The recently-selected chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission said Monday he hopes to help restore voter’s faith in the state’s elections.
Republican attorney Don Millis was appointed to the WEC on June 8 by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos. Two days later, the six-member board selected him as its new chair.
In an appearance on WPR’s “The Morning Show,” Millis said he wants to “return to a time in which people could rely on or have faith in the election process.” He said “safeguards” such as voter ID and a statewide voter registration did not prevent challenges to the results of the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.
“I think there’s less faith in the confidence that elections, election results reflect the true vote than at any time in our history,” Millis said.
Millis laid out his ideas for using federal funding to increase audits of voting machines following elections. He said his goal would be an audit of 10 percent of voting machines statewide after each general election.
“That’s a process in which you rerun the ballots and then you hand count the ballots to see what the error rate (is),” Millis said.
In 2018 and 2020, those random audits covered about 5 percent of voting equipment across the state. Neither audit found issues or anomalies with the machines checked.
“There’s a couple reasons for (auditing),” Millis said. “One is to make sure that the machines are running properly. The other is educational, because despite the best efforts of our clerks, often people will not make marks the way they should.”