Chippewa Valley Residents Protest Scott Presler Canvas Event

A group of Chippewa Valley residents gathered outside the Eau Claire County Republican Party headquarters in Altoona on Saturday to protest a canvassing event with conservative activist Scott Presler.

Presler, known for his voter registration work and efforts to find evidence of noncitizens voting, visited the region to canvas with Republican Congressman Derrick Van Orden in Wisconsin's Third Congressional District. Cyndi Greening, an organizer with Chippewa Valley Indivisible, highlighted the two's participation in the January 6th Stop the Steal rally as the reason they hosted the protest outside the event.

"For us the upset is, you know, it wouldn't have mattered what party hosted them, we don't think you should be inviting J6 election deniers to the state at this time, especially to canvas," she said. "And so that's why we came to where they were, because these were folks who showed up to Stop the Steal. They spoke there, they organized it, and they tried to take away our vote and tried to suppress the last election and we don't want that to happen again."

Presler was involved in organizing a number of Stop the Steal events following the 2020 election and was present at the Capitol on January 6th. Congressman Van Orden also attended the January 6th Stop the Steal rally, but has maintained that he did not enter any restricted areas or the Capitol building.

Both have continued to share claims of voter fraud in the years since. Chippewa Valley Indivisible organizer Stacey Brehm shared her frustration with those election integrity claims at the protest on Saturday.

"There are absolutely no issues," she said. "It's very minimal, there's been no issues in Wisconsin. We have a very fair election system and I don't know why people are putting out these rumors and these falsities that there is. And we need to stop that, because we don't want our vote to be suppressed in any way, shape, or form."

A complaint filed by the nonprofit Public Citizen last month also accused Presler and his political action committee "Early Vote Action" of violating state campaign finance laws during the 2025 State Supreme Court race in Pennsylvania by not disclosing sources of revenue and detailed expenditures as required. He declined to speak with reporters outside the event after the protest concluded.