The swing state of Wisconsin has been called out for at least one vote-rigging scheme that has swung elections.

But there's more than just Zuckerbucks, a privately funded entity that invaded public election spaces without voter consent in an act the state's special counsel office said amounted to 'bribery.'

According to JustTheNews, there's also this:

A Wisconsin lawmaker is questioning whether it was legal for a political action committee to pay people to encourage others to vote for liberal Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Janet Protasiewicz in the state Supreme Court election in the latest mobilization tactic to raise integrity concerns in the battleground state.

Wisconsin Takes Action, a project of Organizing Empowerment PAC, held live Zoom training sessions during the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, instructing potential "community mobilizers" on how to reach out to people to encourage them to vote and get paid hundreds of dollars for their outreach efforts. 

Like the Zuckerbucks operation, the Wisconsin Takes Action group sounded innocent enough in its aims. It paid activists $30 to download their app and then contact 75 of their family and friends to urge them to get out and vote, even offering them pre-done message templates to use. In return, for each group of 75, (controlling for 15 of them), it would even assess how successful their efforts were in getting people to vote. After that, it would issue a series of gift cards either to a variety of retailers or a pre-paid Mastercard as a reward for their efforts:

From Feb. 22 to March 19, mobilizers were to create their lists and contact the 60 people to ask if they were registered to vote. If the mobilizers did this, then they would receive a $60 gift card from their choice of various retailers or a prepaid Mastercard. The 60 contacts were then to be contacted again between March 20 and March 30 to be encouraged to vote early, which would get the mobilizers another $65 gift card. 

Then, between March 31 and April 2, mobilizers were to contact the 60 people again to ensure they had a plan to vote, which would earn a $70 gift card. Finally, both the day before and on Election Day, mobilizers were to contact the 60 people to encourage them to go to the polls, worth another $75 gift card. Completing all of these steps resulted in a total of $270 in gift cards. 

All in all, a pretty cheap way of buying votes, actually, but apparently, many took them up on it. No more volunteering because a canvasser believes it. The gift cards, of course, are a red flag, often used by bribers as well as spies, and money launderers, to get around bribery and espionage laws, whether of selling secrets or buying votes. There were also $30 cash incentives for recruiting other leftists to participate in the gift card scheme.

And by coincidence, Wisconsin had not just its primary, but its general election for a state supreme court justice which just happened to swing the court to the left. The off-year election for the relatively obscure office was won a few days ago with a "record-breaking" turnout.

JustTheNews outlined why it was skeevy:

First, it wasn't just a family and friends operation for gift cards:

Despite claiming to use people's personal networks for outreach, one organizer said: "To reach out to people, you really only need their name and phone number. Also, because you don't need to know them at all, we're paying just to reach out to people. As long as you can send a text to somebody with a number, that's going count as outreach." 

One of the organizers explained how the app has texts prewritten for mobilizers to send to their contacts, saying that they could send them to acquaintances at local pharmacies and gyms. 

There also was this:

Wisconsin GOP state Rep. Janel Brandtjen told Just the News on Friday she believes that offering gift cards in exchange for mobilizing voters violates state law forbidding election bribery. If it doesn't violate the law, then Republicans should use it, she added. 

After all, if you are committed to your cause, why should you need to be taking gift cards to do it? Isn't that bribery as normal people understand it? And why the gift cards instead of the cash? Haven't elections been won without this? Also, groups like this are supposedly not allowed to target individual voters by law, JustTheNews noted, but here we are.

Then there was this creepiest detail of all:

One of the organizers said during the training session: "This type of organizing is almost brand new. The first time it was utilized was in 2020, and then it was only used in the Georgia runoff [Senate] elections. They did it last cycle in Nevada in the last election cycle and it worked really well." 

The organizer added, "Now they're planning to do it for this and then for all swing states in 2024 potentially." 

Obviously, when Democrats talk about the "granularity" of their get-out-the-votes efforts, this appears to be one of the things they mean. Offering cash and gift cards to get it all done just stinks to high heaven of bribery and obviously, it's affecting election results. GOP legislators in Wisconsin says it's filing its ethics complaints, but with a state Supreme Court in the Democrat bag, good luck with that.

It's trash like this that makes Americans distrust elections more and more, a problem that has been growing by leaps and bounds as these tech players and political manipulators skirt around bribery laws and use any means necessary including payoffs to get what they want. It's disgusting stuff and if the Wisconsin legislators are powerless to stop it, it's up to other state legislators to act to stop this naked rigging by the left, buttressed by nothing less than paying bounties for votes.

Image: JimIrwin, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 3.0