Margaret Rose Bostelmann’s beliefs are clear from one look at her well-kept ranch-style home in central Wisconsin.
A big American flag is mounted close to the entrance door, and a “We Again the Badge” signal on her entrance garden declares her assist for regulation enforcement. Bostelmann, a Wisconsin elections commissioner, mentioned she voted for Donald Trump in 2020 and added: “I’ll all the time vote Republican. I all the time have.”
However her fellow Republicans have exiled her and disparaged her, sought to upend her profession and, on at the present time in July, introduced the 70-year-old to tears as she mentioned what she’s been by means of during the last a number of years as a result of she refuses to assist false claims that Trump received the state within the 2020 presidential election.
Bostelmann, who goes by Marge, beforehand served for greater than twenty years because the county clerk in Inexperienced Lake County, overseeing elections with out controversy. However two years into her time period in a Republican slot on the Wisconsin Elections Fee she turned a goal, denounced and disowned by the Republican Social gathering of Inexperienced Lake County, which claimed she had failed to guard election integrity within the state.
Now a swimsuit filed in June by a Wisconsin man who promotes conspiracy theories about election fraud seeks her elimination from the fee. Citing her estrangement from the county social gathering, the swimsuit claims she’s not certified to fill a place supposed for a Republican.
The elections fee, which has an equal variety of Republican and Democratic members, has confronted an onslaught of discredited claims about election fraud in Wisconsin. The latest drama entails the fee’s nonpartisan administrator, Meagan Wolfe, whose time period is expiring and whose future in the role is in doubt. After the three Republican members of the fee supported Wolfe in a June vote, Republicans within the state legislature made it clear they wished to discover a approach to do away with her.
The Republican clashes in Wisconsin exemplify ongoing discord seen throughout the nation, with elections officers shunned, berated and even pushed away by members of their very own social gathering over their protection of the integrity of the 2020 election.
In Hood County, Texas — a strong crimson block in a crimson state — hard-line Republicans successfully pushed for the resignation of the elections administrator, although Trump received 81% of the vote within the county. In Surry County, North Carolina, the place Trump additionally received overwhelmingly, the Republican elections administrator was threatened with firing or a pay cut for refusing to present a GOP social gathering chief entry to voting gear to conduct a forensic audit. And in Clare County, Michigan, officials are considering possible charges towards a GOP activist accused of kicking the social gathering chair within the groin.
The Wisconsin Elections Fee has been sued by quite a few events, verbally attacked by voters and earmarked for elimination by GOP lawmakers. It has survived solely as a result of a Democrat nonetheless occupies the governor’s workplace and wields veto energy.
In an April survey of native election officers nationwide, the Brennan Middle for Justice, an impartial, nonpartisan regulation and coverage group, discovered that nearly one in three reported being abused, harassed, or threatened due to their job.
In a uncommon interview, Bostelmann wept at one level. For probably the most half, although, she was defiant, insisting the 2020 election was not stolen by Joe Biden.
“I’m a Republican who stands up for the reality and never for a lie,” Bostelmann mentioned. And he or she predicted the most recent authorized gambit, which seeks her elimination, would fail.
Don Millis, the Republican who chairs the Wisconsin Elections Fee, additionally has expressed frustration with the election conspiracy theorists. On the fee’s June assembly, he mentioned he thought of a few of the agitators to be “grifters” who’re conning folks of goodwill into pondering there’s something incorrect with the election system.
“It’s not about profitable or stopping fraud,” he mentioned of the conspiracy theorists’ motives. “It’s about getting publicity or consideration. It’s about grifting, convincing others to donate to their trigger.”
In a current interview with ProPublica, Millis mentioned he was referring to a small set of individuals he believes try to lift cash by spreading lies by means of social media or newsletters. “There are a lot of individuals who imagine them, who don’t know any higher,” he mentioned.
From Fraudster to Fraud Investigator
The person who introduced the swimsuit towards Bostelmann is Peter Bernegger, grandson of the founders of Hillshire Farm, the Wisconsin deli meat and sausage firm. Now 60, Bernegger has described himself as a “knowledge analyst” and an “impartial journalist.”
He has engaged in relentless — and to this point futile — authorized efforts to show fraud within the 2020 election. This mirrors a distinct form of authorized battle from earlier in his life: attempting to overturn his personal fraud conviction.
A 2008 indictment accused Bernegger and a enterprise associate in Mississippi of deceiving traders, bilking them of $790,000 in numerous ventures — together with the event of a gelatin, supposed for pharmaceutical or beauty firms, produced from the carcasses of catfish. A federal jury acquitted the associate, who has since died, however convicted Bernegger of mail and financial institution fraud. He was sentenced to 70 months in jail and ordered to pay almost $2.2 million in restitution.
