Is Rebecca Kleefisch a ‘Hypocrite’?

Last week we learned that Republican candidate for governor Rebecca Kleefisch voted absentee in 2020 as an “indefinitely confined” individual. Meanwhile she was anything but confined: the former Lt. Governor was campaigning across the state, while promising that as governor she would ban the method of voting she used in 2020, as Patrick Marley has reported.

A Kleefisch campaign spokesperson called this “a mistake” by her, while Democrats blasted Kleefisch as a “hypocrite.”

Certainly Kleefisch has completely undermined one of her major issues, that Wisconsin’s election laws must be changed to prevent alleged fraud, including tightening up the rules for those who declare themselves indefinitely confined. Presumably Kleefisch doesn’t think her own vote was fraudulent. And not one Republican criticized her doing what they now want to outlaw.

The reality is that this kind of vote is something Republicans have long considered helpful to their cause — until Donald Trump began selling the Big Lie, the unproven contention that the 2020 election was fraudulent.

It was the Republicans who passed Act 23 in 2011, which while tightening the rules for voting, allowed voting by the elderly, sick and disabled who were “indefinitely confined.” Once they were registered as voters and had shown voter ID, the state would send them an absentee ballot each year and they were not required to show a photo ID when they voted.

This law was signed by Gov. Scott Walker, and garnered no criticism from Kleefisch. It was widely popular with Republicans.

Then came the pandemic and a surge in people claiming to be indefinitely confined. According to an analysis by the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau (LAB), 220,404 voters in the state’s 2020 election claimed this status, up from 50,503 in prior years. Fear of being exposed to COVID-19 while voting in-person was probably driving these numbers. No doubt that’s why Kleefisch claimed the status, though she hasn’t discussed her reasoning.

But most of those claiming the status already had a photo ID on file with the state or included it with their ballot. The LAB found that 44,242 or just 20% of those voting as indefinitely confined lacked photo ID.

Republicans have blasted Milwaukee and Dane County election officials for a lax attitude toward indefinitely confined voters, echoing Trump’s unproven claims that these heavily Democratic counties were somehow cheating.

But while votes in this category did increase for these counties, the LAB analysis shows that only about 28% of the 44,242 indefinitely confined voters who did so without photo ID were residents of Milwaukee and Dane counties. In fact there more people in Waukesha County than in Dane County who voted this way, though Dane County has a much larger (by 150,000) total population. Residents in all 72 counties voted this way, with by far the smallest number (just nine) in Democratic-leaning Menomonee County.

Should any of these voters be doing so fraudulently, through voter impersonation or double voting, they are likely to be caught, as the WEC can check all names against the state’s master file of all voters. And the WEC report on the 2020 election found few examples of voter fraud, a result verified by the LAB.

You can be sure that when Republicans passed the law for the indefinitely confined in 2011, they believed more Republicans would fall into this category. Even with the growth in this category in 2020, about 60% of those claiming to be indefinitely confined were 65 or older, according to figures from the state elections commission. And older voters have tended to lean Republican.

Yet Republicans are now looking to restrict and reduce such voting and Democrats (no doubt looking at the increase in such votes in Milwaukee and Dane counties) oppose this. Yet it’s far from clear just how much of an edge either party might have gained from these voters.

But Kleefisch and the Republicans have seized on this issue as a way to sow doubt about the election and open the door to a wide range of election laws meant to reduce the turnout. Sure, that will suppress some Republican votes but they are betting far more Democratic voters will be discouraged. And if it takes false claims of election fraud and hypocrisy by their leading candidate for governor to get these laws passed, it’s all worth it to win more elections.

Kleefisch Also Blows Her Tough Image? 

When she launched her campaign for governor, Kleefisch called herself a “fighter” with far more physical toughness than Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. Noting that she suffered from cancer back in 2020 and had a tumor removed, she offered this statement: “They literally cut out half my guts,” she said “Even with half my guts, I still have twice as much guts as Tony Evers.”

So why did she declare herself indefinitely confined and vote absentee? Was she was afraid of getting COVID-19 by voting in-person? Given that she’s a cancer survivor, that’s a sensible decision to make. Except that it undercuts the idea of Kleefisch being so tough and appearing mask-less at campaign events. (She eventually did contact COVID-19 at one of these events.)  Kleefisch definitely has some explaining to do.