But what made this year particularly special was the introduction of the Forward newsletter. Each week the Wisconsin Watch state team produces shorter stories about what we expect to be the big news and trends in the days, weeks and months ahead. It’s something our local media partners asked for and our state team reporters delivered.
As the year winds down, we gave each state team reporter the assignment of picking a favorite story written by another member of the team (Secret Santa style!). Here were their picks:
Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, speaks during a Republican press conference on June 8, 2023, in the Wisconsin State Capitol building to announce a tentative agreement between legislative Republicans and Gov. Tony Evers on a shared revenue bill. (Drake White-Bergey / Wisconsin Watch)
To some, radio is a source of entertainment and information from a bygone era. They’re mistaken. Hallie Claflin’s deeply reported, authoritative story illustrates the immense and continuing influence of talk radio — especially conservative talk radio — in Wisconsin politics. The rise of former Gov. Scott Walker, the toppling of a Democratic mayor in Wausau and the deaths of certain bills in the Legislature can all be tied, at least in part, to advocacy or opposition from conservative talk radio hosts. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, the state’s most powerful Republican, makes regular appearances on broadcasts and described talk radio as being “as powerful as it’s ever been.” This story is worth your time as you look ahead to 2025.
Phoebe Petrovic’s profile of militant, anti-abortion Pastor Matthew Trewhella, her first investigation as Wisconsin’s first ProPublica local reporting network fellow, was an engaging read. But I especially liked the companion piece she wrote. It’s a reader service to do this kind of story when we do a large takeout on a person or subject unfamiliar to most readers. It also might drive readers to the main story when they learn more about why we did it. It puts the readers behind the scenes a bit and has the potential to make readers feel more connected to Wisconsin Watch.
Tom Kertscher does an amazing job with all of his fact briefs, but my favorite has to be a compilation that fact-checked presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump right before their September debate. Over the past few races, presidential campaigns have been full of misinformation. Debates are a vital time to show the reality of candidates and their beliefs. Tom’s story made sure people could accurately judge the claims both candidates were making. I learned about many new and important topics across party lines like Trump’s for-profit college, Harris’ claim about tracking miscarriages and accurate deportation statistics.
The Waupun Correctional Institution — shown here on Oct. 27, 2023 — was not over capacity as of late July 2024. But the state prison system as a whole has long incarcerated more people than its prisons were designed to hold. (Angela Major / WPR)
Khushboo Rathore’s DataWatch report detailing that the state’s prison population was at nearly 130% capacity stood out as one of my favorite pieces this year. Not only did this short story shed light on severe deficiencies in Wisconsin’s prison system, it also presented the findings in a digestible format that helped readers understand overcrowding in prisons through striking data. It’s one thing to report that Wisconsin prisons are overwhelmed, and it’s another to have the numbers that show it. This piece has the power to reshape future conversations about statewide prison reform, which is what our work here at Wisconsin Watch is all about!
The Wisconsin Supreme Court holds its first hearing of the new term on Sept. 7, 2023, at the Wisconsin State Capitol. (Andy Manis / For Wisconsin Watch)
Jack Kelly has some of the best sourcing this newsroom has ever seen. He’s such an affable people-person, and it enables him to get coffee with anyone and everyone and build legitimate relationships that result in wild scoops, like this one. It’s a testament to his brilliance as a reporter.
This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.
Shortly after former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman commenced his error-ridden and fruitless investigation into the state’s 2020 election, he raised eyebrows when he derided chief election official Meagan Wolfe’s clothing choices.
“Black dress, white pearls — I’ve seen the act, I’ve seen the show,” he said on a conservative radio program in spring 2022.
Not long after that comment, Wolfe was scheduled to appear at a county clerk conference, and a county clerk bought fake pearl necklaces for everyone in the room, according to Wood County Clerk Trent Miner, a Republican.
“Every one of us, men, women … were wearing those pearl necklaces to show support for her,” he said. “There’s nothing but support from the county clerks for Meagan and the job that she does.”
