A conservative group launched a 10-month investigation of the 2020 presidential vote in Wisconsin and wound up debunking Donald Trump’s claims of election fraud in the Badger State.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports:
The report from the [Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty] concluded there were no indications of widespread fraud and there was nothing suspicious about voter turnout or the timing of the vote tally. In addition, voting machines operated properly, the report found.
Trump called Milwaukee “one of the most corrupt election locales in the country” and claimed state lawmakers were “working hard to cover up election corruption in Wisconsin.”
But the new report undercuts that conspiracy theory, explaining: “A close review, including a hand count of roughly 20,000 ballots from 20 wards, uncovered no evidence of fraudulent ballots or widespread voter fraud.”
It also discovered that there were no mass influx of bogus absentee ballots, a claim repeated by Trump and his defenders.
“The number of absentee ballots counted on election night in Milwaukee is consistent with what was reported to be outstanding,” the report said, adding “Put simply, there was no unexplained ‘ballot dump.’ ”
Salon adds:
The group also spent months investigating accusations from MyPillow CEO-turned-election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell, including the claim that technology made by election security company Dominion voting systems was hacked or otherwise manipulated. But, unsurprisingly to elections experts who had been sounding the alarm for months that Lindell’s claims were bogus, WILL was unable to substantiate those claims.
In fact, the group even noted that Democrats underperformed expectations, on average, in areas that used the Dominion Voting machines in question.
A separate audit of Wisconsin’s 2020 vote that was authorized by the GOP-controlled state legislature is ongoing. It will cost taxpayers $676,000 and is being led by a former judge who has embraced Lindell’s election lies.