Eric Hovde, the Republican candidate for Senate in Wisconsin who is projected to lose to Senator Tammy Baldwin, said this week that the election was tainted by “inconsistencies” in the vote, prompting election officials to say his claims “lack any merit.”
Mr. Hovde’s assertions, which were made in a video he posted on X on Tuesday, make him the first prominent Republican to suggest that last week’s election was rigged against him. Mr. Hovde pointed to a series of theories similar to those former President Donald J. Trump used to try to discredit his defeat in 2020.
Mr. Trump has dropped his claims of corrupt elections since he won the White House last week. Mr. Hovde made no mention of Mr. Trump’s 30,000-vote victory in Wisconsin and whether he believed that vote was also marred.
He said he was weighing whether to contest the result. He trails Ms. Baldwin by about 29,000 votes in preliminary results.
“While I’m deeply concerned, asking for a recount is a serious decision that requires careful consideration,” Mr. Hovde said. “Further, there are meaningful limits on a recount because they don’t look at the integrity of a ballot.”
Many of the Republican’s claims about the vote indicate a misunderstanding or distortion of counting procedures and rules in Milwaukee, a Democratic stronghold. In a statement, the Milwaukee Election Commission said it “unequivocally refutes Eric Hovde’s baseless claims regarding the integrity of our election process.”
Mr. Hovde’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
Here’s a look at his assertions and the facts about the vote.
The Claim: “At 1 a.m., I was receiving calls of congratulations, and based on the models, it appeared I would win the Senate race. Then at 4 a.m., Milwaukee reported approximately 108,000 absentee ballots, with Senator Baldwin receiving nearly 90 percent of those ballots. Statistically, this outcome seems improbable as it didn’t match the patterns from same-day voting in Milwaukee, where I received 22 percent of the votes.”
The Facts: It is not unusual for a large number of legally cast ballots to be counted late at night or early in the morning. Milwaukee, like most other municipalities that count absentee ballots at a central location, reports the totals only when they are finished.
It is also not suspicious or even especially surprising that Ms. Baldwin would perform better among those absentee voters than she did with in-person voters. Democrats strongly urge their voters to cast absentee ballots and have continued to outperform Republicans in voting by mail, even as Republicans made some gains on early voting across the country.
Additionally, Wisconsin law requires that clerks post the number of total outstanding absentee ballots by the close of polls. Mr. Hovde and his campaign would have been aware of the expected ballot total out of Milwaukee well before 4 a.m.
The Claim: “Since last Wednesday, numerous parties have reached out to me about voting inconsistencies, such as certain voting precincts in Milwaukee having turnout of over 150 percent of registered voters, and in some cases, over 200 percent.”
The Facts: Although it seems impossible, there is nothing unusual about participation rates over 100 percent. That is because the state allows voters to show up at their precinct and register on Election Day.
When calculating and reporting turnout, however, election officials use as a denominator the number of voters who were registered before Election Day. Some wards, especially those with lower-income or student populations, see a high number of voters registering on Election Day and casting a ballot. While their votes are counted, the denominator in the unofficial, ward-by-ward results is not changed. There were at least seven wards in Milwaukee that reported turnout over 100 percent in the unofficial results.
The Claim: “In 2020, President Biden received over 10 million more votes than Vice President Harris did last Tuesday. Yet in Milwaukee, even though the population of the city has declined, the number of registered voters fell by 26,330, and early voting numbers were down, somehow, Harris received only 1,100 less votes than Biden did, which is not consistent with most other cities.”
The Facts: The 10 million popular vote gap between Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris will shrink after West Coast states like California, Oregon and Washington finish counting their ballots. As of Wednesday, Ms. Harris had 8.8 million fewer votes than Mr. Biden won in 2020.
Mr. Hovde is correct that some other cities saw Ms. Harris’s vote total plunge further than it did in Milwaukee. (Mr. Biden earned 61,000 more votes in 2020 in Wayne County, home to Detroit, than Ms. Harris did in 2024, for example.)
But Milwaukee isn’t alone in bucking that trend. In Fulton County, home to Atlanta, Ms. Harris received 4,400 more votes than Mr. Biden did in 2020. And in Pittsburgh, Ms. Harris received just 6,000 fewer than Mr. Biden.
The Milwaukee Election Commission “is fully confident that Mr. Hovde’s accusations lack any merit,” it said.
The Claim: Democrats organized and placed a third-party Senate candidate, Thomas Leager of the America First party, in order to siphon votes from Mr. Hovde.
The Facts: Ms. Hovde is correct. Mr. Leager told The Associated Press he was urged to run by a group called the Patriots Run Project. The group claimed to be a pro-Trump movement, but The Associated Press found that it was supported by Democratic firms and donors.
Mr. Leager did receive 28,724 votes as of Tuesday, which is nearly the total by which Mr. Hovde lost.
This type of trickery, however, is not evidence of voter fraud.
The Claim: “Another issue that is further undermining our confidence in our election is the failure by Wisconsin and Milwaukee election commissions to clean up our voter rolls. We currently have almost eight million registered voters on our voter rolls with only 3.5 million active voters.”
The Facts: Mr. Hovde’s numbers are accurate, but they are not evidence of impropriety or fraud.
As the Wisconsin Election Commission explains on its website, only active registered voters — the 3.5 million Mr. Hovde mentions — “appear on the poll book and are eligible to receive a ballot, either in-person or by absentee ballot.”
The other voters are on the inactive list. These are people who have died, moved and registered in another state, have been convicted of a felony or were made inactive for other reasons.
The Wisconsin Election Commission states that “Wisconsin law requires that there be an active and an inactive voter list,” but also notes that maintaining both helps ensure election integrity and accuracy.
“If someone is dead and if the clerk gets a registration form for that person, the clerk would see that the person is deceased and would not register them,” the commission notes as an example on its website.
The post Election Officials Say Wisconsin Republican’s Claims ‘Lack Any Merit’ appeared first on New York Times.
