WATERTOWN, Wis. — There are swing states, and then there are swing states like Wisconsin, where about 20,000 votes — fewer than 1% — have decided four of the Dairy State’s last presidential elections.
Even a few thousand votes siphoned off by a third-party presidential candidate could determine which direction Wisconsin’s coveted 10 electoral votes will go.
David Strang, the state’s Democratic National Committee deputy operations director, filed a complaint Wednesday challenging the ballot access of Wisconsin Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who won more than 30,000 votes here in the 2016 presidential election.
The complaint alleges the Wisconsin Green Party, which qualified for ballot status in 2022 when a candidate garnered 1% of the state’s vote, does not have qualified electors to put forward and therefore runs afoul of Wisconsin election law.
The Green Party’s virtual convention happens this week, where Stein is expected to win the party’s presidential nomination. Her platform includes left-leaning positions such as codifying Roe v. Wade, abolishing student debt, opposing school choice and supporting the Equality Act, which would add sex, sexual orientation and gender identity to the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The Wisconsin Green Party’s website features an article from May titled “Standing with the students standing with GAZA,” which praised student protests at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and endorsed the students’ demands.
Stein and her campaign manager were arrested in April at Washington University in St. Louis while taking part in an anti-Israel protest.
Removing an option for pro-Palestinian voters in Wisconsin would likely be a boon for the Democratic Party.
In the April presidential primary, almost 48,000 voters cast an “uninstructed ballot” as a protest against President Biden’s handling of the Israel-Gaza conflict. Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) have all faced anti-Israel protests and hecklers when campaigning in Wisconsin.
WisDem Chair Ben Wikler said after the primary that then-Democratic presidential candidate Biden had work to do to earn those uninstructed votes.
Now booting other options for pro-Palestine voters off the ballot may be the Democrats’ key to pushing those voters toward Harris.
Harris responded to a question in March about the uncommitted protest vote in neighboring Minnesota.
“They matter,” the VP declared, “and we care about them.”
“We respect the fact that people feel very strongly about what we are witnessing,” Harris said, referring to the Israel-Hamas war.
The DNC employee filed a complaint against former Green Party member and independent candidate Cornel West last week, attempting to deny his ballot access as well.
“This is a fishing expedition conjured up by the DNC,” Stein’s campaign manager Jason Call told The Post. “And [it’s] in line with their statements back in March that they will hire an army of lawyers and infiltrators to find any angle of attack to prevent Green Party ballot access.”
“The American people are tired of these anti-democratic shenanigans, and we absolutely will be hiring counsel to defend our ballot line in Wisconsin,” Call continued.
In a poll out Wednesday, Harris took a strong lead over Donald Trump in Wisconsin when third-party candidates were factored in, leading the former prez 48% to 43%.
The unelected, six-member bipartisan Wisconsin Election Commission will determine the fate of Stein, West, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and two other independent candidates in an Aug. 27 commission meeting.
