Further, the special counsel’s report showed that fraud found was not merely “technical” fraud but resulted in ballots cast and votes counted contrary to the intent of the nursing home residents. The “improbably high voting rates” alone creates a strong inference of fraud, but the special counsel also gathered evidence of fraud, such as suspected forgeries of residents’ signatures and situations in which the residents who “cast” a vote had been adjudicated mentally incompetent, meaning they no longer had a legal right to vote. Other residents, while not adjudicated mentally incompetent, “were unaware of their surroundings, with whom they are speaking at any given time, or what year it is.”

The special counsel’s report also condemned the WEC for attempting to justify its illegal conduct by claiming it wanted to ensure seniors were not disenfranchised during Covid. “In no way was WEC’s mandating illegal activity a ‘solution’ to ‘disenfranchisement’ and to suggest that WEC’s actions were a good faith effort at doing so ignores the facts and the law,” Gableman wrote.

To the contrary, the report continued: “It is ‘disenfranchisement’ when electors are pressured to fill out ballots they did not wish to or in a way they don’t desire or even understand. It is ‘disenfranchisement’ when ballots are illegally cast on behalf of persons who have had their right to vote taken away by the courts of this State due to their mental incompetence.”