MADISON, Wis. (AP) The Republican Party of Wisconsin has filed two lawsuits six weeks before the election, requesting records from the administrations of Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson and Democrat Gov. Tony Evers. The lawsuits are related to issues that have served as conservatives’ campaign fodder.
The cases were filed on Tuesday, one day after the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, a conservative law firm, sued the state parole commission to obtain information regarding paroles that had been granted.
The complaint aims to obtain correspondence between Johnson and Claire Woodall-Vogg, the executive director of the Milwaukee election commission, and GPS Impact, a leftist marketing company that has backed Democrats, regarding a privately funded voter engagement initiative in the city.
Republicans claim that the Milwaukee Votes 2022 initiative is an unlawful Democratic get-out-the-vote operation.
Johnson’s administration has emphasised that all of the initiatives to register voters and promote voting are nonpartisan. According to GPS Impact staffer Melissa Baldauff, the organisation provides advice to NGOs managing the programme but does not receive any funding from the city or any other organisation.
Baldauff has previously worked for the Wisconsin Democratic Party and the Evers administration.
On September 13, the Republican Party sent the city a request for access to public records. A city attorney allegedly replied on September 19 saying it was being looked into as one of the 19 requests that had been submitted about the get-out-the-vote campaign. Republicans claim that by delaying in providing the records, the defendants violated the state’s open records statute.
The time it takes to respond depends on a number of factors, including the scope and complexity of any given request, but often takes weeks or months for records to be provided, despite Wisconsin’s open records law’s requirement that responses be given as soon as practically possible and without delay.
According to Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, many records requests take far longer than two weeks to be fulfilled.
They shouldn’t be delaying, but it doesn’t usually happen right away.
Republicans claim that by suppressing or delaying data relevant to a highly time-sensitive matter, the City runs the risk of escalating public worries about the impending election and casting a shadow over its administration of the election and its election-related actions.
An inquiry for comment sent on Wednesday went unanswered by the mayor’s spokeswoman.
The Waukesha County Circuit Court received the other Republican case against Evers. It asks for copies of documents that Republicans asked for in June regarding conversations between the governor and his chief of staff on the Union Grove veterans facility. U.S. Republicans Rep. Bryan Steil has criticised the facility’s treatment of veterans, whose district in southeast Wisconsin contains the community. .
Republicans in Wisconsin file two open records lawsuits.
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