Robin Vos

Vos has been described as having a significant role in countering Governor Tony Evers.[32] After Evers, the Democratic nominee, won the 2018 Wisconsin gubernatorial election, defeating incumbent governor Scott Walker, Vos was the first public official to propose curbing the incoming governor's powers.[33] He claimed it was to restore a balance of power between the governor and the legislature, despite having previously voted to expand gubernatorial power.[34][35] Vos also said the changes were intended to lock in laws passed by Republicans and to prevent the incoming Democratic administration from fulfilling its campaign pledges, particularly a pledge to withdraw Wisconsin from a lawsuit seeking to overturn the federal Affordable Care Act.[36] The Republican-led legislature was called into a December lame duck session and passed laws decreasing the powers of the incoming governor, limiting early voting, and giving the legislature more control. Walker then signed the bills.[37]

Christopher Beem of the McCourtney Institute of Democracy at Pennsylvania State University described Wisconsin Republicans' power grab as a "deeply undemocratic act" that, while possibly legal, eroded democratic norms by frustrating the expressed will of a majority of the electorate, immediately after an election, to make it "more difficult for the incoming administration to undertake actions that the majority has just shown that it wants."[38] In June 2019, the Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected a challenge brought by the League of Women Voters and other groups to the laws enacted in the December 2018 lame-duck session, ruling in a 4–3 decision that extraordinary sessions are constitutional.[39]

Robin Vos on election day during the COVID-19 Pandemic

In April 2020, amid the coronavirus pandemic, Vos opposed calls by Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat, to delay the state's primary election from early April to late May, to make it a mail-in election, and to mail ballots to all registered voters.[40][41] The legislature adjourned without taking action on any of those proposals. When the governor then issued a last-minute emergency order to suspend in-person voting, Vos and the state senate majority leader appealed the order to the state supreme court, which overturned it, and the election was held as scheduled.[42] Due to the coronavirus pandemic, it was estimated that many voters would be effectively disenfranchised, and in-person voting was also considered a public health risk.[40][43] According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, "Vos had no answer to how local election officials are supposed to keep people safe as a massive shortage of poll workers has resulted in the closure or reduction of polling locations, forcing more people to vote at a single site."[44] Vos said, "If you are bored at home and sick of watching Netflix, volunteer to go and help at the polls."[44]

On election day, Vos served as an election inspector.[45] While dressed in full-body personal protective equipment,[46] he said it was "incredibly safe" to vote at the polls.[45] Vos later clarified that the city he was volunteering for required that he wear the protective equipment.[32]

Because the Republican-controlled Wisconsin Legislature did not timely waive a requirement that unemployed Wisconsinites wait a week before they can be reimbursed unemployment benefits, Wisconsin lost $25 million in federal funding from the CARES Act. Vos and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald had been warned that this would happen if the waiver was not passed in time.[47]

In October 2020, during the pandemic, Vos and Fitzgerald filed a brief in support of a lawsuit by the right-wing law firm Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty that sought to block a statewide mandate, issued by Governor Evers, requiring the wearing of face masks in indoor public places to prevent the spread of the virus.[48][49] Evers issued the mandate at a time when cases and hospitalizations in Wisconsin were surging, straining the state's hospital systems.[49] The legislature could have convened a session to terminate the health emergency declaration and strike down Evers's mandate, but Wisconsin Republicans opted to go to court instead, so as to prevent vulnerable Republican legislators from having to vote against face mask mandates just before an election.[48][49] A state judge rejected the attempt to strike down Evers's order, finding that state law "gives the governor broad discretion to act whenever conditions in the state constitute a public health emergency" and considering the fact that "The legislature can end the state of emergency at any time, but so far, it has declined to do so."[49]

In March 2021, after Congress passed a $1.9 trillion COVID-relief stimulus package, Vos suggested that Wisconsin should reject the federal government's assistance to provide the unemployed with unemployment benefits for their first week of unemployment.[50]

In November 2021, Vos said that members of the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) should "probably" face felony charges for easing some of the regulations around voting in nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic.[51]