MADISON – How nearly 180,000 Milwaukee residents voted in the 2020 presidential election could be at risk of becoming public if the FBI compels election officials to hand over voting data here in its pursuit to relitigate President Donald Trump’s election loss in key battleground states.
State and local election officials in the Badger State were on alert Monday after the FBI issued a grand jury subpoena for voting information in Maricopa County, Arizona − the second battleground state where federal authorities have compelled the release of records related to the 2020 election.
In February, federal investigators seized hundreds of boxes related to the 2020 election in Fulton County, Georgia.
There has not been any movement in Wisconsin but if federal authorities expanded their probe to include the pursuit of voting data in Milwaukee, where Trump has leveled baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 election, poll books and around 176,000 absentee ballots with an attached ID number could be turned over.
That’s because state law requires absentee ballots counted at a central counting facility to include poll list numbers, which could be matched with poll book information to identify voters.
“To me, the number one priority is voter privacy and protecting voters’ rights to vote,” Paulina Gutiérrez, Milwaukee Election Commission executive director, said.
“We do everything in our power to keep that [information] private, so we’re monitoring it carefully.”
Normally, ballots from an election held more than five years ago would have been destroyed by now. But these ballots still exist, in part, because of a lawsuit filed against the city by a New London man who has filed dozens of lawsuits against state and local election officials over the 2020 election and other voting matters.
“Because Milwaukee is a central count [location], if you have the poll books and if you have the ballot, you can identify who cast what ballot and obviously who they voted for,” said Don Millis, a Republican member of the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission.
“It’s a mystery why, after all this time, that issue − that is the destruction of the ballots − has not been resolved either before the lawsuit was filed or after it was filed,” Millis said.
Millis said it’s his understanding that ballots from the 2020 election have been destroyed in all other municipalities utilizing a central counting process like Milwaukee uses.
The ballots at issue are part of a swath of votes in liberal-leaning Dane and Milwaukee counties that Trump sought to throw out during a recount he paid for of Wisconsin’s 2020 presidential election, when the COVID-19 pandemic fueled a spike in absentee voting.
Trump lost reelection in Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia in 2020 but continues to falsely claim he in fact won, despite court rulings, audits and reviews showing he lost.
Now, after Trump was elected to a second term in 2024 through victories in those states, the U.S. Department of Justice is reviewing the 2020 contest in the key states.
Emilee Miklas, spokeswoman for the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said election officials at central counting locations “are currently bound by state statute to record absentee numbers on the back of ballots until the law changes.”
“The Commission has raised issues with the current law for years; however, efforts to reform the law have stalled in the legislature,” she said in a statement.
The U.S. Department of Justice is suing Wisconsin officials over their refusal to hand over confidential information of voters that the state election officials argue is protected by Wisconsin law.
The federal lawsuit is one of nearly two dozen the Trump administration has filed across the country seeking voter lists without personal information redacted.
Federal justice officials say the department wants the information “to test, analyze, and assess states’ [voter roll lists] for proper list maintenance and compliance with federal law.”
Molly Beck can be reached at molly.beck@jrn.com.
(This story was updated to add new information.)
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: FBI action could reveal how Milwaukeeans voted in the 2020 election
Reporting by Molly Beck, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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