Claim that Wis. elections official Meagan Wolfe permitted ‘Zuckerbucks’ in 2020 is Pants on Fire

A new TV ad attacking Assembly Speaker Robin Vos for not impeaching Meagan Wolfe, Wisconsin’s top elections administrator, repeats misleading claims about Wolfe’s involvement with outside funding given to Wisconsin local clerks during the 2020 election.

The ad claims Wolfe permitted clerks to accept money from an election assistance group backed by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg and his wife. A full-page newspaper ad that ran in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel makes a similar claim.

"She permitted the ‘Zuckerbucks’ influence money," a voiceover narrates in the ad.

However, Wolfe did not decide to accept money from the Zuckerbergs’ group, nor did she have power over decisions by local clerks to do so.

Impeachment articles riddled with falsehoods

First, in an earlier review, we found all 15 impeachment articles against Wolfe contain misleading or false claims about how elections administration works in Wisconsin.

That hasn’t stopped the Wisconsin Election Committee Inc. from running ads on Milwaukee-area TV and radio stations threatening to recall Vos or launch a primary challenge if he doesn't move forward with impeachment against Wolfe. 

Vos advanced the impeachment articles to an Assembly committee shortly after the ad launched.

MORE: PolitiFact: Impeachment articles against Meagan Wolfe riddled with false and misleading claims

The group is led by Adam Steen, who unsuccessfully launched a primary challenge against Vos in 2022, and Harry Wait, a Racine County man who was charged last year for fraudulently obtaining absentee ballots.

The group’s TV ad makes multiple false claims about Wolfe, one of which blames her for allowing local clerks to accept more than $10 million from the Zuckerburgs’ group, the Center for Tech and Civic Life, founded to help conduct the presidential election during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The ad also makes false claims about Wolfe’s role in Wisconsin Elections Commission decisions ahead of the 2020 election and falsely blames her for mismanaging Wisconsin’s voter rolls.

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When asked to provide evidence for the ad’s claims, Wait provided documents from summarizing state lawsuits that HOT Government, a group focused on false election claims, cited as proof Wolfe acted illegally. The documents did not cite grants from Zuckerberg’s group.

He also provided an election report from former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman that found no evidence of election fraud.

Local clerks, not Wolfe, accepted money

Most of the funds were directed to Wisconsin’s five largest cities — Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Kenosha and Racine, where Democratic voters are concentrated. 

However, local municipal governments legally voted to accept the funding. It was not a decision made by the WEC and Wolfe. 

Republicans have tried but failed on nearly a half dozen occasions in court to claim local clerks’ decisions to accept private grants and outside consultants for state elections administration was illegal.

MORE: Grants to five cities are at the heart of Wisconsin Republicans' election review. Here are the activities under scrutiny

MORE: Judge: No apparent law against cities using private grants to help stage elections during pandemic

In a TV ad, the Wisconsin Election Committee claims Wolfe "permitted the ‘Zuckerbucks’ influence money."

But local clerks accepted that funding, from the Center for Tech and Civic Life. The commission and Wolfe played no role in soliciting, collecting or distributing the money. That makes this claim not only false, but ridiculous.

We rate it Pants on Fire.