Let America Vote Spokesperson Grace Silva released the following statement after a report of Wisconsin Republican Senate candidate Eric Hovde calling for 24 hour ballot drop box monitoring only in Madison:
“Early voting hasn’t even begun in Wisconsin, but Eric Hovde is already perpetuating Trump’s discredited election conspiracy theories, laying the groundwork to claim election fraud. By only calling for one city to require around-the-clock surveillance, it’s clear that he doesn’t actually care about protecting the elections—he simply wants to intimidate voters. Hovde poses a grave risk to our elections and our democracy.”
Washington Post: Senate candidate calls for drop box monitoring in Wisconsin college town
Patrick Marley
07/12
Key sections:
- The top Republican running for the Senate in Wisconsin this week suggested without evidence that absentee ballot drop boxes could be stuffed with fake ballots, and he called for monitoring them around-the-clock in one of the state’s most Democratic cities.
- “Who’s watching to see how many illegal ballots are being stuffed?” Hovde said, according to a recording of his remarks obtained by The Washington Post. “Look, we’re probably going to have to have — make sure that there’s somebody standing by a drop box everywhere.”
- He made his remarks at a campaign stop in Ashland, in far northern Wisconsin, and said he wanted to focus the monitoring in Madison, home to the University of Wisconsin and one of the most Democratic areas in the swing state.
- “It’s probably not a risk up here in this part,” Hovde said of northern Wisconsin. “But, you know, I think in Madison, let me assure you, we’ve got to make sure that there’s somebody standing by that drop box literally 24 hours a day, you know, for, you know, 45 days to make sure that you don’t have people just jumping, jamming fake ballots.”
- By raising the prospect of fake ballots, Hovde leaned into a discredited theory at the center of the right-wing film “2000 Mules,” which focused on ballot drop boxes in 2020. Salem Media Group, which produced the film in part, removed it from its platforms last month in response to a lawsuit.
- Hovde offered no evidence that fake ballots were used in Wisconsin or anywhere else. There were no reports of fake ballots in Wisconsin in 2020 after recounts, lawsuits and a detailed review by a conservative nonprofit law firm.
- “Mr. Hovde seems determined to insult every group of voters in Wisconsin one after the other,” Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said in a statement. “Drop boxes, whether in Madison or Ashland, Milwaukee or Eau Claire, are a safe, secure and convenient way for eligible voters to return their ballots.”
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