Eric Hovde speaks in a video posted on X Tuesday, Nov. 12, in which he questions how ballots were counted in his election loss to Sen. Tammy Baldwin that was called early Nov. 6. Hovde did not concede then, only doing so on Monday, Nov. 18.. (Screenshot | Hovde campaign on X)

Poor Eric Hovde. His protestations that the election was rigged against him have fallen on deaf ears. Hovde’s grudging concession to Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin, who beat him by 29,000 votes to hang onto her seat in the U.S. Senate, came as Republicans across the country rejoiced at winning control of the White House and both chambers of Congress. Like his Tom Selleck mustache, Hovde’s election denial is way out of style. 

Hovde’s baseless accusations during his very tardy concession speech about the questionable “legitimacy” of “absentee ballots that were dropped in Milwaukee at 4 a.m.” is so 2020. This year, Trump won all the swing states and, unlike last time, when he lost to Joe Biden, allegations of illegal voting, fraud, recounts, court challenges and death threats aimed at election officials have disappeared like morning dew in the Southern California sun.

Hovde heads home to Laguna Beach, California, a lonely, sore loser instead of storming the U.S. Capitol as a champion for MAGA grievance with his Trump-supporting friends. 

“I entered the race for the U.S. Senate because I love our country and I’m deeply concerned about its direction,” Hovde declared in his concession speech Monday. By then, the country’s direction had taken a sharp right turn. 

The top concerns that Hovde, an enthusiastic Trump supporter, said motivated him to run — government spending, border security and international relations — are now firmly in MAGA hands. 

“Lastly, as I’ve repeatedly expressed, I’m very worried about the political divisions and rhetoric that are tearing our country apart,” Hovde declared.

This last worry led him, Hovde said, to run a campaign that “focused on issues instead of personal attacks.” He followed this assertion by besmirching the integrity of Wisconsin election officials, denouncing his opponent as a liar and blaming Democrats for underhandedly stealing the election from him by allowing third-party candidates to run and by spreading rumors that he’s a California bank owner (a verifiable fact). For good measure, he added, “Equally concerning is the large segments of the press that don’t care to fact-check these lies and even helped propagate misinformation to help their preferred candidate.”

Anyone who watched the debate between Hovde and Baldwin might be surprised to hear Hovde congratulate himself for running a high-minded campaign rooted in the “values of integrity and morality.”

“The one thing you’ve perfected in Washington is your ability to lie,” Hovde sneered at Baldwin at the start of the debate. While Baldwin focused on her long record of detailed policy work, reaching across the aisle to pass bills that helped Wisconsinites, Hovde relied heavily on unsubstantiated accusations and repeatedly called out Baldwin’s girlfriend, a Wall Street investment adviser, demanding that she release financial information she is not required to disclose and unsubtly calling attention to the fact that Baldwin, an out lesbian, is in a same-sex relationship. 

This week, Baldwin is back in Washington doing what she does best — focusing on unsexy issues that matter to her constituents (see her Wednesday press release: “Baldwin Calls on USDA to Provide Emergency Aid for Gamebird Farmers Hit By Tornadoes”). Hovde, who admitted during the debate that he doesn’t know much about what’s in the Farm Bill and then griped afterward to rightwing talk radio host Vicky McKenna: “Like, I’m supposed to study [the bill] in depth?!” can’t imagine why Wisconsin chose Baldwin over him.

There was nothing nefarious about Baldwin’s win. She received a predictable boost from absentee voters in heavily Democratic Milwaukee, and as she has done in her previous statewide races, and she got a lot of votes in Republican-leaning areas of the state where she has spent a great deal of time listening to her constituents and championing their interests in bills that help Wisconsin agriculture and manufacturing. That’s the kind of work that made her the only Democrat to win the endorsement of the Wisconsin Farm Bureau.

Hovde distinguished himself, according to The New York Times, by becoming the first prominent Republican in the nation to suggest the election was rigged, parroting Trump’s 2020 conspiracy theories. 

Fortunately, this year Hovde’s complaints are just one man’s sour grapes. But in his incivility, his poor grasp of policy, and, most of all, in refusing to concede for so long and, even when he did, questioning the integrity of the election, Hovde made a divisive political environment more toxic.

As Sam Liebert, Wisconsin state director of All Voting is Local told Erik Gunn, “The rhetoric of questioning our democracy is more than just words. … It  contributes to chaos and confusion, which undermines public trust in our elections and the officials who administer them.” 

