Good morning. 
Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 39. Sunrise is 6:53 AM and sunset 4:27 PM for 9h 34m 38s of daytime. The moon is full with all of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1863, Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address at the dedication ceremony for the military cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
Writing in the New York Times, Reid Epstein reports Wisconsin Republicans Push to Take Over the State’s Elections:
The Republican effort — broader and more forceful than that in any other state where allies of former President Donald J. Trump are trying to overhaul elections — takes direct aim at the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission, an agency Republicans created half a decade ago that has been under attack since the chaotic aftermath of last year’s election.
The firestorm picked up late last month after a long-awaited reporton the 2020 results that was ordered by Republican state legislators found no evidence of fraud but made dozens of suggestions for the election commission and the G.O.P.-led Legislature, turbocharging Republican demands for more control of elections.
Then the Trump-aligned sheriff of Racine County, the state’s fifth most populous county, recommended felony charges against five of the six members of the election commission for guidance they had given to municipal clerks early in the pandemic. The Republican majority leader of the State Senate later seemed to give a green light to that proposal, saying that “prosecutors around the state”should determine whether to bring charges.
And last week, Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican, said that G.O.P. state lawmakers should unilaterally assert control of federal elections, claiming that they had the authority to do so even if Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, stood in their way — an extraordinary legal argument debunked by a 1932 Supreme Court decision and a 1964 ruling from the Wisconsin Supreme Court. His suggestion was nonetheless echoed by Michael Gableman, a conservative former State Supreme Court justice who is conducting the Legislature’s election inquiry.
Epstein goes on to report why an effort like this matters to the GOP nationwide:
“In Wisconsin we’re heading toward a showdown over the meaning of the clause that says state legislatures should set the time, manner and place of elections,” said Kevin J. Kennedy, who spent 34 years as Wisconsin’s chief election officer before Republicans eliminated his agency and replaced it with the elections commission in 2016. “If not in Wisconsin, in some other state they’re going to push this and try to get a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on this.”
The WISGOP efforts in Wisconsin may not advance, but GOP efforts somewhere will advance, in hope of a U.S. Supreme Court decision placing federal elections wholly in the hands of GOP-controlled state legislatures eager to establish time, place, and manner of elections to their liking.
See also Ron Johnson Wants It All.
[…] See also Ron Johnson Wants It All and The WISGOP Push to Take Over the State’s Elections. […]