Prior to the 2024 presidential election, the Wisconsin Senate, which is dominated by Republicans, voted on Thursday to fire the state’s top election commissioner.
Republicans removed Meagan Wolfe, a nonpartisan administrator of the elections commission in the pivotal state, in a 22-11 decision cast along party lines.
Republicans had been demanding Wolfe’s resignation due to the way she handled the state’s 2020 presidential election, which President Joe Biden won. The Wisconsin Senate couldn’t agree on Wolfe’s reappointment for a second four-year term in June.
Wolfe has defended her handling of the election and spoken out against rumors of electoral fraud that have repeatedly been spread by the late President Donald Trump and his supporters in the region.
Democratic governor Tony Evers urged the state’s Justice Department to offer “immediate representation” to help maintain Wolfe in the position in a statement released on Thursday.
Republicans, who earlier this year won a supermajority in the Senate in a special election, were targeted by Evers, who referred to the removal attempt as an “attempt to illegally fire Wisconsin’s elections administrator without cause.”
In addition, he lauded Wolfe for being a “consummate, qualified professional who’s worked in voter registration, outreach, and election security for in excess of a decade.”
The state’s six-member, bipartisan commission chose Wolfe to serve as its lead elections official in 2018. In May 2019, the state Senate unanimously confirmed her for a four-year term.
Meagan Wolfe has been contacted by NBC News for comment.