A Wisconsin man, Harry Wait, was found guilty of voter fraud by a jury, which he claimed he would do again. Wait went to the MyVote.wi.gov website and requested absentee ballots for two people in 2022, as reported by WISN.
The criminal complaint against him reveals that Wait, on multiple occasions, admitted to requesting the ballots using others’ identities without their consent. He even admitted to this in online videos.
The names he used were those of Robin Vos, the Republican state Assembly speaker, and Cory Mason, the Democratic Racine mayor.
Wait is the founder of HOT Government, a group that claimed fraud in the 2020 elections. According to them, Donald Trump won the election, which he originally lost by almost 21,000 votes, as reported by ABC News.
Harry Wait went on trial in Racine County on Monday, accused of requesting absentee ballots in others’ names, as the defense says he was exposing voting system flaws. https://t.co/gmbjIJ7Ugl
— FOX6 News (@fox6now) March 24, 2026
Wait told The Associated Press that he was not surprised by the verdict in the case. He said, “You got to expect to pay some costs sometimes when you are trying to work for the public good.”
During his cross-examination, Wait revealed, “I couldn’t believe I ordered the ballots and got them.” He submitted Mason’s unopened ballot to law enforcement a few days later and never received Vos’ ballot.
At the trial, Wait stated, “I didn’t want to take away their voting rights, even though I don’t like them. You know, I don’t think they’re good, but I didn’t want to steal their vote.”
Joe Bugni, Wait’s lawyer, tried to convince the jury of Wait’s intention behind what he did. He pointed out, “This is the key word for the purpose — for the purpose — the purpose, why did he do it?”
Apparently, Wait wanted to prove the vulnerability of the online MyVote system.
State prosecutors argued that Wait did it for attention and stated, “Ladies and gentlemen, you don’t get to break the law to show that the law can be broken,” as reported by WTMJ-TV.
The jury deliberated for more than three hours and found Wait guilty of three of the four charges against him. He was found not guilty of one count of misappropriation of identity information.
Right-wing activist Harry Wait got convicted for brazenly swiping Robin Vos’s ballot to “test” fraud, landing a felony identity theft charge. He’d “do it again,” he shrugged.https://t.co/4yExDvj9Ud
— tomwellborn3rd (@TomWellborn3) March 25, 2026
However, he was convicted of two counts of election fraud and of one count of misappropriation of identity information, as revealed by WISN.
While talking to WTMJ-TV, Wait said, “When you poke the bear you get that type of outcome, yes. I would do it again.” He added that he “tested the system, the system failed.”
HOT Government had issued a statement on X, as reported by Huffpost. According to them, “the larger issue remains unsolved: should citizens be punished for exposing potential weaknesses in the systems that govern them?”