In contrast with that virtually unanimous support from clerks, he said, most of the criticism she’s received is based on false conspiracy theories or from people who don’t know her or understand her role on the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
Since becoming the commission’s nonpartisan administrator six years ago, Wolfe has faced death threats, repeated efforts to oust her, opposition from President-elect Donald Trump, and more lawsuits than you can count on two hands.
It’s the kind of intense pressure that has caused many election officials to leave their roles in recent years. But in the eyes of other election officials, Wolfe has thrived. Many of her peers say she is a nonpartisan and clear-headed model for navigating the world of election administration at a time when election officials are under ever-increasing scrutiny.
For Wolfe, that pressure was just a din of mostly political noise seeping into the already-complicated work of election administration. Even before the 2020 election, she learned how to cope with a level of stress that has now become the norm.
“I cannot imagine what it would be like to be in a position or an environment where we’re not constantly putting out fires,” Wolfe told Votebeat. “I’ve come to really like and appreciate those challenges. Where a challenge comes up, we have to figure out how to overcome it, how to accomplish this thing that’s never been done before.”
Politics inherent to the job for Wolfe
Wolfe, who has degrees in strategic communications and English writing, came into her administrative job with a long election background. That stands out from the many election chiefs across the country who start their roles with little or no election experience.
When Wolfe was hired at the commission’s predecessor, the Government Accountability Board in 2011, her role was to help implement and train clerks and voters about the state’s new voter ID law. The law, which was the target of litigation, was “very divisive,” Wolfe said.
In her training sessions, she said, “I’d start everything by saying, ‘I’m not here to talk about if this is a good law or this is a bad law. I’m just here to tell you what the law is and what we all need to know to be able to navigate it.’”
Those experiences, along with the continuing political and legal battles she faces, she said, have given her an ability “to separate the noise that’s intended to distract us, intended to sway us from what the important things are that actually deserve our resources and our attention.”
“If you don’t have that experience and perspective,” she said, “then it’s really easy to fall into the trap of, here’s this really loud voice or this really loud claim that’s being made, let’s shift all of our resources and our time and everything over to dealing with that, and then it allows other things to fall by the wayside.”
Wolfe moved into IT and leadership roles before becoming administrator in 2018. Some of her work has been groundbreaking across the country.
For example, Wolfe oversaw the in-house development of the statewide registration system and made Wisconsin among the first states to deploy multi-factor authentication for election officials to access that type of system — a crucial cybersecurity tool.
Wisconsin seems like an “unlikely candidate” to develop those complex systems, Wolfe said, but the state has the most decentralized election system in the nation, which means there are few ready-made programs that it could easily implement.
“We’re used to having to just sort of trailblaze,” she said.
Both of those systems became models for other states, including Rhode Island, whose former election director Rob Rock called Wolfe when the state was trying to develop its own custom-built system.
“I really had no idea how to do this, and so to have someone who kind of helped me out through this process was really instrumental,” said Rock, who is now Rhode Island’s deputy secretary of state. “We certainly wouldn’t have the system we have today if it wasn’t for folks like Meagan and her insight into how they did it in Wisconsin.”
Added Rock, “Meagan is one of the best election administrators in this country. I say that without hesitation at all.”
Wolfe’s accomplishments led to her taking leadership roles in national organizations, such as the Electronic Registration Information Center and National Association of State Election Directors.
A significant portion of Wolfe’s job is to be a conduit between state and local election officials.
She appears at clerk conferences to update local election officials on changing laws and oversees programs to train an ever-evolving cast of full- and part-time county and municipal clerks.
Marathon County Clerk Kim Trueblood, a Republican, said she has come to lean on Wolfe, sometimes for emotional support and other times for advice.
This past election cycle, Trueblood faced a contentious primary from an opponent who, she said, accused her of corruption and targeted her over an outstanding speeding ticket, calling her a fugitive from justice and saying she was unfit to serve.
