Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Where election integrity goes to die.
Some mighty strange things have happened in the Brew City’s election administration over the years, much of it well-documented in the pages of The Federalist.
In its latest election mess, Milwaukee election workers, according to the Milwaukee Election Commission, mistakenly downloaded audit log files instead of results on five of nine data sticks. The glitch stalled the release of Wisconsin’s August 11 primary election results, including the final tally in a nationally-watched race for the Democrats’ candidate for governor. Interestingly, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who had quit the campaign amid basement level polling numbers only to be dragged back in by the Democratic Party “establishment,” narrowly defeated state Rep. Francesca Hong, a Madison radical socialist with a grudge against Thanksgiving and very little chance of winning the general election.
The feckless Wisconsin Elections Commission will once again do nothing to hold the Democrat-led city accountable for the “human errors” that have shredded election integrity over the past several election cycles.
Milwaukee is the poster-child for the necessity of federal election monitors. There are several other blue cities that have run roughshod over election integrity.
The cavalry is coming.
‘The More Eyes We Have on Elections’
Last month, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Harmeet Dhillon announced her office will be deploying 1,000 election monitors at polling sites throughout the country in November’s midterm elections. A Department of Justice official tells The Federalist that the monitoring effort could be the largest in DOJ history.
The official did not have details on precisely where the volunteers will be, but some hotspots immediately come to mind.
Monitors already have been serving on the primary election front lines, covering 15 jurisdictions in six states — Arizona, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Virginia. Twelve monitors were present at polls in Boston, New Bedford, and Lowell in Massachusetts’ primary elections earlier this week, according to the DOJ. The department has deployed more than 80 monitors at more than 200 polling locations in eight states this primary season.
Democrats have railed against the election integrity initiative, accusing the Trump administration weaponizing the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Of course, past Democrat administrations have deployed their share of federal election monitors. In the 2022 midterm election, the Biden DOJ dispatched nearly 300 monitors to polling sites around the country, CBS News reported. In the 2024 presidential election, the DOJ sent 714 people to ensure compliance with federal voting laws 86 jurisdictions in 27 states.
“I’ve been a volunteer and private election lawyer in prior years and some of these jurisdictions are jurisdictions where I know I’ve got personal knowledge of there being problems in the past,” Dhillon told conservative talk show host Joe Pags last month. “So I think it should be a welcome sign in all jurisdictions that we have an eye on things … The more eyes we have on elections, in my opinion, the better because the more people will be confident in those elections. We all want that as Americans.”
You would think so. But Democrats aren’t real keen on transparency in election administration.
In Milwaukee, elections officials hid the central count ballot tabulation behind a black curtain during the 2024 presidential elections. Observers could see absentee ballots arriving at the facility, but once inside the black curtain observation was impossible. In the 2025 state Supreme Court election, Milwaukee election officials blocked windows to the “Secure Ballot Room.” Again, the feckless Wisconsin Elections Commission did nothing to stop the Dem-led city from cutting off public access to the vote count — a clear violation of state election law.
‘The Monitors are Welcome Here’
Democrats and leftist “voting rights” groups have been busy pushing a narrative that federal election monitoring by the Trump administration is somehow unprecedented. It’s not. Democrat and Republican administrations have deployed election monitors for decades.
Kristen Clarke, who served as assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division in the Biden administration, told the receptive MS Now crew last month that there is “no statutory justification for sending federal election monitors inside polls.”
“When I led the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department, jurisdictions would give us consent where we had a good-faith basis to be on the ground helping to ensure good-faith access,” said the far-left attorney who serves as NAACP general counsel.
“I am confident that members of the public are not calling the Justice Department for help and that they are not wanted or needed inside polling sites across this country,” said Clarke, a highly partisan practitioner of leftist lawfare who herself had a run-in with the law in 2006 that she opted not to disclose during her Senate confirmation process.
Clarke is wrong. Members of the public have indeed called on the Department of Justice to monitor polls sites. California citizens sought assistance last year during California’s Prop 50 ballot initiative. The measure asked voters to allow the state legislature to redraw congressional district lines to the Democrats’ broader advantage. California’s extended election days and universal mail-in ballots have made a mockery of election integrity.
Conservative activist Scot Mussi, president of the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, said he hasn’t seen any resistance or real opposition to federal monitors at polling sites. The Justice Department sent federal officials to monitor Arizona’s July primary elections in three counties — Maricopa, Apache, and Pima.
Mussi said it’s usually activist groups on the left that oppose federal monitors from Republican administrations.
“Usually, the monitors are welcome here and a net positive,” he told The Federalist this week in a phone interview. “There’s usually no opposition from the general public.”
Mussi said federal election monitors have long served at Arizona poll sites, particularly on Indian reservations and other vulnerable jurisdictions. Maricopa County has a history of irregularities and incompetence in its troubled election system.
The Biden DOJ sent monitors to four Arizona counties in the 2024 presidential election.
‘An Ongoing Priority’
It’s a matter of law. The Civil Rights Division’s Voting Section is charged with enforcing federal statutes, including the Voting Rights Act, National Voter Registration Act, Help America Vote Act, Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act and Civil Rights Acts. The goal is to ensure everyone who is eligible to vote is able to. That also means protecting against the negation of votes by noncitizens and others who are prohibited from voting in U.S. elections.
Clarke, the former assistant attorney general in the Biden administration, is urging local elections officials to “resist” the DOJ’s legal right to send election monitors.
“If this Justice Department comes knocking at your door, tell them you’re not needed,” she told MS Now.
As The Federalist reported this week, the Department of Homeland Security has launched a coordinated investigative “surge” targeting potential election fraud. Investigators will conduct the surge through mid-October in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Wisconsin. The initiative will be directed by Homeland Security Investigations.
“HSI is committed to restoring integrity to our election systems and ensuring that American citizens and only American citizens are electing American leaders,” a DHS spokesperson said Tuesday in an email responding to The Federalist’s request for comment.
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a far-left Democrat, called the DHS investigations “a joke.”
“I think it’s another thing that Trump is doing to make it look like there’s all sorts of problems that are not problems in Wisconsin. And frankly, he needs to stay out of it because voting is a state issue and not a federal issue,” Evers, one of several Democrats to have won an election after a late-night Milwaukee ballot dump, told state media this week.
There clearly are plenty of problems with election administration in portions of swing state Wisconsin, problems Evers and fellow Democrats have tried to sweep under the rug.
The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has an important role to play in making sure federal elections are being conducted securely and transparently.
“Election monitoring is an ongoing priority for this office,” Dhillon said in a press release. “Nondiscriminatory monitoring ensures all elections remain free, fair, and accessible to all.”
