For more than a decade, True the Vote and allied election observers have argued that elections should rest on common-sense laws, equitable standards, equal access, and equal treatment inside the polling place.  

That debate came to a head in Wisconsin when the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s observer rule, known as Rule 4, took effect on August 1, 2025, after surviving a legislative rules fight earlier that year. As lawmakers considered the rule in April 2025, True the Vote and longtime Wisconsin election observer Ken Dragotta warned that Rule 4 could create a loophole, making it easier to control election observers, sideline dissent, and leave ordinary citizens with fewer protections if a politically hostile polling place decided to target them.

Rule 4: Quiet Change With Serious Consequences

Supporters called Rule 4 a clarification of observer conduct. Wisconsin’s observer guidance says Rule 4 is now uniform statewide, requires observers to sign in, present ID, obey official directions, and remain in designated observation areas generally three to eight feet from key tables. It also says observers may ask questions and challenge voters for cause but may not make audio or visual communications inside polling places and certain absentee-voting locations. Just as important, the rule allows election officials to warn observers and remove them if the conduct continues.

The last point is where the danger begins, according to Dragotta. Rule 4 defines a “designated election official” broadly enough to include not just the chief inspector or clerk, but also another election official designated during polling hours to carry out those duties. In other words, critics argue there is little to stop an inspector from designating an untrained volunteer from monitoring an observer.

“Here’s the kicker,” said Dragotta. “This newly designated, on-the-spot volunteer ‘position’ does not require certification. So, you effectively have an untrained volunteer who has been put in the position to eject you and there is no requirement for that individual to know the law.” 

To be clear, Rule 4 governs observers, not poll workers directly. That distinction makes the problem worse, not better. Observers represent the citizen-audit function. If you narrow what they can do, isolate where they can stand, forbid them from making an audio record when a confrontation starts, and give local officials wide discretion over their treatment, you have not increased transparency. You have reduced it under color of law.

This is exactly what Dragotta and Engelbrecht warned about back in 2025. They said it wouldcreate a delegation mechanism under which a chief inspector or clerk could suddenly empower another election official to police observers, while simultaneously barring audio recording at polling places. In their view, that combination would make it easier to remove or neutralize dissenting observers and harder for them to defend themselves after the fact.

Janel Brandtjen’s Story Shows Why

Unfortunately, events since then suggest those warnings were not misplaced. During Wisconsin’s recent Supreme Court election, former state lawmaker Janel Brandtjen says she was effectively pressured to leave a Milwaukee polling place where she was serving as a volunteer observer after questioning election procedures at an Adopt-a-Site location. 

Brandtjen describes having arrived as an observer at what she said was a “heavily Democratic Milwaukee polling location,” checking in properly, and sitting down to observe. Within about ten minutes, she says, the chief inspector approached her and said she had already been reported for taking pictures. Brandtjen says she was not taking pictures, but rather, texting her children to inform them of her whereabouts. Brandtjen explained,

“I'm just an observer, and the inspector knows who I am, verified everything, and then,literally within the first ten minutes of my being there, she leaves the room and then comes back. She then walks over to me and says, ‘ I have reported you already for taking pictures in here.’ And I said, ‘What?!’ And she said, ‘I know you're taking pictures.’”

“I showed her my phone, which showed that I was not taking pictures but was texting my kids. But there were six tables at the site because there were three different wards at this facility. There was a chief clerk, a check-in table, and there was also a table with twoindividuals from some group with no identification badges whatsoever, and they had their laptops out and black backpacks full of stuff. I think because I kept looking at these people, she thought I was taking pictures of them. I did not.”

“At that point, I stepped out into the hall and called Ken and asked him, ‘So what is going to happen now? What do I do? Do I fill out anything?’ And he says, ‘I don’t know.’”

“So here I am,” she continued, “I am in Democratic territory. I am the only Republican there who is taking the time to observe and the question then becomes, what protections do I have if they say I grabbed somebody or I was taking pictures of ballots, or hassling people? What protections do I really have?” 

What makes Brandtjen’s account especially significant is what first drew her attention. She says she noticed unidentified individuals sitting at a table inside the polling location with laptops, but without the badges or markings she associated with regular poll workers.

When she asked what they were doing there, she says she was given only a vague response: they were “doing other things.” Later, according to her account, commissioners were told those individuals were merely alternates for tired poll workers. Whether that explanation was adequate or not, the broader point is critical in the context of Rule 4. Brandtjen saw something that appeared irregular, asked a reasonable question, and almost immediately found herself on the defensive.

Parity at the Polls—or Partisan Control? Milwaukee’s Adopt-a-Site Program

Now place that episode alongside Milwaukee’s Adopt-a-Site program. Launched in 2007, the program allows “charitable organizations” to adopt polling places, recruit and coordinate poll workers and chief inspectors, and in some cases fully staff polling locations with people affiliated with those organizations. It is widely understood that many of these groups lean politically progressive. Brandtjen says Milwaukee defends the program as a cost-saving measure. 

Milwaukee maintains that the program is fair because NGO-affiliated workers must complete the same state-required training and administer elections as nonpartisan officials under the same standards as other sites. In practice, however, Brandtjen and Dragotta argue that the program conflicts with the spirit, if not the letter, of Wisconsin law requiring partisan balance at polling places. If polling locations are being staffed largely by Democratic or progressive volunteers recruited through outside groups, then the Adopt-a-Site model effectively undercuts the equal-representation principle the law is supposed to protect. As Brandtjen explained: 

“We’re clearly supposed to have, at every poll location, equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats,” Brandtjen continued. “Well, when you use an adopt-a-group, or [more realistically] an adopt-an-NGO, the problem is that all same-thinking individuals are now running a location. It flies in the face of that, and we’ve never had anybody question it or go to court over it.”

Small Rule Changes, Big Consequences

I asked Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True the Vote, what she thought about this ongoing battle for transparent elections in Wisconsin, and she shared the following about her history there:

Ken and I have worked side by side for more than a decade — through every high and low of trying to make sense of our election system: recruiting, training, mobilizing, supporting volunteers, monitoring drop boxes, and advocating in the legislature. Through it all, Ken never wavered. 

When TTV was invited around 2021 to join a bipartisan, state-convened committee on election processes, I asked him to represent us. He showed up the way he always does — steady, principled, and focused — pushing consistently for transparency, equality, and accuracy. One of the most critical fights was over parity at polling places, ensuring both parties have equitable representation among election workers. We fought hard and initially stopped efforts to weaken that standard.

But after our work on the committee, a loophole was quietly allowed in — one we knew would be used to sideline Republican poll workers. Now, in 2026, that’s exactly what we’re seeing: Republicans being removed from polling places and threatened with baseless criminal charges. This isn’t theoretical anymore — it’s happening. And it needs to be acknowledged, addressed, and corrected before the general election.

Both Engelbrecht and Dragotta said that Wisconsin politicians largely brushed aside their concerns about Rule 4. Yet Rule 4 is a reminder that seemingly minor procedural changes in election administration are often anything but minor. More troubling still, rules like this often pass with little notice from the electorate. But changes such as Rule 4 can quietly shift authority, narrow oversight, and weaken the citizens trying to hold the process accountable—all of which ultimately erodes public trust in elections.

-Wendi Strauch Mahoney