As the attacks wore on, Trueblood said, Wolfe gave her a call to see how she was doing.
“She was not taking any sides,” Trueblood said. “She wasn’t involving herself politically at all. She was just checking in on a fellow human.”
“That says a lot about a person’s character,” Trueblood added.
Another local election official, Douglas County Clerk Kaci Jo Lundgren, a Democrat, recalled Wolfe being there for her when she was in a pinch.
Ahead of the August election this year, Lundgren mistakenly assigned the wrong Assembly district on every ballot in a small town. After catching the error on election day, Lundgren said, one of her first moves was to call Wolfe for advice.
There wasn’t much the commission could do, Lundgren recalled, but Wolfe offered her templates to communicate the error to the town’s voters. Additionally, Lundgren said Wolfe provided emotional support.
“I felt like one mistake ruined everything for me. And she affirmed that I was here because I’m doing a good job, and I’m upset because I care,” Lundgren said. “She knows what it’s like to deal with difficult situations in elections, and because it was my first time having to deal with something so difficult, it was just nice to have her as a resource.”
One figure in national elections, Carolina Lopez, the executive director of the Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions, recalled a particularly volatile time in Wisconsin elections around 2022, when courts were flip-flopping on the legality of drop boxes.
During that time, she said, the elections commission sent rapid updates to make local election officials aware of the recent changes.
“That’s probably the biggest thing you could do for … your counties and the people that you partner with – it’s prompt communication, clear communication.”
For all the credit that clerks give Wolfe, the state’s top election official said she has it easy compared to them.
“If we don’t have them and we don’t have people that are resilient and resourceful and compassionate and tough in each of our communities, then this doesn’t work, right?” Wolfe said. “And so my job is really just to support them.”
Wolfe becomes GOP target after 2020 election
After the 2020 election, a multitude of prominent Republicans, including Trump, blamed Wolfe for Trump’s loss in that year’s election. They baselessly alleged fraud and called for investigations and her ouster, blaming her for a slew of decisions by election commissioners that she had no vote on, like bypassing a state law that ordinarily requires sending election officials to conduct elections in nursing homes.
Calls for a new administrator haven’t entirely ceased. But now, over four years after Wolfe became a target, scores of people in the election community — and even many Republican leaders — are ready to move on.
The Legislature’s top Republican, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, was recently asked on WISN 12 if the Assembly would move to impeach Wolfe. Vos, who had authorized Gableman’s investigation, called it unlikely, adding, “I really want 2020 to be in the rearview mirror.”
Trueblood, the Marathon County clerk, said there’s a sense of camaraderie between local election officials and Wolfe, especially after she became targeted in the wake of the 2020 election.
“For a while, she wasn’t going anywhere by herself for fear of her own safety,” Trueblood said. “I don’t care what your political feelings about somebody are, things like that just aren’t okay. And I think we all developed a really close bond with her.”
If that vitriol gets under Wolfe’s skin, she’s not expressing it.
“I’ve always felt really strongly that we cannot allow people threatening us, harassing us, bullying us, whatever you want to call it – we cannot allow that to sway how we behave or, in my position, to stop me from going out and talking to the public about how elections work,” Wolfe said. “Because in some ways I view that as almost giving in to partisan pressure … and I’m just not going to do that.”
Smooth 2024 election sign that Wolfe should continue, former chief says
Despite efforts to move forward, the fight to target and oust Wolfe has continued into 2024, past the November election, which for the most part went off without a hitch.
After 2020, the commission received thousands of calls and emails replete with election conspiracy theories and false claims, she said. Since the 2024 election, she said, conspiracy theory-laden calls and emails number in the single digits.
At least one significant hurdle awaits, though.
As Wolfe’s term expired in the summer of 2023, the election commission deadlocked on her reappointment. She remained in her role as a holdover appointee and, along with the commission, filed a lawsuit against GOP legislative leaders who sought to oust her.