Bernegger overwhelmed the courts with claims to clear his identify, alleging procedural errors, inadequate proof, judicial bias, ineffective counsel, violations of his constitutional rights and different misconduct.
“Mr. Bernegger, you file an terrible lot,” mentioned U.S. District Court docket Choose William Griesbach of Wisconsin. “Simply let me say that. You file so many issues. And in all honesty, I don’t have time to maintain up on all of it.”
Although most of his claims failed, Bernegger did succeed on one entrance: He received his restitution decreased to roughly $1.7 million. Ordered in 2019 to get a gentle job to make funds on the debt, Bernegger testified that he had restricted choices.
He mentioned his well being was too poor for him to have the ability to raise heavy objects, drive a truck or function heavy gear. “I work odd jobs, all kinds of them. And it’s money, nevertheless it’s authorized,” he defined.
When ProPublica reached Bernegger by telephone for this story, he instantly hung up. He didn’t reply to letters and emails searching for remark.
A lot of his vitality, it seems, is now dedicated to stoking doubt about election integrity. In his social media posts and podcast appearances, he has railed towards Wolfe, the Wisconsin elections fee administrator, whereas repeating sweeping, unsubstantiated claims about issues in voting methods throughout the nation. Alongside the way in which, he has made alliances with like-minded people past his residence state.
Bernegger has ties to Omega4America, an internet site selling a super-fast computing technique to establish fraud by matching voter knowledge with property tax information and different giant databases. The location solicits donations to a nonprofit known as Election Watch Inc.; Bernegger based a tax-exempt group with that very same identify in 2022.
The Texas Tribune has reported that the Omega4America venture was initially funded by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, a conspiracy theorist near Trump. Omega4America makes glowing claims about programming marketed by Texan Jay Valentine as a robust software that would change the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, a multistate consortium that ferrets out duplicate voter registrations throughout states. ERIC has been the topic of heavy criticism from conservatives who imagine its work identifying unregistered voters for states bolsters the rolls for Democrats.
In a podcast, Bernegger talked about that he has entry to the “Valentine fractal programming system” as he seeks to uncover voter fraud. Valentine, who’s listed on the Omega4America web site as the positioning contact, declined to debate his work or Bernegger, telling a ProPublica reporter: “I’ve nothing to say to you.”
In an April episode of a podcast called The AlphaWarrior Show, Bernegger mentioned he’s now a part of a staff of 10 scouring federal marketing campaign knowledge for oddities. He named James O’Keefe as a member of that staff. O’Keefe is the previous head of Undertaking Veritas, a conservative group recognized for secretly recording liberal organizations, and has a new media company that encourages “citizen journalists” to research election fraud. ProPublica’s makes an attempt to succeed in O’Keefe for remark had been unsuccessful.
Towards the tip of the AlphaWarrior podcast, the host urged viewers to “smash” the blue donate button on an Election Watch web site to indicate assist for Bernegger and his staff.
“It means we sacrifice a film or a flowery dinner and we throw a pair {dollars} their method,” he mentioned.
“I Don’t Know That I’d Be Welcome”
Marge Bostelmann nonetheless doesn’t totally perceive the way it received up to now, how she turned such a goal of Bernegger and others, together with folks she as soon as thought held comparable values.
However she does know that issues in Inexperienced Lake started to vary in 2020, throughout Trump’s reelection bid. Bostelmann mentioned she stopped paying membership dues to the county social gathering after the social gathering chair turned crucial of her and of the way in which the 2020 election had been run in Inexperienced Lake County by her successor.
By November 2021, as conservatives carried out investigations into voting lodging made in Wisconsin through the pandemic — together with using drop packing containers and permitting unsupervised absentee voting in nursing houses — Bostelmann and others on the elections fee got here underneath assault for his or her votes shaping these procedures.
Kent McKelvey, the Inexperienced Lake County GOP chair on the time, issued a press launch saying Bostelmann’s actions on the Wisconsin Elections Fee “don’t mirror the rules, values and beliefs of the Inexperienced Lake County Republicans, on this case, supporting the right enforcement of the regulation and of election integrity.”
The press launch mentioned flat-out that “Ms. Bostelmann is now not a member of the Republican Social gathering of Inexperienced Lake County.” McKelvey didn’t reply to requests for remark.
The snub harm. Bostelmann, a former foster dad or mum who is aware of many native Republicans by means of her actions along with her church and the Rotary Membership, mentioned she stopped attending many native GOP occasions. “I don’t know that I’d be welcome,” she mentioned.
At the same time as efforts to show fraud in Wisconsin fizzled, the stress on the fee remained intense. Highly effective Republicans within the state Senate known as for Wolfe’s ouster, blaming her for what they noticed as regulatory overreach by the fee, although in her function she carries out the orders of the six voting members.
