Dane Co. judge rules Wolfe legally in position at Wisconsin Elections Commission

A Dane County judge ruled on Friday that Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe is legally in her position as a holdover despite the expiration of her term last summer and that state law does not compel the body’s six commissioners to appoint a new chief election official. 

Since the 2020 election, Republicans in the state have become increasingly hostile to Wolfe, blaming her for numerous perceived flaws in the administration of that election. Many of those complaints involve decisions made by the six appointed commissioners, yet she has become a regular target of the state’s election conspiracy theorists. 

Wolfe was unanimously confirmed by the state Senate to a four-year term in 2019. Prior to her term’s expiration, Republican legislators began threatening to vote down her renomination. In a legal maneuver to avoid Senate confirmation, the three Democratic appointees to the Commission abstained from a vote in June to renominate her. 

The scheme was taking advantage of a legal precedent created by Republicans when they worked to keep a Republican appointee to the state Natural Resources Board in his position for nearly two years after his term expired in an attempt to retain GOP control of the environmental policy making body. 

The Republican-held Senate, however, declared that Wolfe had been renominated and moved forward with the confirmation process, voting in September to strike down her apparent confirmation and fire her. Immediately after that vote, Wolfe said she would remain in her post as the issue was not properly before the Senate and Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul filed a lawsuit in Dane County seeking to have a judge declare that she is legally allowed to remain in her job. 

In legal filings in the case, Republicans admitted that the September vote to fire Wolfe was “symbolic” but that state law requires the Commission to vote to choose a new administrator after the expiration of the term. 

Dane County Judge Ann Peacock found on Friday that state law does not require an appointment, allowing Wolfe to remain in the position as the 2024 election cycle is set to begin. Peacock also issued a permanent injunction against the Republican Legislature, to stop lawmakers from illegally attempting to fire Wolfe. 

In their arguments, Republicans stated that the Commission’s failure to make an appointment undermined the public’s trust in elections. Peacock wrote that this argument ignored all the ways Republicans have acted to undermine elections themselves. 

“This argument wholly ignores the Defendants’ own role in undermining the ‘public confidence in the integrity and reliability of the state’s elections,’” Peacock wrote. “The Legislature has fanned the hyper-partisan flames by engaging in several high-profile unequivocal official acts to purportedly remove Administrator Wolfe without publicly disclosing for months that their acts were ‘symbolic’ rather than supported by the law. That lack of transparency and their willingness to attempt actions contrary to the law are precisely the reasons why a permanent injunction is appropriate in this case.”