[5] Meagan Wolfe was appointed interim administrator March 2, 2018, and was unanimously confirmed by the Wisconsin Senate on May 15, 2019, for a term ending June 30, 2023.
[6] With Wolfe's term set to expire, a commission vote to reappoint her deadlocked on June 27, 2023, meaning that she will likely continue serving as acting administrator for the foreseeable future.
The two commissions formally came into existence on June 30, 2016, replacing the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, which had overseen state elections and ethics since 2008.
WILL's lawsuit demanded that the commission respond to a "Movers Report," which was produced via computer analysis of voter data compiled by the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC).
[16] Acting on behalf of the commission, which was split 3-3 on the matter Josh Kaul, Wisconsin's Attorney General, joined the appeal to stay Malloy's removals.
[18] Despite insufficient evidence for removal of that extraordinary number of qualified voters, the state could be forced to comply with Malloy's order.
[19] On January 2, 2020, WILL said it asked the circuit court to hold the Elections Commission in contempt, fining it up to $12,000 daily, until it advanced Malloy's December 17, 2019 order to remove from the rolls registrations of hundreds of thousands of voters who might have moved to a different address.
[20] The purge was construed to be targeting voters living in the cities of Madison, and Milwaukee, as well as college towns, which all tended to favor Democrats.
[16][21] Reporter and author Greg Palast associated the Wisconsin effort at voter purging as conforming to a national Republican party strategy which had attracted international attention.
"[23] The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel examined the list of voters subject to being purged because they were presumed to have moved, and found that about 55 percent of those registrants had been domiciled in municipalities that had been won by Hillary Clinton in the 2016 general election.
Knudson, however, faced opposition from his fellow Republicans on the commission, specifically from election-denier and fake presidential elector Robert F.
This allowed Wolfe to remain in office indefinitely, because of a 2022 Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling in the case of State ex rel.
[31] But the Prehn precedent now boomeranged against Republicans, as Wolfe was entitled to remain in office until a successor was properly nominated and confirmed.
But Wisconsin attorney general Josh Kaul directed Wolfe to ignore the Senate vote and continue in office, suing in state court to clarify the legal situation.
[32] The same day, however, Republicans in the state senate voted to reject the appointment of Democrat Joseph Czarnezki to the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
[33] On January 10, 2024, Dane County circuit judge Ann Peacock ruled on the question of Meagan Wolfe's status as administrator, finding that she was lawfully holding over, that the vote on her renomination was invalid without a majority of the commission, and that the state Senate vote to reject her "renomination" therefore had no legal weight.