Previous to the fee’s key June vote on Wolfe, Bostelmann mentioned, she acquired a disturbing telephone name from an acquaintance who had been crucial of Wolfe. “The patriots wouldn’t be pleased” along with her, she was instructed, if she backed Wolfe. Bostelmann took that as a risk.
Nonetheless, she and the panel’s two different Republicans voted to reappoint Wolfe. Bostelmann defended Wolfe publicly on the June assembly, saying the administrator had been unfairly focused “because the scapegoat” by folks dissatisfied with the fee and the end result of the 2020 election.
In a tactical transfer, Democrats abstained from voting, resulting in a remaining tally of three sure votes. That appeared to imply that the panel didn’t have the requisite 4 votes to ship the matter to the state Senate for remaining consideration, and it was extensively thought Wolfe would proceed in her put up due to the deadlock.
However the Senate, surprisingly, determined the three affirmative votes had been sufficient for it to take up her nomination. Wolfe’s reappointment is now pending earlier than the Senate elections committee. No public listening to or vote has been scheduled.
Lawsuits are anticipated, although for now she stays on the job.
“Some decide will inform us who our administrator is. That’s my guess,” mentioned the fee chair, Millis, a tax legal professional who favored retaining Wolfe.
Like Bostelmann, Millis has been the goal of Bernegger, who on Twitter has ranted about Millis ignoring election system issues, referring to him as “Blind Don.”
Robert Spindell, the third Republican member of the fee, mentioned he hasn’t been chastised for his renomination of Wolfe. He mentioned he thought it finest that the Senate take up the matter. “I haven’t had anyone name or criticize me,” he mentioned, noting: “The general public I do know on this election stuff will not be shy.”
By a spokesperson, Wolfe declined a request for an interview.
Bernegger’s swimsuit towards Bostelmann calls for that the circuit courtroom take away her from her seat on the fee, citing the disavowal from Inexperienced Lake County Republican Social gathering. “She can’t show she is a member of the Inexperienced Lake County Republican Social gathering and is in any other case certified to carry the designated Republican seat,” he wrote.
The statute that governs fee appointees doesn’t particularly require them to be dues-paying social gathering members.
Data present Bernegger has bombarded the Wisconsin Elections Fee with official complaints and calls for for knowledge, usually accompanied by threats of authorized motion and accusations of felony conduct. In a single electronic mail he referred to a fee staffer as a “prick.”
“Please be aware that I’m turning into more and more uncomfortable with this particular person’s erratic habits that’s directed at myself, our employees and native election officers,” Wolfe wrote to the fee in October 2022. In Could of this 12 months, Wolfe instructed the fee Bernegger made her really feel “extremely unsafe” when he famous her residence handle in daring in an electronic mail to the fee and known as her a “pathological liar.”
The fee fined Bernegger $2,403 in March 2022 for submitting frivolous complaints. Data present fee employees have, at occasions, forwarded his correspondence to the Wisconsin Division of Justice.
On July 7, the Wisconsin Division of Justice’s Legal Investigation Division served Bernegger with a letter at his residence in New London, stating that his actions might fairly have made Wolfe and others on the fee really feel “harassed, tormented or intimidated.” It warned that he may very well be arrested for stalking if he continued his habits.
One among Bernegger’s lawsuits over information towards the fee remains to be ongoing.
He has additionally sued officers in Dane, Door, Grant, Marathon, Milwaukee and Ozaukee counties, the city of Hudson, the town of Hudson, the town of Milwaukee and the city of Richmond in Walworth County. The fits are associated to broad public document requests he made for absentee poll purposes, pictures of ballots, router logs and different supplies and contain disputes over prices and entry. Whereas a lot of these have been dismissed, 4 are nonetheless pending.
“We’re all attempting to do our jobs to the easiest of our skills. It makes it tough once we are continually being undermined and questioned,” mentioned Marathon County Clerk Kim Trueblood. Her workplace supplied Bernegger with some info when he inquired however denied him sure documentation that Trueblood mentioned was exempt from launch. He sued, however a decide dismissed the case.
One other clerk, Vickie Shaw of the city of Hudson, mentioned she needed to go to courtroom thrice to cope with a Bernegger swimsuit over information. A decide threw out the case, Bernegger appealed, and it was tossed once more.
Earlier than Bernegger’s swimsuit, Shaw had stop in 2021, discovering the job too burdensome and confrontational. However she returned the next 12 months as a result of, she mentioned, the city “didn’t have anyone to run the April election.”
Bostelmann expressed dismay with Bernegger’s ways towards her and the opposite election clerks.
“It’s bullying is what it’s. It’s really bullying,” she mentioned. “It’s nearly like they’re attempting to get people who find themselves educated, and do a superb job, to stop to have individuals who don’t know how you can do the job to come back in.”
