MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Republican candidate in Wisconsin’s closely watched U.S. Senate race emphasized this week that he does not oppose senior citizens’ voting after initially saying that “almost no one in a senior citizen’s home retirement” is at a point in their lives where they are able to vote.
Eric Hovde faces the Democratic senator. Tammy Baldwin in the race that is essential for Democrats to win in order to maintain their majority in the Senate. A poll this week by Marquette University Law School showed the race is about even among likely voters.
Baldwin and Democrats attacked Hovde over comments he first made April 5 on a Fox News radio show about nursing home voting. Who can vote in a nursing home and how to vote has been a hot-button issue in Wisconsin since 2020, when supporters of the former President Donald Trump alleged that people were voting illegally.
No charges have been filed, and President Joe Biden’s victory over Trump has withstood a nonpartisan audit, numerous lawsuits, a partial recount and review by a conservative law firm.
But Hovde raised the issue of nursing home voting when discussing what he sees as problems with the 2020 election.
“We’ve had nursing homes where the Racine sheriff investigated, where you had 100 percent voting in the nursing homes,” Hovde said.
This claim of 100 percent nursing home voting, first made by former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman in a discredited report, has never been verified. Voting data showed turnout in nursing homes across the state was well below 100%.
“If you’re in a nursing home, your life expectancy is only five or six months,” Hovde said last week on the “Guy Benson Show.” “Almost no one in a nursing home is able to vote.”
Baldwin, in response to Hovde’s comments, said last week that “thousands of Wisconsin residents live in nursing homes.”
“Eric Hovde has no idea what he’s talking about,” she said on MSNBC.
In two subsequent interviews this week, when asked to clarify his comments following Democratic criticism, Hovde accused his opponents and the media of “political stunts.”
“They tried to say I don’t want old people to vote,” Hovde said Monday on WISN-AM. “I don’t even know how they got there.”
Hovde reiterated that his argument was based on reports that people were questioning the voting of their seriously ill loved ones living in nursing homes.
Racine County Sheriff Christopher Shmaling, a Trump supporter, said in 2021 that the families of eight residents told investigators they believed their loved ones lacked the ability to vote, but that ballots votes had been cast for them.
Hovde said this week that “a significant percentage” of nursing home residents “do not have the mental capacity to (vote).”
But that doesn’t mean he thinks older people shouldn’t be allowed to vote.
“I think older people should absolutely vote,” he said Wednesday on WSAU-AM.
Voting in nursing homes became a priority for Trump supporters after his narrow defeat in Wisconsin in 2020.
State law requires local election clerks to send so-called special voting deputies to nursing homes to give residents the opportunity to vote.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission, in a bipartisan 5-1 vote in March 2020, determined that poll workers could not be sent to nursing homes to assist with voting due to a safer-at-home order issued by Governor Tony Evers at the start of COVID. -19 pandemic. This order came at a time when nursing homes were severely limiting the number of people who could enter their facilities, often not even allowing immediate family members inside.
An audit by the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Office determined that the Election Commission broke the law when it directed officials not to send or attempt to send lawmakers to nursing homes.
Schmaling, the sheriff and Trump supporter, called for criminal charges against the commissioners who voted not to send deputies to vote. But the Racine County prosecutor declined to file charges, citing lack of jurisdiction. The Milwaukee County prosecutor also declined to charge two commissioners in his county, saying there was a lack of evidence that a crime had been committed.
Republicans in the Legislature tried to tighten rules around nursing home voting, but the measures either failed to pass or were vetoed by Evers.
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