Both of Wolfe’s predecessors expressed support for her to stay in her job.
Mike Haas, who was administrator at the accountability board and later became the commission’s first administrator, said the smooth administration of the 2024 election “is evidence that the right person is in the job and should continue in it.”
Added Haas, “It would be nice in Wisconsin if we could get to a position of people supporting election officials, rather than being focused on creating imaginary conspiracy theories.”
Kevin Kennedy, who was Wisconsin’s chief election official for over 30 years, said both he and Haas were replaceable — and Wolfe is too.
But Kennedy wondered why people would want to replace “someone who’s really good.”
“I think it’s best for Wisconsin if she stays,” he said.
For her part, Wolfe said she has “no immediate plans to leave” if she wins that case and continues to receive the election commissioners’ approval. She has many ongoing projects, but also wants to gauge what next year looks like, she said.
Wolfe also questioned whether she may get in the way of her agency’s functions, like budget negotiations. If there’s ever a time “where me being in this role seems like it’s not productive to the needs of our agency or the state,” she said, then she may reevaluate staying at the commission, “because this isn’t about me. It’s much bigger and more important than me.”
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
Update, Dec. 12, 2024: A federal judge dismissed the Republican Party of Wisconsin lawsuit on Thursday, saying there’s no controversy over the main issue in the case. Both the GOP and the defendants agree they should cast electoral votes for President-elect Donald Trump on Dec. 17, in compliance with a federal law, not the Dec. 16 date dictated under a state law.
Original story: The Republican Party of Wisconsin filed a lawsuit Friday to resolve a discrepancy between state and federal law directing when appointed presidential electors must meet to cast Electoral College votes.
State law requires presidential electors to meet on Dec. 16 this year, but a federal law passed two years ago calls for them to meet on Dec. 17. The state GOP is calling on a U.S. District Court of Western Wisconsin judge to enforce the federal requirement and strike the state one.
“The presidential electors cannot comply with both requirements,” the lawsuit states.
Resolving the current conflict is key to avoiding the state’s electoral votes getting challenged or contested in Congress, the state GOP states.
The lawsuit highlights the Legislature’s failure to pass a bill that would have brought Wisconsin in line with the new federal law. That inaction, the state GOP says, “led to the current conflict between the federal and state statutes.”
The lawsuit is filed against Gov. Tony Evers, Attorney General Josh Kaul and Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe.
The GOP is asking for the federal court to declare the current state law requirement — for the electors to meet on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December, as opposed to the federal law’s requirement to meet on the first Tuesday following the second Wednesday — unconstitutional and unenforceable. Given the tight timeline, it’s seeking a hearing “as soon as the Court’s calendar allows.”
Spokespeople for the Wisconsin Elections Commission and Evers declined to comment for this story.
Generally, federal law supersedes state law if there’s a conflict between the two, said Bryna Godar, a staff attorney at the University of Wisconsin Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative. Under the current, conflicting laws, electors this year definitely have to meet on Dec. 17, but it’s less clear what they should do on Dec. 16, she told Votebeat in May.
The new designated day arose as a result of the new federal law, commonly called the Electoral Count Reform Act. Congress designed the law in 2022 to prevent the post-election chaos that then-President Donald Trump and his allies created after the 2020 election, which culminated in efforts to send fake electoral votes to Congress, block certification of legitimate electoral votes and then storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The new federal law sets specific schedules for certifying election results and casting electoral votes. It cleared up ambiguities contained in the previous version of the law, which was enacted in 1887 but never updated until two years ago.
As of mid-October, 15 states had updated their laws to comply with the Electoral Count Reform Act, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. A Wisconsin proposal to bring the state in line with the new federal law passed the Senate nearly unanimously in February. But it never received a vote in the Assembly.
“It would have been beneficial if Wisconsin had also done that,” Godar said.
Scott Thompson, a staff attorney at the liberal-leaning legal group Law Forward, said the Legislature knew about this problem for over a year but chose not to resolve it with a simple fix.