As Hovde himself might put it, the kind of campaign he ran is tearing our country apart. Fortunately for Wisconsin, in this case, it’s over. 

The Wisconsin Elections Commission's October 4, 2024 meeting.

Local elections clerks found just 30 instances of fraud in elections from July 1, 2023 through Sept. 12, according to a report the Wisconsin Elections Commission approved and sent to the Legislature Friday. 

Those incidents occurred during the four elections in that span in which more than 4 million votes were cast. In the report, clerks from across the state found 18 instances of people voting twice in the same election — usually voting both absentee and in person. One case found a person who voted in two Kenosha County municipalities. Kenosha County also had six instances of people who attempted to register to vote while serving felony sentences. 

The WEC’s annual report on election fraud has frequently found that it is an exceedingly rare crime. Despite that, baseless allegations of fraud have continued to come from members of the Legislature and prominent election deniers. 

At Friday’s meeting, the commission also ended an effort to pass an emergency administrative rule guiding how election observers must operate at poll locations during the November election. The body has already approved a permanent rule on the same topic and forwarded it to the governor for approval. 

Republican Commissioner Don Millis, who proposed withdrawing the emergency rule, said that he was told by Republicans in the Legislature that the Joint Committee on the Review of Administrative Rules (JCRAR) wouldn’t approve the emergency rule and if WEC forwarded it to the committee, it could result in the permanent rule not passing the committee. 

“I’ve been told in no uncertain terms by the Senate side of the administrative rules committee that this rule will be suspended as soon as the committee has the opportunity,” Millis said. “Moreover, I’ve been told that proceeding on this could endanger the permanent rule. I think the permanent rule is a good thing, I’m glad it’s going to be in place. We’ll see what happens.” 

The rule on election observers is meant to provide a statewide template for how poll workers should deal with election observers, including how far away from voting activities observers must be, what type of seating should be provided, ensuring access to restrooms and providing guidance for when an observer is being disruptive and can be asked to leave a poll site. The emergency rule would have gone into effect sooner, but with an expiration date while the permanent rule, if approved, won’t expire. 

WEC has worked on the permanent rule for more than two years, gathering input from a wide range of partisan and advocacy groups. But with JCRAR’s opposition to the emergency rule, the fate of the permanent rule, once it reaches the Legislature, is unclear. 

“I’ve asked a number of people if they would prefer to have no rule or the administrative rule, which they may find some fault with, and they’ve actually said they prefer to have no rule,” Millis said. “So I’m very disappointed, but I think that for the long term opportunity to have a rule in place is that the best course of action is to cease the emergency rulemaking process and see what happens to the permanent role in the Legislature.”

JCRAR has become increasingly hostile to WEC in recent years, including a fight in 2022 over guidance the commission had sent to clerks over the use of absentee ballot drop boxes. 

“We spent two years, we had multi-partisan input, we had non-partisan input, we had both major political parties, we had minor political parties, we had persons who were advocates for persons with disabilities, who were advocates for all other aspects of it,” Democratic Commissioner Ann Jacobs said. “And we’ve had, I don’t know how many people come in here and demand that they wanted chairs and toilets and they were going to raise heck and high water, and then we put forward a rule that allowed it, and then all of a sudden they’re like, ‘Well, but not like that.’ And we read every single comment from every single person who had every single complaint. This was a bipartisan, multi-partisan rule. The fact that the Legislature is indicating, and I take Don at his word that they’re not going to let it go forward, is just sort of ridiculous, and it’s unfortunate.”

The commission also discussed updates to the agency’s open records request policy. A staff report notes that since 2020, the commission has received record-high amounts of requests — mostly for the communications of commissioners and WEC Administrator Meagan Wolfe. Often, those requests require commissioners to search their personal devices and accounts for relevant records. 

Staff proposed having commissioners forward any communications involving official government business that takes place on those devices or accounts to their Wisconsin.gov email accounts so staff can conduct those searches. 

Commissioners Mark Thomsen and Millis questioned the policy, with Thomsen saying people could effectively shut down his work by requesting communications from his work email that he receives unsolicited. 

“This is not a rational response to the problem posed,” he said. “We cannot invite people to shut down our businesses by sending us unsolicited emails.” 

State law generally considers messages about official government business conducted by officials on personal devices and accounts to be public records.