After the 2020 election, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos tasked former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman with investigating the validity of Wisconsin’s 2020 presidential election results. After 14 months, Vos fired Gableman after his investigation burned through $2 million and came up with nothing, according to Wisconsin Public Radio. Gableman found no evidence of fraud in the 2020 election results.
The failure of the Gableman investigation is a shining example of why government transparency and the keeping of public records are so important to the relationship between the public and their representatives.
The investigation was undoubtedly a failure, but to make matters worse, Gableman’s investigation didn’t follow public record laws. Throughout the entire investigation, Gableman did not provide adequate public records from his investigation.
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The Assembly only budgeted around $676,000 of public funds for the investigation, but now the cost of Gableman’s failure is falling on the shoulders of taxpayers. The failure of this investigation emphasizes the need for government officials to keep public records and increase transparency to build trust with the public.
Government should be more transparent, particularly because elected officials are elected to serve the people. Keeping the public out of some investigations is necessary, but for an investigation as important to the citizens of Wisconsin as the Gableman investigation, those documents should’ve been public.
Studies show government transparency can create trust between citizens and their elected officials. According to Secure Democracy USA, most Wisconsinites trust that the government has fair elections. But it is still important to build up trust between the state government and its citizens.
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The excessive spending from the Gableman investigation is sure to decrease the trust between the state government and Wisconsinites. Taxpayers were unaware of where their money was going because of the lack of public records and transparency — as a result, they will be wary of trusting the government with an investigation of this sort again.
The significance of the Gableman investigation cannot be understated. Its failure shows how quickly the trust individuals have in democracy can change. Both citizens and lawmakers at first did not believe that the election results in Wisconsin were accurate because they lacked trust in the democratic system. Now, after the failure of an investigation, even more citizens will be distrustful of the government for spending their money in one of the most inefficient ways possible.
Wisconsin lawmakers need to try to regain the trust of their citizens by being more transparent because, without transparency, the divide between citizens and the government will only continue to grow.
Emily Otten ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in journalism.