“This eleventh hour lawsuit merely confirms that our state Legislature needs to stop peddling election conspiracy theories and start taking the business of election administration seriously,” he said.
Wisconsin Republicans were among those who sent documents to Congress in December 2020 falsely claiming Trump won the state. Trump won the state in 2024. The Wisconsin fake electors were subject to a civil lawsuit, and there’s an ongoing criminal case against their attorneys.
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
Two lawyers and a former Trump campaign aide are scheduled to make their initial appearances in court Thursday, each facing 11 felony charges for their roles in a scheme that generated documents falsely claiming Donald Trump won Wisconsin’s 2020 election.
Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul in June initially charged Michael Roman and attorneys Jim Troupis and Kenneth Chesebro with “uttering as genuine a forged writing or object,” a felony that can result in up to a $10,000 fine and imprisonment of up to 6 years. The charges stem from their efforts to craft a slate of false electors for Donald Trump in 2020 after he narrowly lost Wisconsin and other key swing states to Joe Biden.
On Tuesday, the state Department of Justice added 10 additional charges for each defendant, arguing Chesebro, Roman and Troupis defrauded the 10 Republicans who falsely posed as electors for Trump. All 10 new charges are felonies and they can each result in up to a $10,000 fine and imprisonment of up to 6 years.
The defendants are set to appear in Dane County Circuit Court almost four years to the day after a group of Republicans met at the State Capitol in Madison to create the documents.
Kaul’s office declined to answer a question about why he believes it’s important to continue the prosecutions into 2025. But Kaul spokesperson Gillian Drummond reiterated that the Department of Justice’s approach “has been focused on following the facts where they lead and making decisions based on the facts, the law and the best interests of justice.”
The case’s original 47-page criminal complaint details how Chesebro, Troupis and Roman helped craft a “Certificate of the Votes of the 2020 Electors from Wisconsin” that falsely said Trump won Wisconsin’s 10 Electoral College votes at the time — tactics replicated in six other swing states. The complaint also outlines efforts to deliver the paperwork to then-Vice President Mike Pence.
A majority of the 10 Republicans who acted as the false Trump electors told investigators that they did not believe their signatures would be sent to Washington, according to new details in Tuesday’s amended complaint. A majority of the false electors also said they did not consent to their signatures being presented as Wisconsin’s electoral votes without a court ruling handing the state to Trump.
Chesebro and Roman have faced charges in Georgia, where Chesebro is seeking to invalidate an earlier deal in which he pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit filing false documents.
Of the trio charged in Wisconsin, Troupis is the only one who has filed motions to dismiss ahead of Thursday’s hearing.
One motion, which was filed before the additional charges were handed down, argues the DOJ failed to allege a criminal offense.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court just two hours before the alternative electors met ruled against Trump’s efforts to throw out more than 220,000 Dane and Milwaukee county votes and to reverse his loss. But an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was still in the works, Troupis’ motion notes. The Republican electors cast their illegitimate ballots for Trump, the motion adds, as Troupis worked to protect his client’s rights in case the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Wisconsin’s election results.
“That practice of having both sets of electors meet and vote during an on-going legal challenge or recount is over a century old,” Troupis argues in his brief. He points to the 1876 presidential election, when three states sent competing slates of electors to Washington, and the 1960 race, when Hawaii featured competing electors due to an ongoing recount that eventually flipped three electoral votes from Richard Nixon to John F. Kennedy. Historians have identified key differences between those cases and 2020.
“Having the Republican electors meet and cast their ballot was not criminal or even untoward and the ballot was not a forgery,” Troupis argues.
A separate motion argues the criminal complaint omits information that pokes holes in the DOJ’s allegations.
Troupis’ attorney points to a 2022 memo from the DOJ solicited by the Wisconsin Elections Commission as it investigated a complaint filed against the Trump electors.
