Wisconsin Lost Track of 82,000+ Mail-In Ballots During 2020 Election

Wisconsin lost track of over 82,000 mail-in ballots cast during the 2020 election, more than four times Biden’s margin of victory. 

The Public Interest Legal Foundation, an election integrity watchdog group, released a report Friday disclosing the information from one of the most closely contested states of the election, per the Daily Signal. 

Indeed, Joe Biden beat Trump by 20,682 votes in the state - meaning he only won by .6 percent or less. But, per the legal foundation’s report, 82,766 mail-in ballots were undeliverable or suffered an unknown fate. 

“The federal data show the 2020 election had more mail ballots that were never counted than the margin of victory in the presidential election in Wisconsin,” the group’s president, J. Christian Adams, said in a statement. 

“This isn’t the way to run an election,” he said. “Mail ballots invite error, disenfranchisement of voters, and puts the inept U.S. post office determining the outcome of elections.” 

The Public Interest Legal Foundation previously determined that 14.7 million mail-in ballots were unaccounted for nationally, based on data from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. 

The Wisconsin Elections Commission, however, argued the report “mischaracterizes election systems and cherry-picks data,” urging it is “unreliable and frankly, it’s sloppy work.” 

“Their figures for ballots sent, undeliverable ballots, and rejected ballots count are all incorrect - in some cases by a wide margin,” Wisconsin Elections Commission spokesman Reid Magney said in a statement to the Daily Signal. 

He said that while about 85,000 absentee ballots were not returned, there is “no indication they ‘went missing’ or were undeliverable.” He said the number used for “unknown” ballots “doesn’t add up to any combination of ballot status classifications used in the State of Wisconsin.”