FON DU LAC, Wisc. (Legal Newsline) - District Attorney Eric Toney is alerting prospective voters that his office offers an avenue for action for those who witness election law violations in Tuesday’s Spring Elections.
“A lot of voters have been frustrated because judges have told them they don’t have standing when they bring an election law case,” Toney, a Republican candidate for Attorney General, told Legal Newsline. “They need to contact my office if they witness any election law violations. We can stop violations in real time.”
On April 5, Wisconsin voters will elect county and local government officials, judges to local circuit courts and school board members.
Eric Toney, Fond du Lac DA
| erictoney.com
Past elections in the state, most notably the 2020 General Elections, have been plagued by allegations of election law violations. Toney has been a strong advocate of investigating and prosecuting the crimes.
“I’m not like the current activist Attorney General (Josh Kaul) and only defend the laws I like,” Toney, president-elect of the Wisconsin DA’s Association, said. “All voters want to be secure in the fact that all election laws are being defended.”
Last month, his office announced the filing of five voter fraud cases, bringing the total number of voter fraud cases in Fond du Lac County to seven.
“These five cases came from an investigation conducted by the City of Fond du Lac Police Department,” Toney said at the time in a press release. “The allegations relate to individuals that illegally registered to vote using a PO Box as their address with three of the five voting in the November 2020 election. All defendants are presumed innocent unless or until proven guilty in court.”
Toney was also critical of Milwaukee County DA John Chisholm’s recent decision not to charge members of Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) with crimes recommended by the Racine County Sheriff over guidelines that nursing homes not use special voting deputies (SVD) to oversee voting by nursing home residents.
“DA Chisholm took a year to figure out he didn’t have venue for an investigation into alternate electors (in a reference to allegations of false presidential electors),” Toney tweeted on March 7. “He then released his findings around Jan 6, 2022 but the SVD decision was made in a span of weeks, despite clear evidence election laws weren’t followed.”
Two investigations, one headed by former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman as special counsel to the Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections, and another by the Thomas More Society, a public interest law firm out of Chicago, found that some nursing home residents with severe dementia were on record as having voted in the 2020 elections.
In a March 1 appearance before the Assembly Committee, Gableman showed videotaped presentations of interviews of sons and daughters of nursing home residents who were shocked that their parents, some with severe dementia, cast ballots in the 2020 general election and February 2021 primary elections.
Gableman said that nursing home residents in the five Zuckerberg cities had an unheard of 95% to 100% voting turnout.
He blamed WEC for not enforcing a law that requires the presence of special voting deputies, from both parties, in the homes to ensure that those who vote are capable of voting, and not having their ballots filled out by third parties.
Toney said that he wants to “ensure people have the right to vote and the ability to cast their ballot, but it is equally important that all ballots in our state are treated and counted the same, regardless of which county the ballot is cast because elections are the cornerstone of democracy.”