That complaint argued the Trump electors “met in a concerted effort to ensure that they would be mistaken, as a result of their deliberate forgery and fraud, for Wisconsin’s legitimate Presidential Electors.” But the DOJ concluded in its memo that the “record does not support this allegation” and that the Trump electors even before the Dec. 14 meeting “publicly stated, including in court pleadings, that they were meeting to preserve legal options while litigation was pending.”
Troupis’ legal team claims that conclusion — omitted from the criminal complaint —shows “it was proper and necessary for the alternate electors to meet and vote on December 14.”
In another motion, Troupis argues election-related prosecutions can unfold only if the elections commission determines probable cause and refers the case to a county district attorney — not the attorney general.
Troupis’ legal team argues his motions to dismiss must be heard before Troupis makes his initial appearance. Dane County Circuit Court Judge John Hyland declined on Friday to hear the motions before the initial appearance.
Trump could not pardon his former aides upon his return to office. Presidential pardon power extends only to federal offenses. These are state charges.
The hearing is scheduled for 10:30 a.m at the Dane County Courthouse.
Forward is a look ahead at the week in Wisconsin government and politics from the Wisconsin Watch statehouse team.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Protesters filled the Wisconsin Capitol in 2011 to protest the legislation that ultimately past as Wisconsin Act 10, eliminating most union rights for most public employees. (Photo by Emily Mills. Used by permission)
A Dane County judge on Monday struck down the core parts of the landmark state law that eviscerated most union rights for most public employees in Wisconsin.
Judge Jacob Frost ruled that Act 10, passed by the state Legislature’s Republican majority in 2011 and signed by former Republican Gov. Scott Walker in his first year in office, was unconstitutional in making some public safety workers exempt from the law’s limits on unions but excluding other workers with similar jobs from those protections.
The ruling essentially confirmed Frost’s ruling on July 3, 2024, when he rejected motions by the state Legislature’s Republican leaders to dismiss the 2023 lawsuit challenging Act 10.
In that ruling, Frost declared that state Capitol Police, University of Wisconsin Police, and state conservation wardens were “treated unequally with no rational basis for that difference” because they were not included in the exemption that Act 10 had created for other law enforcement and public safety employees.
For that reason, the law’s categories of general and public safety employees, and its public safety employee exemption, were unconstitutional, Frost wrote then.
Frost reiterated that ruling Monday. “Act 10 as written by the Legislature specifically and narrowly defines ‘public safety employee,’” Frost wrote. “It is that definition which is unconstitutional.”
In addition, the judge rejected the suggestion that Act 10 could remain in effect without the law’s public safety employee carve-out, and that either the courts or the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission could resolve a constitutionally acceptable definition in the future.
“The Legislature cites no precedent for this bold argument that I should simply strike the unlawful definition but leave it to an agency and the courts to later define as they see fit,” Frost wrote. “Interpreting ‘public safety employee’ after striking the legislated definition would be an exercise in the absurd.”
Advocates, lawmakers react
Opponents of the law, including plaintiffs in the lawsuit, cheered Monday’s ruling, while Act 10’s backers attacked it and vowed to see it through the appeals process.
The lawsuit was brought on behalf of a group of local and state unions and public employees by the progressive nonprofit law firm Law Forward along with Bredhoff & Kaiser.
“This historic decision means that teachers, nurses, librarians and other public-sector workers across the state will once again have a voice in the workplace,” said Jeff Mandell, Law Forward president and general counsel. “Every Wisconsin family deserves the chance to build a better future through democratic participation in a union. As an organization dedicated to protecting and strengthening democracy, Law Forward is proud to have been a part of this important case.”
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester), dismissed Monday’s ruling. Through its Republican leaders, the Legislature was among the defendants in the lawsuit.
“This lawsuit came more than a decade after Act 10 became law and after many courts rejected the same meritless legal challenges,” Vos said in a statement. “Act 10 has saved Wisconsin taxpayers more than $16 billion. We look forward to presenting our arguments on appeal.”
