New lawsuit seeks to challenge votes in 3 Wisconsin counties

MADISON, Wis. (WMTV) - The process for canvassing or certifying votes is complete in Dane County and many other but a federal lawsuit filed Thursday looks to have presidential votes excluded in Dane, Milwaukee, and Menominee counties.

Those three counties helped President-elect Joe Biden win Wisconsin. NBC15 checked in with a UW-Law expert to find out the likelihood of this lawsuit holding up in court. UW-Law School Associate Professor Robert Yablon says it’s not unusual to see some post-election litigation but there has been nothing like what we’re seeing in 2020.

Less than two weeks after election day, President Trump and his allies have filed lawsuits in several state, alleging election irregularities and issues with ballot-counting procedures.

The latest lawsuit turns attention to Wisconsin and comes from three voters. They’re seeking to have votes in Menominee, Milwaukee and Dane counties invalidated and not included in the certification of presidential votes.

Prof. Yablon says lawsuits like this have no history in succeeding.

The lawsuit brings voters labeled “indefinitely confined” into question. These are voters who are exempt from showing proof of photo ID when applying for absentee ballots. The lawsuit targets Dane and Milwaukee counties as areas that saw large increases of voters included in this group.

Ann Jacobs, Chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission is the person in charge of certifying the state’s official election results. She says the current lawsuit doesn’t show that any fraud has happened.

Prof. Yablon says it’s not likely any of the suits filed across the country will have much of an impact changing the election results.

“For the most part these lawsuits across the country haven’t gotten much traction. There’s no reason to think this lawsuit is likely to succeed,” he said.

The non-partisan Legislative Reference Bureau said that if voters were not truly confined, they could face charges and have their vote challenged.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said the November 3rd election was the most secure and there’s no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes or was compromised.

Copyright 2020 WMTV. All rights reserved.