River News: Our View

On November 14, the town of Presque Isle will conduct an election for town chairperson — a re-do of the spring election in which long-time town clerk Lorine Walters defeated incumbent town chairman John MacClean by one vote.

By now everyone knows how tainted the integrity of that election was. As we have previously reported, Vilas County judge Martha Milanowski ordered a new election after a court review turned up at least seven questionable ballots and two that were cast illegally beyond a reasonable doubt. Those illegal and questionable ballots were significant given the one-vote margin in the race.

As we have written, the two illegal ballots should never have been counted. Jane Alt reportedly lived only part-time in Presque Isle and was registered in Illinois, not Wisconsin, while Robert Von Holdt’s ballot contained irregularities, specifically, Milanowski found, the procedure in mailing his ballot was not followed correctly under the state’s election laws.

The most astounding thing is, not only were the votes counted, they got counted again during the election canvass. Holy smoking guns!

Of course, all that begs the question of how fraudulent the election truly was, and now comes a new controversy involving part-time residents from Illinois and potential votes in the new election. This time, though, it involves Illinois residents who were not trying to vote illegally but who say they were approached by Ms. Walters, who told them they could unregister in Illinois, vote in the Presque Isle election, and then reregister in Illinois later.

The affidavit by Illinois resident Robert Hanson, a retired police officer, is troubling in and of itself, but doubly so given illegal Illinois voting in Presque Isle in the spring.

Mr. Hanson’s affidavit raises a number of red flags. For starters, when Ms. Walters approached the Hansons, they say they told her they could not vote because they were part-timers. That should have been enough to deter Ms. Walters but, at least according to the affidavit, she pressed on, telling them they could vote so long as they had “lived” in Presque Isle for 28 days. 

Mr. Hanson says he voiced his doubts that doing so was appropriate.

At this point for sure, Ms. Walters should have been on her way, given that the couple clearly had no intention to become permanent residents. However, she then offered up that they could unregister in Illinois, register in Wisconsin, and then could re-establish Illinois residency at a later date, according to the notarized affidavit.

Now that certainly sounds like Ms. Walters is suggesting a temporary move in order to vote, which would be illegal. State statutes make clear that establishing temporary residency just to vote in an election with the intent to return to the former permanent residence afterwards is not allowed.

“Elector residence” statutes declare that there must be residency “without any present intent to move” and that “no person gains a residence in any ward or election district of this state while there for temporary purposes only.”

To register in Wisconsin with the idea of switching afterwards is illegal on its face.

To be sure. Ms. Walters denies she suggested this, as our story recounts, and she says the actual conversation didn’t come off quite like the affidavit says it did. Specifically, Ms. Walters says she would only have told them they could switch their registrations back to Illinois later if they legitimately changed their minds about being full-time residents of Presque Isle, meaning that, if they registered, they should do so only with the intent of being voting residents of Presque Isle going forward.

But people can sometimes change their minds later, Ms. Walters added, and that is all she was suggesting.

Now it may be hard or impossible to prove that is what she said or meant, but that sounds like a “wink, wink” to us: “Oh sure, we only registered here because we intended to stay forever, but, you know what, when the snow started to fly, we realized we made a mistake.”

How conveniently vague these statutory provisions are.

Beyond that, another comment Ms. Walters made is suspicious as to intent. Generally, Ms. Walters said, if people tell her that they are not registered because they are not full-time, she says she asks them how long they stay.

“And most of them say, ‘well, we come up around Memorial Day and we go home sometime after Labor Day, maybe October,’” she said. “And I say, ‘well, it sounds like you may be qualified.’”

Actually, it doesn’t sound like they are qualified. How long people stay in the Northwoods makes no difference in their eligibility. They can stay hunkered down in Presque Isle for 11 months of the year if they want, but if their legal residence is elsewhere and they have no intention of changing it, they cannot be qualified electors in Presque Isle. 

And when someone immediately says to her that they are not legal residents and not full-time, as Hanson did in his affidavit and as Walter’s hypothetical people do in her own example, they are signaling their intent up front. And the intent is that they are legal, voting residents somewhere else.

Certainly we don’t know if Ms. Walter’s method of campaigning violates any law, but, if not, she is walking a fine line along the edge of it, and we believe it violates the spirit of the residency law, at least.

The truth is, when most people move full-time to a place and change their legal and voting residency to that new location, they have thought it through well beforehand. They make the decision to relocate, do so, and then codify their intention and actual relocation by changing legal documents, such as drivers’ licenses and voter registration.

People don’t just change their intentions about permanent residency on a whim after a candidate for office approaches them on the street or at the town dump on any given day, asking them out of the blue to make up their minds then and there to live permanently in a new town.

The idea that the Hansons or anybody else would just do so and sign on the dotted line strains credulity. 

It’s one thing for Ms. Walters to inquire about residency as she talks to voters in the street. It’s quite another to start telling those voters how they can switch back and forth and “in the future, if they decide to declare Illinois their residence, they can do that. This doesn’t need to be permanent.”

The words “this doesn’t need to be permanent” are damning. It reeks of a temporary voting scheme.

Finally, Ms. Walters says she does her best to conform with what the Wisconsin Elections Commission says. That’s hardly reassuring to hear that she seeks to obey a rogue agency whose official advice to election clerks in 2020 was to break state law with regard to drop boxes.

We prefer a candidate who actually follows the law as it is written in black and white and not the interpretations of the law rendered by big liberal bureaucracies.

There’s a larger point to be made, too, and it goes to the heart of election integrity everywhere. If these kinds of shenanigans can go on in a small town like Presque Isle, they are happening most everywhere. Anyone who thinks there’s no voter fraud going in this country should just take a look at this one little town. 

It’s quite an eye-opener, wink, wink.