Gov. Tony Evers, who has sought to repeal Act 10 since he took office in 2019, applauded the ruling.
“This is great news,” Evers, a Democrat, said in a social media post on BlueSky and on X. “I’ve always believed workers should have a seat at the table in decisions that affect their daily lives and livelihoods. It’s about treating workers with dignity and respect and making sure no worker is treated differently because of their profession.”
Evers sought to repeal the law in each of the three state budgets he has submitted since taking office, but the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee Republicans stripped those provisions each time.
Ben Gruber, a conservation warden and union leader, called the ruling “personal for me and my coworkers.” Gruber is one of the named plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
“As a conservation warden, having full collective bargaining rights means we will again have a voice on the job to improve our workplace and make sure that Wisconsin is a safe place for everyone,” he said in a statement distributed by the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC).
Member local unions of WEAC were among the plaintiffs.
“The lawsuit was filed because of the dire situation that exists in Wisconsin’s public service institutions since workers’ freedoms were unconstitutionally taken away,” WEAC stated. “The state’s education workforce is in crisis as 40 percent of teachers leave the profession in the first six years because of low wages and unequal pay systems; the conservation warden program is fraught with unfair and disparate treatment of workers; and there is a 32 percent staff vacancy rate for corrections officers.”
Also joining in the lawsuit was the union representing University of Wisconsin graduate students who work as teaching assistants, TAA Local 3220.
“Graduate workers look forward to claiming our seat at the table to ensure our teaching and research, which helps make UW-Madison a world-class university, are supported and compensated fairly,” said TAA’s co-president, Daniel Levitin. “The winds of change are blowing in our direction and we urge the university to take note and voluntarily recognize the TAA as the union of graduate workers and be prepared to meet us at the bargaining table.”
TAA is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers. “Workers must have the right to partner with their employer and negotiate fair wages, benefits, and working conditions,” said AFT-Wisconsin President Kim Kohlhaas.
Appeals expected
WEAC’s statement cautioned that the ruling’s impact would be delayed by appeals. “The plaintiffs acknowledge that while this decision is a major win for Wisconsin’s working families, it is likely that the case will remain in the courts for some time before a final victory is reached and pledge to continue fighting until the freedoms of all workers in Wisconsin are respected and protected,” the teachers union said.
Sen. Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton) was first elected to the Legislature the year after the law was passed and now leads the Democratic minority in the state Senate.
“This is a crucial step to recognize and restore the rights of hard-working public employees doing the people’s work in every corner of Wisconsin,” Hesselbein said in a statement. “There are likely further hurdles ahead and I applaud the resolve of those who have kept up the effort to restore the right to collectively bargain in the state.”
State Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee) was a Milwaukee Public Schools teacher when the law was enacted.
“I saw firsthand the negative impact that the lack of collective bargaining had not only on our profession of teaching but also the schools, students, and our communities,” Clancy said in a statement. He called Monday’s ruling “a crucial step to ensuring that every Wisconsin worker has access to fair and equitable working conditions.”
Sen. Rachael Cabral-Guevera (R-Fox Crossing), was among the GOP lawmakers decrying the decision, declaring that the law had saved taxpayers $30 billion — nearly twice the figure Vos asserted.
“Today, an activist Dane County judge overstepped his role and unilaterally struck down Act 10 because it didn’t align with his politics,” she said in a statement. “One judge, appointed by the current governor, acting like a super-legislature is about to bankrupt local governments and school districts across Wisconsin.”
Kurt Bauer, president of Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state’s largest business lobby and among the groups that had championed the legislation, called the ruling “wrong on its face and … inconsistent with the law” in a statement Monday that called Act 10 “a critical tool for policymakers and elected officials to balance budgets and find taxpayer savings.”
He said the business lobby’s members “hope this ruling will be appealed and that Act 10 will be reinstated as quickly as possible.”
This story has been updated with reactions to the ruling.
