Wisconsin voter may lose right to vote after failing to prove he could fraudulently vote
In a misguided plan to try and prove that Wisconsin’s voting system is riddled with flaws, Harry Wait of Union Grove had a not-so-brilliant idea.
He’d request absentee ballots for several people, including some prominent state and local politicians, and see if he could get their ballots in the mail.
It worked, but it didn’t prove what he thought it would. In fact, it proves the opposite.
In a video posted on Rumble along with the letter he sent to state officials, Mr. Wait claimed “the ease of harvesting election ballots online is nothing short of stunning.” He added that his plan showed “significant vulnerabilities” with the process to request and receive absentee ballots in Wisconsin.
If getting a fraudulent absentee ballot were all he set out to prove, then he succeeded. But proving that he could actually cast those absentee ballots and get away with it, is another story.
The concern is not about receiving incorrect absentee ballots — though to be sure, if it can be prevented then let’s do that. The real problem is whether those fraudulent ballots can be cast and counted. This is where Mr. Wait’s foolhardy plan fails.
It’s a problem of scale and duplication
Mr. Wait said he requested the absentee ballots of Racine Mayor Corey Mason and State Assembly Speaker Robin Vos without their knowledge. He also said he requested and received the ballots of “numerous individuals” who gave him permission as part of his so-called stress test. “Numerous” is vague, so we don’t really know exactly how many ballots Mr. Wait may have received.
But while Mr. Wait said receiving the ballots is evidence of deficiencies in Wisconsin’s absentee ballot system, his plan doesn’t account for scale and how easily a scheme like this would be uncovered even if he hadn’t notified state officials about it.
What happens when the State of Wisconsin starts getting perhaps thousands of duplicate requests for absentee ballots?
If Mr. Wait, or some other schemer, had requested and then improperly received ballots for a large number of unwilling participants, surely some number of those people would reach out to request the ballot they never received or follow up with the state about what happened to it.
State elections officials would be able to see that someone had already requested that individual’s ballot and that it was sent to Mr. Wait’s (or whoever’s) address.
But even more significantly, even if Mr. Wait (or whoever) were somehow able to slip past that glaring flaw, just because you receive a ballot doesn’t mean it will count.
According to Wisconsin’s voting information website, on election day “election inspectors first verify the absentee ballot envelope meets all requirements, including the presence of a voter signature, witness signature, and witness address.”
So, for Mr. Wait’s plan to have any effect, he would need to be able to somehow match the signatures of hundreds (maybe thousands?) of people whom he’s never met and certainly doesn’t know what their signatures look like. He’d also have to come up with fake names, signatures, and addresses for a corresponding number of fake witnesses.
Again, the problem is scale. It’d be a mammoth undertaking for a singular individual to manufacture the level of fraud needed to affect an election in this way and get away with it. And if there were multiple people were involved, now we’re talking conspiracy and even more serious charges.
Save for a small minority of people like Mr. Wait, who have been brainwashed into believing that there is widespread voter fraud, the risk versus reward of voter fraud simply is just not worth it.
Fines and possible jail time are just not worth the paper trial, easy apprehension, and minuscule impact that a scheme like Mr. Wait’s could potentially have.
The ironic part
As noted, Mr. Wait’s scheme doesn’t even prove what he thinks it does.
Instead of proving that voter fraud is easy to commit, it instead proves that it’s more likely that the decentralized nature of our voting system and the protections built within that system, such as signature verifications and ballot tracking, are robust and likely to prevent widespread fraud.
And one final point: Following Mr. Wait’s letter to state officials, the Wisconsin Department of Justice has said it is now investigating him.
It would be quite ironic if he lost his right to vote due to a felony conviction over a half-baked scheme to prove the very thing he was found to be doing.
At least in his letter, he said he “stand[s] ready to be charged.”
Mark Remillard is an award-winning journalist based in New York City. His work has appeared extensively on ABC News, Yahoo! News, and local news stations across the U.S. and Canada. More info: https://linktr.ee/markjremillard