Rep. Janel Brandtjen speaks at a rally of election conspiracy theorists, where she told them “you’re not crazy.” (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
One of the Wisconsin Legislature’s most prominent election deniers has sued the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) to force the state out of an agreement with an organization that helps states track when voters move to or die in other states.
State Rep. Janel Brandjten (R-Menomonee Falls) filed the lawsuit last month in Waukesha County Circuit Court. The suit takes aim at the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), an organization currently made up of 24 states and Washington D.C., established to help states keep accurate voter rolls.
Election conspiracy theorists have regularly targeted ERIC in recent years, and a number of Republican-controlled states have dropped out of the compact, despite its role in assisting state election officials in keeping voter rolls updated. Election deniers in Wisconsin and across the country have frequently complained that the voter rolls don’t get updated enough and leave the election system open to fraud.
Brandtjen brought the lawsuit despite voting in 2016 for a bill that required the state to enter into an agreement with ERIC. She is being represented by Kevin Scott, who worked as an attorney for former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman during his ill-fated review of the 2020 election. Scott represented Gableman in court during Gableman’s attempt to jail the mayors of Green Bay and Madison.
The case has been assigned to the circuit court of Judge Brad Schimel, the former Republican Attorney General under Gov. Scott Walker who is now running a campaign for a seat on the state Supreme Court.
Jeff Mandell, general counsel for voting rights-focused firm Law Forward, says the lawsuit — which he doesn’t believe will be successful or even heard before Election Day in November — shows how far into the conspiracy rabbit hole Brandtjen has gone since 2020.
“We’ve seen that Rep. Brandtjen over the last four years has slipped fairly deep into the fringes of election denial, and given that, I think it’s somewhat unsurprising that she would bring claims that are part of discredited conspiracy theories, but are similar to claims that we’ve seen in other states,” Mandelle says. “It is, of course, a testament to her journey that what is most bizarre about this lawsuit is that she is asking a court to order the Elections Commission to end its relationship with ERIC when that relationship is required expressly by state law, and it’s a law that she voted for.”
The lawsuit argues that Wisconsin’s agreement with ERIC was made by Kevin Kennedy, who was the executive director of the Government Accountability Board (GAB), the predecessor agency to the elections commission that was disbanded by Republicans in the spring of 2016. Because the agreement was made with the GAB, it is not valid, Brandtjen argues.
Brandtjen’s lawsuit also states that the agreement with ERIC violates a constitutional amendment passed by voters earlier this year which prohibits non-election officials from carrying out election-related duties; violates the state public records law because of ERIC requirements that its data remain confidential, and violates the statute that initiated the agreement with ERIC because rather than just updating the voter rolls, the state uses the data to find voters and contact people who are eligible to vote but not registered to vote.
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