Racine DA Office Won't Charge Election Officials: Reports

MOUNT PLEASANT, WI — Racine County District Attorney Tricia Hanson wrote there won't be charges from her office against Wisconsin election commissioners who Sheriff Christopher Schmaling accused of missteps during the 2020 election, according to reports.

In a letter sent to the sheriff, released Friday, Hanson says commissioners may have broken the law in their decision, but she doesn't have the jurisdiction to charge, adding that the health care workers at a Mount Pleasant nursing home who helped residents to vote in place of poll workers would also not be charged, according to a Journal Times report.

Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling accused the Wisconsin Elections Commission of breaking the law in how it handled planning for absentee ballots and nursing homes in the 2020 election at a news conference, according to an Oct. 2021 report by The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Sergeant Michael Luell from the sheriff's office claimed in the press conference the decision led to workers at a nursing home filling out forms for a resident who was not able to make sound decisions — although, a court order is required to take the right to vote away from someone in such a situation, according to the October Journal Sentinel report.

"Without action from the Commission, many residents in Wisconsin care facilities could have and would have been disenfranchised and not able to vote in the 2020 elections," Commission Chair Ann Jacobs said in a statement in a news release put out by WEC after Schmaling made the accusation in October of 2021.

"In the case of nursing homes and other care facilities, statutes state that Special Voting Deputies (SVDs), and election observers, are to be sent to some facilities to allow for in-person voting for residents. Not every care facility utilizes the SVD process. For those that do, during the COVID-19 pandemic, only “essential workers” were allowed into nursing homes as part of the required quarantine for residents," a news release from the Wisconsin Election Commission said in October in response to the sheriff's claims.

"Statutes call for two attempted visits by SVDs to a facility after a 5-day notice period. If the SVDs are not allowed access, then absentee ballots are sent to those residents. Residents complete those ballots in the same manner as other absentee ballot voters. The timeline for these visits, and the sending and return of absentee ballots, all must occur in the 22 days immediately before an election. In 2020, the U.S. Postal Service advised that clerks should plan for 13 days to send a ballot and have it mailed back to them in time to be counted on Election Day," the news release continued.

"In a thoughtful, public, and hours-long discussion at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, commissioners acted in a bipartisan fashion to preserve the right to vote by ensuring ballots were sent to care facility voters in time for the ballots to be mailed and returned," the news release continued.

“If we had waited for two unsuccessful attempts by SVDs to enter nursing homes, we would have been in danger of missing the deadline to get their votes collected and counted,” Commissioner Mark Thomsen said in the October news release. “Our goal was to allow as many eligible voters as possible to participate in the election."

On Friday, the Racine County Sheriff's Office posted on Facebook it was again requesting Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat, to launch an investigation.

Kaul had previously told Journal Times that the sheriff's actions were an "abuse of authority."

WEC Commissioner Dean Knudson, a Republican, claimed to WisPolitics.com the lack of charges comes because there was no probable cause, calling the events stemming from the sheriff's claims a "political circus," the outlet reported Friday.