Election denialism colors the dark money flowing into state elections

The state Supreme Court election in Wisconsin could go down as a crucial pivot in the battle between democratic integrity and electoral denialism: The national press referred to it as “the most important election nobody’s ever heard of” because of how it could impact the 2024 presidential cycle. 

And political funders on both sides of the aisle responded accordingly. With $45 million dollars in total spent on the election, it went down as the most expensive race of its kind. But some of these reams of cash came from wealthy individuals who in 2020 sought to overturn Biden’s victory. 

Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, the billionaire owners of the Wisconsin-based shipping company Uline, donated over $5 million to the campaign of arch-conservative and former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly in his attempt to return to his seat. The same year the Uihlein’s contributed millions to GOP operatives seeking to delegitimize Biden’s victory, the Wisconsin Republican Party paid $120,000 to Kelly to help them overturn the state’s electoral votes that Biden secured.

It stands to reason that the Uihlein’s and other reactionary mega-donors believed Kelly could provide them the kind of institutional leverage they would need to avoid a potential repeat of 2020. Kelly could have hypothetically cast the deciding vote if Wisconsin’s 2024 election results were challenged legally.

Such dark money denialism is not unique to Wisconsin’s recent race. A new investigation by the watchdog outlet Documented revealed that a “secretaries of state conference” held in February connected key election officials from Indiana, Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia with right-wing operatives from the Heritage Foundation, the Public Interest Legal Foundation and the Honest Elections Project. 

All three organizations, which are tied to conservative dark money PACs, support policies that would limit voting access. Additionally, keynote speakers at the conference included election deniers from the Center for Election Integrity at the America First Policy Institute and Election Transparency Initiative.