And getting caught doing it doesn't even matter - mostly because they usually turn themselves in. But instead of thinking how a national election could be swung "the wrong way" by a few knuckleheads fucking with the mail-in system, they just stop right there and yell about phantoms running around stealing elections.
Here's the thing:
- Yes there's voter fraud. And yes, there's voter fraud exactly like what this Harry Wait idiot pulled.
- But no - in order to swing a national election, someone would have to put in about a dozen fraudulent ballots in each of the 176,933 voting precincts
That's a conspiracy that simply can't hold together. If you could find 2,500 people willing to risk 12 or 15 years in federal lockup, you could put 50 people in every state, and they'd each have to cover 70 precincts. And then you'd have to worry about 2,500 people being able to keep quiet about it.
Like Grandpa said: 3 people can keep a secret - as long as 2 of 'em are dead.
I think that's probably why somebody came up with the stories about Hugo Chavez, and Italian internet satellites intercepting the voting machine signals, and whatever other weird shit they put out there.
Anyway, WaPo observes a change in how Republicans are trying to deal with their crazies, and how the crazies aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
As Republicans inch away from election denialism, one activist digs in
Harry Wait ordered ballots in the names of others to show voter fraud is possible. Now facing up to 13 years in prison, he is undaunted in his crusade to change Wisconsin’s voting laws.
RACINE, Wis. — Harry Wait marched into the courthouse, walked through a metal detector and planted himself on a bench in the ornate lobby. His supporters, some wearing bright yellow “Free Harry” T-shirts, chatted amiably as they followed him inside.
Emboldened by former president Donald Trump’s false election claims, Wait in July had ordered absentee ballots in the names of others for the purpose, he said, of exposing what he considers flaws in Wisconsin’s voting systems. Now, on a warm September afternoon, he was using the resulting voter-fraud charges against him — which could land him in prison for up to 13 years — to amplify his argument that absentee balloting should be severely restricted.
“I’d do it again in a heartbeat because to save the republic, soldiers have to draw blood and blood be drawn,” Wait said as he sat on the courthouse bench.
For two years, a large segment of Trump supporters has embraced discredited claims that the 2020 election was stolen. The strategy of cultivating anger over supposed voter fraud proved politically disastrous this fall, when election deniers lost high-profile races from Arizona to Pennsylvania.
Now some Republican leaders are urging their party to downplay election denialism and shift its focus to other issues to improve its chances of winning the presidency in 2024.
But activists such as Wait are making that difficult, showing how hard it will be to extinguish the grievance and distrust whipped up by Trump and his allies. Undeterred by the November results, Wait in recent weeks has rallied for overhauling election rules, planned a January protest at the state Capitol and pledged to use the charges against him to trumpet his call for new voting laws. For him, the fight over elections continues.
A Harry Wait supporter wears a pin to show support at the Racine County Courthouse in Racine, Wis., on Oct. 7. (Alex Wroblewski/for The Washington Post)
There are others like him. Three months after Wait made headlines, an election official in Milwaukee engaged in similar behavior to bring attention to what she sees as voting vulnerabilities. Election deniers who lost their bids for statewide office in Michigan this fall are running to lead the state’s Republican Party. Former professor David Clements, who spent the summer visiting small towns around the country to spread false claims about the 2020 election, reappeared after the midterms to urge officials in Arizona to defy state law and refuse to certify the state’s results.
Former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon continues to dwell on election issues on his podcast. MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, now making a long-shot bid for chairman of the Republican National Committee, remains committed to funding efforts to ban the use of voting machines. Trump himself, running for president once again, has shown no signs of letting up on his false claims about a stolen 2020 election.
Some Republicans worry that the emphasis on electoral fraud will prove self-defeating for the party.
When voters are told “that their vote doesn’t count, they stop voting,” said former congressman Reid J. Ribble (R-Wis.). He encouraged Republicans to push back on the claims of activists including Wait by assuring voters that elections are secure and the results accurate. If they don’t, he said, they risk losing more elections.
“The House wave didn’t happen, because there were too many election deniers,” he said.
But Wait, an ardent Trump supporter who does not consider himself a Republican, isn’t inclined to heed Ribble’s plea to move on.
Wait, 68, is a veteran of fights against officialdom in Racine, a blue-collar city on Lake Michigan 25 miles south of Milwaukee. After receiving a disorderly conduct ticket in 2011, Wait launched a blog to chronicle what he considered the failures of local government. The retired business consultant kept going after he beat his citation and several years later formed a group with others to marshal their energy. They called themselves HOT Government to highlight their support for a form of politics that they describe as honest, open and transparent.
When a school referendum passed by five votes in the spring of 2020, Wait helped organize a lawsuit over the recount — only to lose 7-0 before the state Supreme Court. The experience led Wait to dive into how elections are conducted in Wisconsin, just as Trump was ramping up his complaints about supposedly fraudulent voting.
This summer, Wait discovered that a state website would allow him to request someone else’s absentee ballot and have it sent to any address. Election officials, who designed the site to make it easy for out-of-town voters to obtain ballots, have maintained that the site does nothing to diminish election integrity, saying anyone who attempted voter fraud would be quickly caught.
