There is no better lab experiment designed to demonstrate that Elections Matter than the state of Wisconsin, which has staggered out from under the maladministration of a gerrymandered Republican majority in the state legislature, the comical maladministration of former governor Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage this particular midwestern subsidiary, and a conservative majority on the state supreme court. The people in my beloved second home woke up, finally, to the fact that these combined forces had turned America’s Dairyland into Mordor. They flipped the state supreme court, and they elected a Democratic attorney general named Josh Kaul, who, on Tuesday, brought the pain. From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

The charges are the first to be filed by state prosecutors against anyone involved in the scheme that involved 10 Wisconsin Republicans meeting in the state Capitol in December 2020 to sign paperwork falsely claiming to be electors for Trump, despite Trump’s loss to Biden. Kaul filed the charges in Dane County Circuit Court against Kenneth Chesebro, a Wisconsin native and lead architect of the 2020 fake elector plan; former Dane County Judge Jim Troupis, who represented Trump in Wisconsin during the 2020 election; and Mike Roman, a former Trump aide who allegedly delivered Wisconsin’s slate of false elector paperwork to a Pennsylvania congressman’s staffer in order to get them to Vice President Mike Pence on Jan. 6, 2021.

Once again, state and local courts are doing the work that the narcotized federal courts cannot. There are now five states in which state prosecutors have brought charges in the fake-electors scheme, and as these prosecutions go forward, it’s going to become plain that the fake-electors scheme was a national conspiracy. Kaul was coy about what may be coming down the line. And Tony Evers, Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, was admirably succinct.

In a one word statement on the charges, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers said: “Good.”

Indeed.

Headshot of Charles P. Pierce
Charles P. Pierce

Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.