Harry Wait’s bid to portray himself as testing election safeguards ran into a jury verdict instead. A jury in Racine County, Wisconsin, found the 71-year-old man guilty of election fraud and identity theft after a two-day trial over his requests for absentee ballots belonging to Robin Vos and Cory Mason without their consent, according to an Associated Press report. Jurors convicted Wait of two misdemeanor election-fraud counts and one felony identity-theft count, and acquitted him of an additional identity-theft charge.
The conviction focused on how Wait obtained the ballots of two prominent political figures without authorization. The AP reported that the ballot requests involved Vos, the Republican state Assembly speaker, and Mason, the Democratic mayor of Racine. Prosecutors said the ballot requests were made without consent, and the jury agreed.
During the trial, the case drew attention to Wait’s broader public posture on elections. The AP reported that Wait leads a group that makes false election claims, including assertions that Wisconsin elections were riddled with fraud and that President Donald Trump won the 2020 election. It also reported that Trump lost Wisconsin in 2020 by about 21,000 votes.
Wait’s own account of why he requested the ballots also became part of the public record. The AP said Wait admitted in 2022 that he requested Vos’ and Mason’s ballots to try to show the state’s voter registration system was vulnerable to fraud. The AP further reported that Wait told it at the time he was not surprised he had been charged, saying, “You got to expect to pay some costs sometimes when you are trying to work for the public good,” and describing his effort as for “the public good.”
Wait’s actions have also drawn support from some election-grievance circles. The AP reported that in 2022, Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson praised Wait, calling him a “white hat hacker.” After the guilty verdict, the AP reported that Wait told WTMJ he “would do it again,” saying, “I tested the system and the system failed.”
The AP report said sentencing has not been scheduled. It reported that Wait faces up to six years in prison on the felony conviction and up to a year in jail on each misdemeanor conviction. The AP also reported that Wait’s attorney, Joe Bugni, did not respond to an email Wednesday seeking whether he would appeal.
The case also lands amid a pattern of election-related cases in Wisconsin. The AP reported that it comes after a 2024 jury verdict against Kimberly Zapata, a former Milwaukee election official, who was convicted of misconduct in office after she obtained three military absentee ballots using fake names and Social Security numbers in 2022. The AP said Zapata was fined $3,000 and sentenced to one year of probation.
A jury’s decision in Wait’s case leaves no room for the “testing” framing he used publicly. With a sentencing date still pending, the next step will be whether Wait challenges the verdict through the appeals process, as his attorney’s response was not available at the time of the report.