On Thursday, the Wisconsin Department of Justice (WDJ) announced charges, two felony counts and two misdemeanor counts, of voter fraud against 69-year-old Harry Wait. Wait decided that the best way to help prove the GOP’s Big Lie concept that voter fraud was rampant would be to perpetrate voter fraud himself. According to the WDJ, Wait decided on July 26 of this year to go and request absentee ballots for two people who were not himself, and have those ballots sent to his own address.
Then Wait boasted about it a bunch. Wisconsin Elections Commissioner Ann Jacobs told the news "This man, according to his own confession, broke the law, did so intentionally under the guise of some sort of weird attack on our absentee voting system, which if you don't break the law, works very well.” Is Harry Wait some wild-eyed liberal harvesting votes? No, just a super patriot who is defrauding our election process to prove that most people not named Harry Wait shouldn’t be allowed to vote.
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Wait is the “leader” of a Racine County-based group calling itself Honest, Open and Transparent Government. Before being charged, Wait was asked about whether or not he regretted breaking the law. He said: "I'd do it again in a heartbeat. If I get charged, and I have to go to trial, it's a small price to pay to save a republic."
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Compounding how much of a MAGA conspiracy to defraud our democracy this actually is is Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling. Schmaling campaigned for Donald Trump and told reporters that he had been informed of the plot to commit election fraud but has instead decided to blame the state’s election officials since that serves his political delusion ideology:
Instead of promising to investigate the crimes, Schmaling publicized the plot on social media as being helpful in rooting out vulnerabilities in the state election system and blamed the Wisconsin Elections Commission, calling on commissioners to remove a way voters can easily request ballots online.
According to Wait, he told the sheriff what he had done. "Basically, I committed a crime when I ordered them. I emailed Sheriff Schmaling, asked if he was going to arrest me and he said 'hell no.''' Schmaling, who seems likely to run for something in the near future, continues to push for voter suppression measures—specifically the ability for people to ask and receive absentee ballots from the state.
Racine, Wisconsin Mayor Cory Mason told WISN 12 that while Wait may have believed himself some kind of voting Jesse James character, Jesse James characters are still criminals. “You can argue that your bank needs more security; you don’t get to rob the bank to make your point.” On the other hand, one of the world’s worst senators, Ron Johnson, told WISN 12 he didn’t see this as being an indictable offense, saying that Wait’s “election fraud” isn’t as serious as some other vague election fraud.
I guess that’s why Johnson didn’t speak up when Crystal Mason was sentenced to five years in prison for illegally voting under her own name in the 2016 election. In Mason’s case, unlike Wait, she was given a provisional ballot and was not told by officials that she was ineligible. Of course Mason’s white counterpart in North Carolina, who voted not once but twice—using her deceased mother’s name to vote a second time—received a “speeding ticket”-level punishment for her fraud. Got it.
Then again, Johnson has been secretly recorded saying that he knows there was no election fraud in Wisconsin during the 2020 election. He’s been recorded saying that investigations have shown there is nothing to the Big Lie. He has also been exposed by the Jan. 6 committee for being involved, possibly just as a lowly messenger boy, in the conspiracy to perpetuate the Big Lie and expedite a coup d’etat of our office of executive in chief.
Wait faces up to six years for each of two counts of identity fraud. He also faces up to six months for both counts of election fraud. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has vetoed the Republican-controlled legislature’s attempts at voter suppression laws over the last two years.
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