WATERTOWN, Wis. — There are battleground states, and then there are battleground states like Wisconsin, where roughly 20,000 votes (less than 1%) have decided the outcome of the dairy state’s last four presidential elections.
Even a few thousand votes swept away by a third-party presidential candidate could determine which way Wisconsin’s 10 coveted electoral votes go.
David Strang, deputy operations director for the state’s Democratic National Committee, filed the complaint Wednesday challenging access to the ballot for Jill Stein, the Wisconsin Green Party candidate who received more than 30,000 votes in the state in the 2016 presidential election.
The complaint alleges that the Green Party of Wisconsin qualified to be on the ballot in the 2022 election when its candidates received 1% of the statewide vote, but the party did not have any qualified electors to nominate, violating Wisconsin election law.
Stein is expected to win the Green Party’s presidential nomination at its virtual convention this week. Her platform includes left-leaning positions such as enacting Roe v. Wade, abolishing student loan debt, opposing school choice and supporting the Equality Act, which would add sex, sexual orientation and gender identity to the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The Green Party of Wisconsin’s website published an article in May titled “Standing with Students in Support of Gaza” praising student protests at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and supporting their demands.
Stein and her campaign manager were arrested in April while participating in an anti-Israel protest at Washington University in St. Louis.
Eliminating the option for pro-Palestinian voters in Wisconsin is likely to be an advantage for Democrats.
In the April presidential primary, about 48,000 voters cast “secret ballots” in protest of Biden’s handling of the Israel-Gaza conflict. Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) all faced anti-Israel protests and disruptions while campaigning in Wisconsin.
Wisdem chairman Ben Wikler said after the primary that Biden, then the Democratic presidential nominee, had work to do to win the secret ballot.
Now, removing other options for pro-Palestinian voters from the ballot could be key for Democrats to tilt those voters toward Harris.
Harris responded to a question about pending protest votes in neighboring Minnesota in March.
“They matter, and we care about them,” the vice president declared.
“I respect the fact that people have very strong feelings about what we’re witnessing,” Harris said of the war between Israel and Hamas.
DNC officials also filed a complaint last week against former Green Party member and independent candidate Cornel West, seeking to strip him of his voting rights as well.
“This is a bait-and-switch survey set up by the Democratic National Committee,” Stein’s campaign manager, Jason Cole, told the Post. “And [it’s] This is consistent with statements made in March that they would hire an army of lawyers and infiltrators to find every angle of attack to thwart the Green Party’s access to the ballot.”
“The American people are tired of these anti-democratic tactics and will undoubtedly hire lawyers to defend the results of Wisconsin’s vote,” Cole continued.
A poll released Wednesday showed Harris had a big lead over Donald Trump in Wisconsin when third-party candidates were considered, outdoing the former president by 48% to 43%.
The six-member, unelected, bipartisan Wisconsin State Election Commission is scheduled to decide the fate of Stein, West, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and two other independent candidates at an Aug. 27 committee meeting.
