As the Wisconsin Senate begins a new probe of vote fraud during the 2020 election, one local sheriff has a new hot lead.
Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling on Thursday announced that his department’s investigation found eight cases of fraud at one nursing home, Fox6 Milwaukee reported.
The families of eight residents at the Ridgewood Care Center in Racine, Wisconsin said that their family members did not request absentee ballots and did not have the cognitive ability to vote in the 2020 elections.
They said that election records, however, show that someone illegally cast absentee ballots in their family members’ names.
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Joe Biden’s official victory in the state bested then-President Donald Trump by just over 20,000 votes.
Forty-two residents at the Ridgewood Care Center voted by absentee ballot in the 2020 elections. The single nursing home, which houses about 200 residents, registered a 20 percent incidence of voter fraud.
Schmaling’s investigation began when a resident’s family member informed him that their loved one, who had severe cognitive decline, was documented as having cast an absentee ballot.
Schmaling pointed to the Legislative Audit Bureau’s report on Wisconsin’s 2020 presidential election as proof that the Wisconsin Election Commission ignored safeguards that protect the elderly from becoming victims of voter fraud.
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“Election statute was in fact not just broken, but shattered by members of the Wisconsin Elections Commission,” Schmaling said.
That report prompted State Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, to announce an additional investigation into the WEC and its failure to comply with the state’s election laws, particularly in regard to voter rolls and absentee voting.
Schmaling requested that Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat, launch a statewide investigation into voter fraud at nursing homes, but he refused.
The Racine County Sheriff’s Office has not referred the cases to the Racine County District Attorney’s Office, though Schmaling said that he may do so if the state does not act.
