Narrative of a perfect 2020 election eroding as Wisconsin becomes investigative ground zero

Cognitively impaired nursing home residents in Wisconsin and Michigan cynically exploited for votes. Election mismanagement in Atlanta. Unlawful election instructions in Wisconsin. And 50,000 questionable ballots in Arizona, plus several criminal cases for illegal ballot harvesting and inmate voting.

Eleven months after Donald Trump was ousted from office, the narrative that the 2020 election was clean and secure has frayed like a well-worn shoelace. The challenges of the COVID pandemic, the aggressive new tactics of voting activists and the desire of Democrats to make the collection and delivery of ballots by third parties legal in states where harvesting is expressly forbidden has muddied the establishment portrait and awakened the nation to the painful reality its election system — particularly in big urban areas — is far from perfection.

Nowhere has that story become more clear than the battleground state of Wisconsin, where a local sheriff on Thursday dramatically held a nationally televised news conference alleging he had found evidence of felony crimes involving ballots sent to nursing home residents.