MADISON, Wis. (AP) – Wisconsin election secretaries referred 30 cases of suspected fraud and voting irregularities to prosecutors over the past year, according to a new report.
The nation’s multi-layered election processes provide many safeguards that ensure voter fraud remains generally detectable and rare, according to current and former election officials from the Democratic and Republican parties. U.S. elections are also decentralized into thousands of independent voting jurisdictions — Wisconsin alone has more than 1,800 local clerks — making it virtually impossible to carry out a massive election manipulation operation that could tilt a race. But fraud does happen sometimes.
Wisconsin law requires clerks to notify the Wisconsin Elections Commission when referring a case of suspected fraud or other voting irregularity to a district attorney. The commission, in turn, must compile the data in an annual report to the Legislature. The committee is set to approve a report on Friday detailing referrals made between July 1, 2023 and September 12 this year.
Eighteen referrals involved someone who voted twice. Clerks in Milwaukee County reported seven instances of someone voting twice during the 2024 spring election and eight instances during the 2023 spring election. These people voted in person and by absentee mail in each election, according to the report.
Clerks in Douglas and Kenosha counties also reported someone voted twice in the 2024 spring election. In the Douglas County case, the person voted in-person and in-person absentee. In the Kenosha County case, the individual voted in person in two different municipalities. Clerks in Calumet County reported someone voted absentee in person twice during the 2024 partisan primary.
Kenosha County clerks also reported six cases in which a felon registered to vote in the 2024 spring election. Polk County clerks referred a case of someone who voted in Wisconsin in the 2023 spring election after registering in another state . Douglas County also referred discrepancies between municipal and county totals for write-in candidates in the 2024 spring election to prosecutors.
The report does not identify anyone and contains no dispositions on the case.
The committee’s 2023 report found that between June 25, 2022 and June 30, 2023, clerks referred 44 cases of suspected fraud to the public prosecutor.
Wisconsin’s voting population was nearly 4.7 million in 2022, according to the Election Commission.
