“U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson is calling on Wisconsin lawmakers to take over elections and tell local officials to ignore the work of the bipartisan Elections Commission they set up six years ago. The Oshkosh Republican on Wednesday met privately for an hour with GOP legislative leaders in the state Capitol, less than two weeks after telling the Journal Sentinel in an interview that lawmakers should set aside the commission’s work. In the earlier interview, Johnson accused the state commission of ‘systematically’ violating the law with the advice it gave to municipal clerks during the coronavirus pandemic last year. He contended Republicans who control the Legislature could unilaterally take over federal elections and said Democratic Gov Tony Evers couldn’t stop them. ‘There’s no mention of the governor in the Constitution’ when it comes to running elections.”

“‘It says state legislatures, and so if I were running the joint — and I’m not — I would come out and I would just say, ‘We’re reclaiming our authority. Don’t listen to WEC anymore. Their guidances are null and void.” Attempting to overtake elections without the sign-off of Evers would all but guarantee a legal challenge. The Elections Commission was created by state law and the normal process for replacing it would be for legislators to pass legislation and the governor to sign it. Republican lawmakers voted to create the Elections Commission in 2015 over the objections of Democrats. Until the commission was formed, elections were overseen by the Government Accountability Board. Republicans believed that agency was biased against them, particularly after it launched a wide-ranging probe of Republicans for alleged campaign finance laws. The state Supreme Court shut down the investigation before it was completed and Republicans quickly dissolved the accountability board” – Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.