Complaint alleges Wisconsin city violated Constitution in 2020 election
Racine officials ‘involved private corporations and their employees’ in running vote
By Bob Unruh, Reprinted From WND
Published April 23, 2021 at 10:58am
A complaint has been filed with the Wisconsin Elections Commission against the commission’s administrator, the mayor of Racine and the city’s clerk alleging they violated the U.S. Constitution in allowing an outside interest to be part of the management of the 2020 presidential election.
That issue continues to be of concern across the nation the hundreds of millions of dollars in cash contributions from left-leaning Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to cities and counties to help “run” the 2020 presidential election. The contributions came with conditions.
Adding to that concern is that election officials altered laws in their states to accommodate COVID-19, even though the U.S. Constitution gives that authority to state legislatures.
The complaint was filed by Martin Prujansky, Mary Imhof Prujansky, Kenneth Brown, Brooke Hesse and Dale Giles against WEC Administrator Meagan Wolfe, Racine Mayor Cory Mason and clerk Tara Coolidge.
“In the November 2020 general election, the city of Racine adopted private corporation conditions on the election process affecting state and federal elections,” the complaint states. “In this case, Racine involved private corporations and their employees in the city’s state and federal election administration.
“By doing so, Racine failed to comply with state laws, including obtaining from the commission a prior determination of the legality of the private corporate conditions in the election process, and failed to comply with the U.S. Constitution’s Elections and Electors Clauses which guarantee the state Legislature the exclusive role in approving Wisconsin’s legal conditions relating to federal elections.”
The Wisconsin Spotlight reported Brown argues the billionaire-funded, third-party groups that were allowed to help run the elections violate the reasonable expectation that Wisconsin voters have for fair and honest elections.
The Spotlight found documents showing “the city of Racine sought hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding for communication efforts targeting ‘voters with criminal records’ and the purchase of a recreational vehicle to serve as a ‘mobile voting precinct,’ among other questionable election initiatives.”Did the city of Racine violate the Constitution in the 2020 election?Yes No Completing this poll entitles you to WND news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
The potential problems including that a “mobile voting precinct” could be moved around to accommodate specific groups of voters in specific locations.
Hesse, who owns The Cutting Edge Salon & Spa in Racine, said, “This is something I am really passionate about, bringing this stuff to light. For me, exposing the tiniest amount is going to be like a domino effect.”
Brown is represented by The Amistad Project, a national voter integrity watchdog.
The complaint contends Racine “failed to comply with state laws” in return for more than $940,000 in cash given to the city.
Wisconsin’s Legislature “never gave municipalities the authority to adopt or accept private corporate conditions affecting existing state election laws,” the complaint charges. “The [Wisconsin Elections] Commission, as the responsible entity in the administration of election laws, never opined on the legality of private corporate conditions affecting existing election laws.”
Mason, a Democrat, did not respond to requests from the Spotlight for comment.
The report said the complaint is similar to one filed earlier this month on behalf of residents of Green Bay, where officials also are alleged to have taken money and allowed private activist groups to control significant portions of the 2020 election process, including vote counting.
The state’s 2020 outcome is one of six won by Joe Biden that were contested.
The Chicago-based Center for Tech and Civic Life gave Wisconsin’s five largest – and heavily Democratic – cities some $8 million to help “run” the 2020 election.
That organization received $350 million from Zuckerberg, “purportedly to help local elections officers administer ‘safe and secure elections,'” the report said.
The CTCL demanded that the five cities it funded sign “contracts that included provisions allowing the center to ‘claw back’ the funding if they failed to meet the center’s demands,” which included allowing the center’s partner groups to be involved in the election.
Zuckerberg’s grants insisted the cities hire more people, raise staff salaries, promote absentee voting, assist voters in mail-in balloting and more.
Also demanded were “voting navigators” to help voters fill out ballots. Grant-funded election workers were to help with “certification.”
“‘Promoting’ and ‘encouraging higher percentages of our electors to vote absentee’ violates Wisconsin election law, which the complaint says specifies that ‘the privilege of voting by absentee ballot must be carefully regulated to prevent the potential for fraud or abuse; to prevent overzealous solicitation of absent elector’s who may prefer not to participate in an election,'” the report said.
In Racine, the complaint charges, the city sought $250,000 for a “mobile voting precinct (the recreational vehicle),” so city officials could travel to “strategically chosen partner locations” where people could vote.
The Spotlight reported Zuckerberg’s grants “more than quadrupled” the election budget for Green Bay and were used to favor “urban demographic groups,” which jeopardized the integrity of the results.
Emails show Wolfe forwarded information about CTCL partner groups to elections officials in four Wisconsin cities.
The Spotlight previously reported that while Zuckerberg’s payments were promoted as a way to “protect American elections,” they provided an open door for infiltration in the November elections by liberal groups and Democratic activists.
In Green Bay, which received a total of $1.6 million in grant funding from the Zuckerberg-funded Center for Tech and Civic Life, a “grant mentor” who has worked for several Democratic Party candidates was given access to boxes of absentee ballots before the election.
Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein, Wisconsin state leader for the National Vote at Home Institute, in many ways became the de facto city elections chief, the Spotlight said.
Emails regarding the election revealed Green Bay’s partisan Mayor Eric Genrich, a Democrat, and his staff usurped City Clerk Kris Teske’s authority and let the Zuckerberg-funded “grant team” take over – which election law experts call a clear violation of Wisconsin election statutes