Gableman attorney says 2020 election can’t be decertified

At a hearing of the Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections Thursday that included further Republican conspiracism about the 2020 presidential election, an attorney for former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman said that the election can’t be decertified. 

For months, Gableman has been conducting a partisan review of the election, searching for evidence of misconduct or widespread fraud that would prove Republican conspiracies that the election was stolen from Donald Trump. 

Earlier this month, Gableman suggested in a report that the Legislature should look into decertifying Wisconsin’s election results — which numerous recounts, audits, lawsuits and investigations have affirmed was won by President Joe Biden. 

The Legislature’s nonpartisan legal staff has said decertification is an impossible and unconstitutional legal maneuver, though that hasn’t stopped figures such as Gableman and right-wing gubernatorial candidate Rep. Tim Ramthun (R-Campbellsport) from pushing for the action. 

On Thursday, Gableman’s attorney James Bopp told the committee that he doesn’t think decertification is possible. 

“It’s over then — can’t go back. There is no mechanism, no provision, no anything that would have any practical legal effect,” Bopp said. 

Bopp is representing Gableman in a number of lawsuits surrounding the election review, including Gableman’s efforts to avoid complying with the state’s open records laws. 

Representatives of True the Vote, which calls itself an anti-election fraud organization, also testified at Thursday’s hearing, alleging that by using cell phone location data they could  prove that employees of nonprofit organizations illegally engaged in “ballot trafficking” by returning large amounts of absentee ballots to drop boxes. 

The allegations made by True the Vote, which has been searching for evidence of fraud in elections since 2017, were roundly criticized by election experts across the state. 

“Data allegedly showing cell phones that were tracked multiple times near absentee ballot drop boxes is, alone, not evidence of a crime,” the Wisconsin Elections Commission said in a statement.