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Nevilledog

(55,131 posts) Tue Apr 19, 2022, 04:18 PM Apr 2022

Trump-Aligned Sheriffs Target Election Officials - Bolts

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Taniel
@Taniel
Excited for @JessPish's since @BoltsMag launched!

But it's a distressing one. Sheriffs can bring the might of law enforcement & armed force into this wave of election administration fights.

boltsmag.org
Trump-Aligned Sheriffs Target Election Officials - Bolts
A Wisconsin sheriff has bolstered Big Lie conspiracies in a vivid display of law enforcement threats to election administrators.
1:05 PM · Apr 19, 2022

https://boltsmag.org/trump-aligned-sheriffs-target-election-officials/

Christopher Schmaling, the sheriff of Racine County, Wisconsin, told the reporters gathered in his office on October 28, 2021 that he’d called a press conference “so that our citizens can better understand how the election law was broken.”

Standing at a podium with large screens behind him blaring “ELECTION INTEGRITY”, Schmaling warned that the allegations might be difficult to follow at first. “This isn’t your typical criminal investigation, it’s complex—to be quite frank, it’s a bit challenging to understand at first,” he told the room full of reporters. But Schmaling promised that by the end of his office’s presentation, the public would “see firsthand that the election statute was in fact not just broken, but shattered by the members of the W.E.C., the Wisconsin Elections Commission.”

Schmaling and Michael Luell, a sergeant in the sheriff’s office who had investigated a complaint about election malfeasance, spent more than an hour running reporters through a PowerPoint presentation, outlining what they claimed was devastating proof that state election commissioners had committed a crime. At first, the press event, which the sheriff’s office streamed live on its Facebook page, sounded more like a civics lesson than a criminal case, as Schmaling explained the makeup of the state’s election commission—six commissioners serving staggered five year terms, appointed by either legislative leaders or the governor.

Schmaling and Luell eventually pointed to changes made by the election commission in response to the coronavirus pandemic leading up to the 2020 presidential election, which relaxed requirements for how ballots were handled in nursing homes. The sheriff claimed their investigation had uncovered several local nursing home residents who voted even though their families believed they were too old and no longer had the capacity to cast a ballot. Schmaling, an unabashed supporter of Donald Trump and one of many sheriffs who refused to enforce public health orders during the pandemic, pointed to family members who had gathered inside the office for the press conference, but said they wouldn’t be speaking to reporters. “They’re not here to answer your questions, but rather to put a face on the election law that was broken,” Schmaling said.

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