The self-proclaimed defenders of democracy are once again interfering with U.S. elections, attempting to drive another competitor off a critical swing state presidential election ballot.
Democrats have asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court to block Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her running mate, Butch Ware, from the Badger State’s November ballot. The Democratic National Committee argues Wisconsin’s high court should take original action in deciding the case, foregoing the usual first filing in lower courts. The leftist-controlled state high court on Thursday obliged the DNC, with a ruling coming as soon as Monday, legal experts tell The Federalist.
Doug Strange, the DNC’s deputy Operations director in Wisconsin, is named as the petitioner in the legal action against the Wisconsin Elections Commission, the agency’s administrator and commissioners and the Wisconsin Green Party. It’s weird that Strange and the DNC would bring such a democracy-poisoning petition against a like-minded leftist political party, particularly when the Democratic Party’s top leaders are in Chicago this week rallying around a “freedom” message and asking “Americans to defend democracy one more time.”
‘Last-Ditch Effort’
The Wisconsin Elections Commission, which has had its share of election integrity troubles, on a technicality denied a previous complaint from Democrats asserting the Green Party ticket couldn’t appear on the November ballot because there are no Green Party members represented in state offices.
They cite statute laying out requirements for presidential electors, that they must be “[c]andidates for the senate and assembly nominated by each political party at the primary”; … “the state officers” of each political party; and “the holdover state senators of each political party[.]”
“It has long been clear that the Wisconsin Green Party had no affiliated individuals in the latter two categories eligible to nominate presidential electors,” the petition states.
Rick Esenberg, president and general counsel of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL), says the Supreme Court should cast aside the Democrats’ latest political stunt.
“This is a last-ditch effort by a political party operative to disenfranchise the votes of tens of thousands of Wisconsinites,” Esenberg said in a statement released Thursday, after the state Supreme Court agreed to take up the DNC’s petition.
WILL said it planned to file a brief with the court arguing in part that the petition “advances a new reading” of Wisconsin statute “that would effectively prevent any small or new party from getting on the Presidential Ballot.” It’s what Democrats do. The DNC has been down this road before — in Wisconsin and other battleground states.
‘Democratic Party Dirty Tricks’
In 2020, a Wisconsin Democratic Party attorney notorious for lawfare attacks on Republicans challenged Green Party petitions for former Milwaukee native Angela Walker, running mate of the Greens’ presidential candidate Howie Hawkins. Walker had changed her address during the signature-collection period. The Wisconsin Elections Commission told the campaign to notarize a statement of candidacy including Walker’s new address in submitting the petitions. It did so, according to the Green Party.
Leftist Madison attorney Jeff Mandell argued that the change of address invalidated some of the petitions. The six-member WEC ultimately deadlocked 3-3 at a hearing that, the Green Party’s Michael Rubin wrote, “had all the trappings of a kangaroo court.” The commission’s three Democrats voted against the Greens, the three Republicans voted to accept the party’s petitions.
“The attorney for the Democratic challenger huddled with the Democratic chair of the Elections Commission to restrict the testimony of Green Party attorneys,” Rubin, who died in 2022, wrote in a column headlined, “Democratic Party dirty tricks against the Greens,” posted days after the disputed 20 election.
Mandell is behind Law Forward, a Madison-based lawfare firm founded in 2020 to represent “progressive” interests and go after former President Donald Trump and fellow Republicans. The firm, like the party it often represents, bills itself as a protector of democracy, committed to “fair, transparent, and representative government; where Wisconsinites can participate in free, fair elections where their vote counts.”
But the leftist group’s record shows a commitment to Democrat Party causes, including its lead role in a phony lawsuit against Wisconsin’s alternate electors for President Donald Trump in 2020.
‘Upsetting the Election’
The challenge, thanks in no small part to WEC’s impotence, went to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which ruled to keep the Greens off the ballot. Although conservatives held a 4-3 majority at the time, Justice Brian Hagedorn broke ranks with fellow conservatives in giving Democrats a significant political victory less than two months before the hotly contested presidential election. The majority argued that the Green Party ticket took too long to challenge the commission’s default decision and that it was too late in the campaign season to upset the applecart.
“Even if we would ultimately determine that the petitioners’ claims are meritorious, given their delay in asserting their rights, we would be unable to provide meaningful relief without completely upsetting the election,” the majority wrote in the opinion.
The same problem would seem to apply in Democrats’ latest ballot challenge against the Green Party, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty argues. It’s just one of many procedural issues, the conservative law firm asserts.
“A last-minute ruling, not based in law, from the Wisconsin Supreme Court in favor of the DNC would severely damage the faith and trust every day Wisconsinites put in their elections,” WILL’s Esenberg said.
But a ruling again tossing the Green Party off the critical swing state Wisconsin ballot sure would help freshly anointed Dem presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her fellow Democrats.
In her last presidential run in 2016, Stein collected north of 31,000 votes, a fraction of the total Badger State presidential election tally. But Democrats complained that Stein diverted crucial votes that would have gone to their candidate, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who lost Wisconsin to Trump by about 21,000 votes. The 2024 election — a near repeat of 2020 — promises to be just as hotly contested, potentially decided again in swing states by a small percentage of votes.
That’s why the duplicitous Democrats, who are promoting themselves as the defenders of democracy, have tried to disenfranchise millions in myriad efforts to keep Trump off the ballot and millions more by doing the same to fellow leftists. And they’re doing it nationwide.
‘Easier to Eliminate’
Strange, the Democrat operative, also filed a complaint with the Wisconsin Elections Commission to keep leftist Cornel West off the Badger State presidential ballot. Democrats in battleground Michigan last week booted West from the presidential contest. The Independent survived a similar challenge in Maine, while he fights to stay on the ballot in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and several other states.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who shifted to an Independent in his presidential run last year after he felt betrayed by the party of his famous father, U.S. Sen. Bobby Kennedy, and uncle, President John F. Kennedy, has been dogged by a Democrat Party campaign to deny him access to state ballots.
Stein and the Green Party have gone through the same ballot battles, facing a massively funded Democratic Party machine bent on killing competition wherever it lurks. The Greens recently survived a legal challenge in swing state Nevada, when a judge ruled against state Democrats.
“The Democratic Party has not met its burden of demonstrating that the petition is clearly invalid because it has not produced sufficient evidence to show that the petition has less than the required number of valid signatures in any petition district,” wrote Carson City District Court Judge Kristin Luis in her ruling.
She may be fighting an uphill battle in Wisconsin, where the highly partisan liberal majority has been criticized for being a rubber stamp for the Democratic Party.
While Stein is hanging on, multiple news outlets are reporting RFK Jr. will announce that he is dropping out of the race and backing Trump, as soon as today. His attorney, Larry Otter, told WHTM-TV in Harrisburg, Penn., that Kennedy can’t compete with Democrats’ massive political war machine.
“It’s a lot easier to eliminate some of your competition by knocking them off the ballot than having to spend a ton of money campaigning against them, or doing efforts in a campaign to get to their supporters,” Otter told the news outlet.
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
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