Harry Wait, a Wisconsin man described by prosecutors and reporters as leading election-fraud claims, was found guilty by a jury in Racine County of election fraud and identity theft tied to ballot requests for two political figures without their consent, according to court coverage. The case centered on requests for ballots for Republican state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Democratic Racine Mayor Cory Mason, the Associated Press reported.
The two-day trial ended with jurors reaching a mixed verdict. They convicted Wait of two misdemeanor election fraud charges and one felony identity theft charge, the AP said, and they acquitted him of a second count of identity theft.
The AP reported that Wait, 71, faced sentencing after the verdict and that a sentencing date had not been set. It said he could receive up to six years in prison on the felony conviction and up to a year in jail on each of the misdemeanor convictions.
As described in the reporting, Wait was convicted after jurors determined that he requested the ballots of Vos and Mason without their consent. The Associated Press said the charges followed a prosecution that tied the requests to identity-theft allegations as well as election-fraud counts.
Before the verdict, Wait had told The Associated Press in 2022 that he was not surprised by the charges. In that interview, he said his efforts were aimed at showing that Wisconsin’s voter registration system could be vulnerable to fraud, and he was quoted saying, “You got to expect to pay some costs sometimes when you are trying to work for the public good,” as reported by the AP.
The AP also reported that Wait’s efforts drew praise from Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson in 2022, who called Wait a “white hat hacker.” After the verdict, the AP said Wait told WTMJ that he “would do it again,” adding, “I tested the system and the system failed.”
The Associated Press said Wait leads a group that makes false election claims, including claims that Wisconsin’s elections were riddled with fraud and that President Donald Trump won the 2020 election, despite Trump losing Wisconsin in 2020 by about 21,000 votes.
The conviction came after another Wisconsin trial that involved absentee ballots obtained using false identities, the AP said. In that 2024 case, a former Milwaukee election official, Kimberly Zapata, was found guilty of misconduct in office after obtaining three military absentee ballots using fake names and Social Security numbers in 2022, according to the AP, which reported that Zapata argued she was trying to expose vulnerabilities in the state’s election system.
Prosecutors’ allegations and jurors’ decision in the Wait case came alongside ongoing scrutiny of how ballot requests and voter-registration procedures are handled in practice. Wait’s attorney, Joe Bugni, did not respond to an email asking whether he would appeal, the AP reported.