Election Watchdog Finds 137,500 Ballots Unlawfully Trafficked in Wisconsin

10 trillion unique cell phone 'pings' were used to reconstruct the movements of ballot box intermediaries in 2020 election

Residents place mail-in ballots in a ballot box outside of the Tippecanoe branch library in Milwaukee, on Oct. 20, 2020. Scott Olson/Getty Images

At least 137,500 absentee ballots were cast through unlawful vote trafficking throughout several of Wisconsin’s largest cities in the 2020 election, according to research presented last week to the state Assembly’s Committee on Campaigns and Elections by the public interest organization True the Vote (TTV).

Ballot trafficking is an activity in which absentee ballots and votes are solicited, sometimes in exchange for money or other valuables. They are then collected through a process called “harvesting” and delivered to drop boxes by intermediaries (someone other than the voter), who are often paid a per-ballot fee by partisan actors.