Wisconsin voters caught in the middle as misinformation takes on education

In Wisconsin, two groups of activists are touring the state spreading seemingly opposing information about the state’s election system. One of them, led by a former Republican state senator, aims to restore trust in the administration and outcomes of elections, while the other rejects the results of the 2020 election and promotes debunked claims about widespread voter fraud in the state.

Former state senator Kathy Bernier’s efforts form part of a multi-state push by the non-partisan group Keep Our Republic to educate the public about elections and democracy issues “before it is too late”, according to the organization’s website.

The other coalition of activists, called North of 29 – a reference to Highway 29, which cuts a line across the state roughly between Green Bay and Minneapolis – spreads a dire message about elections: they aren’t secure, fraud is rampant, and the only way to ensure correct election results is to return to hand-counting ballots.

It is difficult to ascertain the relative impacts of Bernier’s group, which debunks elections falsehoods, and North of 29, which spreads them. But confusion about the behind-the-scenes of elections and an appetite for explanations in Wisconsin, a swing state known for delivering razor-thin margins during statewide races, has created an environment for both groups to draw in voters.

Groups similar to North of 29 appear to be active across the country. Efforts to spread unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud and promote a return to counting ballots by hand, driven largely by volunteers and local rightwing political groups, are aided by prominent figures such as the MyPillow founder, Mike Lindell. In Shasta county, California, and more recently, Spalding county, Georgia, the spread of conspiracy theories resulted in local officials opting to hand-count ballots.

Hannah Fried, the executive director of All Voting is Local, a voting rights advocacy group, said she is concerned about the trend. “Machine tabulation has become the gold standard,” said Fried. “What we don’t want to see is localities trying to implement hand-counting before machine tabulation, based on conspiracy theories.”

The available research, including a 2018 study focusing on voting in Wisconsin, overwhelmingly shows voting machines tally votes much faster and more accurately than a human could by hand.

The groups pushing to reinstate hand-counting in Wisconsin and elsewhere formed in the wake of the 2020 election. Stephanie Forrer-Harbridge, who founded North of 29 in 2020, said the idea came to her after she and her husband watched in disbelief as the election results came in on TV, with Trump losing Wisconsin. “We were like, ‘What’s going on?’” she said.

After election day, she watched with interest as figures like Lindell and Douglas Frank, a chemist and former math teacher, took Trump’s unfounded allegations that the election was stolen and claimed to substantiate them using data. One of Frank’s hallmark findings suggests that similar voter registration patterns in counties across Michigan proved the existence of an “algorithm” used to steal the election. Frank applies this assertion, which PolitiFact has debunked in depth, to states across the country.

Frank’s findings confirmed Forrer-Harbridge’s suspicion that something nefarious had gone on during the 2020 election, and inspired her to act. “I reached out to Dr Frank, and I’m like, ‘We need help,’” she said.

Frank agreed to come to Wisconsin to speak with residents who had questions about the results of the 2020 election, and election integrity generally. “I literally cried when he said he’d come,” Forrer-Harbridge said.

The results of the 2020 election in Wisconsin have been affirmed repeatedly by recounts, investigations and surveys, including a review by a conservative group that called for a revision of certain pandemic-era policies implemented by the Wisconsin Elections Commission, but found no evidence of widespread fraud. But misinformation and claims that Wisconsin’s elections are compromised and vulnerable to massive fraud have continued to circulate, largely driven by politicians and prominent media figures repeating the false claims.

Mike Wagner, a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin and a misinformation researcher, attributes the persistence of elections-related falsehoods to political polarization and the willingness of bad-faith actors to endorse a lie for political gain. “If you trust someone and think they should be the leader of the free world and they tell you, ‘you were lied to and this [election] was stolen,’ it’s not surprising that some people believe that,” Wagner said.

Since 2020, Frank has crisscrossed the country speaking about his theory of election fraud and his prescriptions to curb it, visiting Wisconsin regularly, where he speaks at town hall-style events in communities around the state. One event in Barron county, in the north-west of the state, drew hundreds of attendees on 28 July.

Invites to the event, billed as a second amendment rally, were shared online by groups including the Barron county Republican party. Dave Graf, a resident of Barron county, noticed one flyer for the event advertised a lineup of unfamiliar speakers, including Frank. (Also featured: “new age entertainment”, “free beer”, and “hourly drawings for firearms”.)

Graf was interested.

After serving for 20 years in the US military as a mental health counselor, Graf has spent the first years of his retirement informally tracking the rise of extremism in his community. He had long worried that “white nationalism, xenophobic nationalism, was something that was essentially going unchecked in the military” and was dismayed to find that an ocean away, friends from his home town were beginning to embrace a similar worldview.

Most people at the event, which he and other attendees estimated drew more than 500 people, seemed more interested in the gun raffle than the lineup of speakers. But one point, raised by Frank, concerned him.

Frank suggests that supporters canvass the area, going door to door to see if their voter data checks out in person, Graf said. “We’re an open-carry, second amendment-loving place where this rough-looking group of people may be knocking on doors and intimidating folks.”

Forrer-Harbridge confirmed that North of 29 trains canvassers to search for election fraud, but vehemently denied that the efforts constituted voter intimidation. “We don’t care who you want to vote for,” said Forrer-Harbridge. “We want to make sure it counts, and that’s what our right is as citizens.”

Forrer-Harbridge said she has trained “team leads” in more than 20 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties to knock doors in search of fraud.

Door-to-door canvassing in search of voter fraud is not a new concept. One group, called US Election Integrity Plan, has been sued in a federal court in Colorado for allegedly violating the Voting Rights Act and the Ku Klux Klan Act by going “door-to-door around Colorado to intimidate voters.

Frank and Lindell did not respond to requests for comment.

When I asked Bernier, the Wisconsin leader of Keep Our Republic, whether she was concerned about groups like North of 29, she shrugged and said she didn’t pay them too much attention. “I try not to keep track of them because they are so irrelevant, in my mind,” she said.

Instead, Bernier said she focuses on voters who have questions about the electoral process but aren’t invested in the idea that the 2020 election was rife with fraud.

The goal, Bernier said, “is to educate the electorate on our electoral system and its checks and balances, to assure people that when the election results are in, they are factual and you can count on that”. Her plan involves traveling across the state over the next year, coordinating with municipal and county clerks to present the nitty-gritty, sometimes boring details of elections administration to demystify the process for voters.

Before she was elected to the state assembly in 2010, Bernier served for a decade as the Chippewa county clerk – a role that includes administering elections in the county. Later, as a lawmaker, Bernier chaired numerous elections committees in the assembly and senate. Allegations of rampant voter fraud in the 2020 election rankled her, and she earned a reputation for speaking out against the Republican party on the issue.

Bernier stressed the importance of demonstrating nonpartisanship to voters who may have supported Trump but aren’t sure where they land on claims of rampant voter fraud. She says her background as a conservative has helped her establish a rapport with some voters.

Bernier’s not alone in her efforts. County clerks and municipal clerks – the people who make elections run – work year round to instill a sense of faith in the electoral process.

Nevertheless, groups like North of 29 continue to promote misinformation and give platforms to the people actively spreading it.