Ramthun repeating election argument
Gov. candidate drafting new bill with ‘decertify’ replaced with ‘nullify’
MADISON - Grievance over the outcome of the 2020 election continues to dominate the Republican primary race for governor just months from the midterms, with one candidate popular with the base of the GOP reviving a push to nullify the state’s 10 electoral votes cast for President Joe Biden and calling for a Republican legislative leader to be prosecuted.
State Rep. Tim Ramthun, a Republican from Campbellsport, is drafting a new resolution to bring to his Assembly colleagues that aims to decertify the 2020 election result, which has been deemed to be a fantasy by legal experts and constitutional scholars, including an attorney who once represented former President Donald Trump.
But Ramthun told supporters he plans to draft the legislation, which resembles a resolution he introduced last year that Republican legislative leaders rejected, without the word “decertify.”
“I did modify the words. If there was the word ‘decertification’ anywhere in it, I took it out and I had it replaced with either ‘nullify’ and/or ‘reclaim’ to address the ballot specifics or the votes’ specifics so we can have a tighter focus (on) the language so that there wouldn’t be excuses from the naysayers,” Ramthun said in an April 29 virtual town hall event organized by supporters of Trump’s false claims of significant voter fraud in the 2020 election.
In a separate event earlier in April held in Oconomowoc hosted by a group known as the Lake Country Patriots, Ramthun said Assembly Speaker Robin Vos should be prosecuted for what he characterized as obstructing efforts to address election fraud.
“From a judicial perspective, the judiciary is going to have to get involved to start prosecuting up to and including, in my humble opinion — are you filming? — the speaker,” Ramthun said at the April 13 event, prompting the crowd to cheer. “Because he is the origin of obstruction in this entire thing. He even hired somebody who found truth as well, and he denied him.”
Vos is the only legislative leader who has pursued a separate review of the 2020 election, beyond state audits, recounts, and judges’ rulings — all of which have confirmed Biden defeated Trump in Wisconsin by about 21,000 votes.
But as the most powerful Republican in the state Legislature, he has come under fire from the grassroots of the Wisconsin GOP for not going further and taking steps to void the result, despite being unable to do so.
“Tim’s comment is absurd,” Vos said in a statement to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “We can’t decertify the 2020 election.”
Vos said he shares concerns held by much of the Republican electorate about how the 2020 election was conducted, when state and local election officials deployed new strategies to help people vote during a pandemic.
Those decisions, which included stationing poll workers in Madison parks to help register residents to vote and collect absentee ballots, and using donations from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to administer elections, have been used as a basis by Trump and Republican candidates to claim voter fraud manipulated the election outcome.
Vos also has been criticized by Republicans for not being more enthusiastic in extending a taxpayer-funded review of the 2020 election he hired former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman in June 2021 to conduct.
Vos hired Gableman to look into how the election was carried out and gave him a taxpayer-funded budget of $676,000. Gableman has not found evidence of such fraud but Republicans and Trump have hailed his review as proof of Wisconsin’s election system needing overhaul.
“I share the concerns about our elections. It’s why I created the Office of Special Counsel. It’s why I voted to ban Zuckerbucks and ballot harvesting. It’s why I will continue to look forward and fight to ensure our elections are secure and free of fraud,” Vos said.
Ramthun said in the virtual town hall discussion that he was apprehensive about voting in the state’s April 5 spring election and remains uneasy about casting ballots in future elections, including his own.
“I need closure, because right now I’m apprehensive about voting,” Ramthun said. “I’m going to be quadruple anxious about Nov. 8 this year. And I’ll be actually rather nervous around my primary, which I expect to win, on Aug. 9 because of the games that still can be played with our ballots.”
In Wisconsin, 37% of GOP voters believe the state Legislature should move to decertify the election and about twothirds have little confidence in the outcome of the 2020 election, according to recent polling by the Marquette University Law School.
But Ramthun may be an outlier as those concerns are not translating into less enthusiasm. About 57% of Republicans said they were excited to vote in 2022 — the same level of excitement expressed by Democratic voters.
“Among Republicans, those who are least confident in the accuracy of the 2020 (election) are more enthusiastic to vote in 2022, while those most confident in the election result are less enthusiastic to vote,” poll director Charles Franklin wrote in an analysis of the survey’s results.
State Sen. Kathy Bernier, a Republican from Lake Hallie who worked as the Chippewa County Clerk before running for a seat in the Legislature, said the belief held by much of the GOP base that the 2020 election result isn’t legitimate will last, at least in the short term.
“I think the fact of the matter is it’s been over two years, or nearly two years now since the election, but it’s been long enough to where if individuals are not going to accept the election results they never will,” Bernier said.
“And Trump will keep feeding them the massive voter fraud (claim). So whether he runs again or not, there will be voter fraud accusations all the way up and down the line until Donald Trump is not running anymore.”