Unnecessary election investigation over deadline, budget

If it is important to review Wisconsin’s 2020 election for possible fraud, it should be done with objectivity, not a predetermined notion of what happened. The Legislative Audit Bureau, a non-partisan state agency, has completed its investigation into the presidential election. They found no evidence of significant fraud and deemed the election secure. They did recommend some changes for possible improvements in election security. But that isn’t good enough for the leader of the Wisconsin Legislature, who allocated $700,000 in taxpayer money to hire a former conservative Supreme Court justice who has claimed the election was stolen. Now we’re learning the investigation will likely go over budget and last longer than scheduled. And it is increasingly clear this is not a good use of taxpayer dollars. Former justice Michael Gableman has tried to be reimbursed for attending conspiracy theory conferences and to visit the offices of a right-wing mega donor. He is also sharing office space with a group that filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn Wisconsin’s 2020 election results. It is clear that this investigation is hardly objective. If they ever finish this investigation, their methods do not give us confidence we can trust their results.