But Wait saw the potential for something nefarious and set out to prove a point.
He ordered ballots under the names of two officials with whom he has long clashed — one Republican, one Democrat — and asked that the ballots be delivered to his address. Wait checked a box saying he was confined to his home because of age or disability, which allowed him to get around a state law that requires most voters to provide a copy of a photo ID the first time they request an absentee ballot. He also checked a box acknowledging that he understood he could face charges if he impersonated someone else.
The ballots he requested were in the names of Racine Mayor Cory Mason, a former Democratic state representative, and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, the most powerful Republican in state government. Wait received Mason’s ballot a few days later and quickly turned it over, unopened, to a sheriff’s deputy; the election clerk in Vos’s hometown never mailed Vos’s ballot to Wait.
Shortly after Wait made the requests, he sent an email to Mason and Vos, as well as to Racine County’s top prosecutor and sheriff. “I stand ready to be charged for exposing these voting vulnerabilities,” he told them.
Election officials in Wisconsin and around the country have spent the past two years battling far-fetched conspiracy theories, including debunked ones alleging that voting machine totals were altered by Italian satellites or thermostats connected to the internet. Wait’s tactic raised a new type of challenge — actual fraud that arguably could go undetected if carried out on a small scale.
Jay Stone, a retired hypnotherapist who has filed more than a dozen challenges to Wisconsin’s voting policies, talked to Wait the night he requested the ballots under others’ names. He said he opposed the idea but added, “You can’t talk Harry out of anything.”
“Look up the cingulate gyrus of the brain. It’s the brain’s gear shifter,” Stone said. “If a car goes — an automatic car — goes zero to 50, it shifts from first gear to second and third gear, decelerates, downshifts. Some people have a gear shifter that gets stuck. That’s Harry.”
In September, the judge hearing Wait’s case imposed a gag order that prevents him from talking about his case. But, in interviews, at rallies and at HOT Government meetings, Wait eagerly shares his views on election policies and the officials who oversee them.
He argues that the Republican and Democratic parties have conspired to establish election laws that protect the powerful. He says the 2020 election was stolen through voting machine algorithms and other means, despite a string of reviews and court rulings that found no significant fraud. Wait, whose legal bills are being covered by the conservative Thomas More Society, wants to get rid of voting machines, limit absentee voting and require all residents to re-register to vote.
“I know both sides cheat. The problem is catching them,” he said.
Mason learned of what had happened from Wait’s email but didn’t know at first whether to believe him. “It was disbelief followed by disgust,” Mason said of finding out what Wait had done.
While frustrated, Mason said he thought the ordeal over his ballot showed that Wisconsin’s systems work. Mason was able to cast a ballot and Wait within a month was charged with two felonies over unauthorized use of personally identifiable information and two misdemeanors relating to election fraud.
“It’s not really about my vote or Speaker Vos’s vote specifically,” Mason said. “It’s about whether or not this stunt is going to intimidate people, policymakers specifically, into making changes that will make it harder for people to vote.”
In response to Wait’s actions, the state elections commission mailed postcards to every voter who had an absentee ballot sent somewhere other than their home — nearly 13,000 in all. The commission has received no reports that other ballots were sent somewhere they should not have been.
Ann Jacobs, a Democrat who sits on the bipartisan commission, said few people do what Wait did because they know they are likely to be caught if they try it. If someone casts a ballot in someone else’s name, the victim will discover it when he or she goes to the polls, she noted.
“In all areas, we balance access with security,” she said. “In a situation like this, where it is such a rare occurrence [and] the penalties are severe, the real question has to be whether we need to make it harder to vote to thwart would-be criminals from doing something like this. And my view of it is, I don’t think we should.”
Some Republicans have called for a tightening of the state’s absentee-voting policies, but there is little chance of that happening. Republicans control the state legislature and have, over the past two years, approved election bills only to see them vetoed by Gov. Tony Evers (D), who won a second term in November.
Three months after Wait ordered the ballots, Milwaukee’s deputy elections director used the same website to create three false identities and ask that military ballots be sent in those names to a state lawmaker. The elections official, Kimberly Zapata, later told prosecutors she did so to alert the public to what she considers a flaw in the state’s voting laws. Unlike most states, Wisconsin allows members of the military to get absentee ballots without registering to vote, and the state site makes it easy to request such absentee ballots.
Zapata was fired from her position and charged with a felony and three misdemeanors. She faces up to five years in prison. Wait and his allies held a rally outside a court hearing for Zapata this month, some of them wearing military-style dog tags that say they marks them as members of “Harry’s Army.”
In the coming months, Wait’s legal team will file briefs contending that Wait’s actions amounted to a form of political speech that is protected by the First Amendment. The judge will consider those arguments at a hearing in April.
At a HOT Government gathering in November, in the back of a Racine bar where the group meets, Wait expressed confidence about ultimately winning his case and pledged to take it to an appeals court, if necessary.
“All I can say is, my case is an attorney’s dream,” he told the group, “because they love to bill.”
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