about that part of his work. Voting machines have no information on them because election data is kept on memory cards, not the machines. Ballots and voting data are retained for at least 22 months after each election.
With Vos' approval, Gableman last week issued subpoenas to the top election officials for the state, Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Kenosha and Racine.
On Wednesday, he delivered subpoenas to the mayors of those cities, as well as to officials there who are "most knowledgeable in regard to the November 2020 General Election."
"This constant rehashing of the 2020 election is not only demoralizing for our clerks, it is corrosive to our democracy. There is no wrongdoing to investigate which justifies subpoenas and interrogations," Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said at a news conference.
As with the subpoenas that went to city clerks, the new ones seek "all documents contained in your files and/or in your custody, possession, or control, pertaining to the Election" — a massive set of documents that officials have said would be difficult to produce.
In the interview, Gableman said if officials "want to cooperate ... and want to narrow it down or otherwise, then I'm certainly open to doing what is efficient."
He has told officials to meet with him on Oct. 15 and Oct. 22 at a rented office in Brookfield.
Gableman aide Zakory Niemierowicz declined to say Wednesday whether those interviews would be held in public. Gableman has said he will perform his work in private and then publicly release his report. Attorneys for election officials have questioned whether he can conduct his interviews privately.
Rhodes-Conway said the interviews had to be conducted before the public.
"If I’m going to go to Brookfield and spend my time in a strip mall answering questions, I think that room should be open to the public and I think it should be open to the press," she said.
In his question-and-answer session with the Green Bay Common Council, Gableman said those who talk to him will be granted immunity from criminal prosecution.
"It's so important to remember that the mission that has been assigned to me, to the Office of Special Counsel, by the Legislature is not a prosecution. It’s not a criminal proceeding," he said.
He did not note that the subpoenas he has issued warn the recipients in boldface type that they could be imprisoned if they do not comply with his demands. Critics have questioned whether he could do that and who could enforce such a provision.
Michael Maistelman, a Milwaukee attorney who frequently represents Democrats, said the mayors should respond to the subpoenas as some on Trump's team have responded to subpoenas from Congress — by disregarding them.
"The folks subpoenaed by Gableman should simply ignore the subpoenas just like the folks that Gableman is carrying water for do," Maistelman said.
Gableman during his presentation in Green Bay said he had no intention of trying to reinstate Trump.
"One of the more vocal criticisms from some quarters is that this investigation is an effort to somehow restore former President Trump to the White House," he said. "If that’s the program, nobody has shared it with me — nor would I have accepted this job if that was the case."
He made his comments just hours before Vos, who hired Gableman, said in the New York Times that he did not know whether Biden had legitimately won the election.
Vos in May told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he recognized Biden's win and was not trying to change the result.
In response to a question about the discrepancy in his comments, Vos issued a statement noting the Electoral College had determined Biden is the president.
"Based off what we have already heard, I believe our investigation is going to show that there were significant issues in the 2020 election," Vos said in his statement. "Whether or not the election result would have been changed, we have no idea. Our investigation aims at uncovering irregularities or issues in our election system so we can fix them and restore election integrity."
Molly Beck and Alison Dirr of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.
Contact Patrick Marley at patrick.marley@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter at @patrickdmarley.