In 2022, the percent of Wisconsin residents who had fluoridated water dropped sharply. According to data from the state’s Department of Health Services, 86.9% of residents had fluoridated water in 2021. A year later, that had dropped to 84.9%. Combining data from the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environmental Protection Agency shows that, in 2024, about 83.6% of the state’s residents have fluoridated water.
The Wisconsin State Journal reported that multiple communities are removing fluoride from their water systems. Opponents of fluoridated water cited a report on fluoride being harmful to children. However, the CDC named fluoridated water systems as one of the greatest health achievements of the 1900s. The CDC recommends 0.7 milligrams of water per liter, or about three drops of fluoride per 55 gallons of water.
This isn’t just a Wisconsin problem. Across the country, fluoride in water is becoming a controversial topic. Coverage from the Associated Press indicated that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s push for removing fluoride from water systems is one of the inciting factors to the controversy. Kennedy is now President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the federal Department of Health and Human Services.
According to a 2018 publication by the American Dental Association, having fluoride in water systems prevents 25% of tooth decay in children and adults. It can also help reverse tooth decay and lower dental costs for the average consumer. Annually, fluoridated water can lower the cost of dental care by over $32 per person.
The Fluoride Action Network, an organization dedicated to ending water fluoridation, argues that fluoride is an unnecessary, toxic and dangerous chemical that should not be added to water systems. It cites a 2024 report by the HHS’s National Toxicology Program that says having twice the CDC-recommended amount of fluoride in water systems correlates with lower IQs in children. The study was not conducted with any data from the United States and does not specify that fluoride causes a lower IQ.
As President-elect Donald Trump stocks his Cabinet with some of his most loyal followers, we’ve already checked some of their surprising and dubious claims.
That statement was made at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee by Thomas Homan, former head of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). He is Trump’s pick for border czar and does not require Senate confirmation.
Such removals were highest during Bill Clinton’s second term as president, averaging 1.7 million annually from 1997 through 2000.
Trump’s highest was 600,000 in 2020.
Check out the video version of this fact brief here.
The vice president has supported the rare occurrence of taxpayer-funded gender-affirming surgery for prison inmates and detained undocumented immigrants.
That supports a claim made on Wisconsin radio by former U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican who was Trump’s pick for attorney general. Last week Gaetz withdrew himself from consideration amid reports he had paid women for sex and also had sex with an underage teen. Trump has since announced he plans to nominate former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to be the nation’s top law enforcement officer instead.
Wisconsin Watch and its partners have also fact-checked claims about (but so far not by) Elon Musk, Trump’s selection to co-lead a government efficiency effort.
We found that Musk was not the founder of Tesla (it was founded by two other entrepreneurs); and that, as of 2022, he was not the richest person in history.
In the early morning following Election Day in 2020, Claire Woodall, then Milwaukee’s elections chief, mistakenly left behind a USB stick carrying vote totals at the city’s central absentee ballot counting facility. Election conspiracy theorists quickly seized on the mistake, accusing Woodall of rigging the election.
Their claims were baseless, but the mistake increased scrutiny on the city’s election staff and led Woodall to create a checklist to make sure workers at central count didn’t overlook any critical steps in the future.
This year, despite the checklist, Milwaukee election staff at central count made another procedural mistake — and once again left the door open to conspiracy theorists.
Somebody — city officials haven’t said who — overlooked the second step outlined on the checklist and failed to lock and seal the hatch covers on the facility’s 13 tabulators before workers began tabulating ballots. For hours, while counting proceeded, the machines’ on-off switches and USB ports were left exposed.
Results from the large and heavily Democratic city ultimately came in at 4 a.m. on Wednesday, only a few hours later than expected, but a time that conspiracy theorists implied was a suspicious hour for vote totals to change. Their posts echoed claims from 2020 that used sensationalized language like “late-night ballot dumps” to describe the reality that in big cities, absentee ballots take time — yes, sometimes late into the night — to collect, deliver, verify and count accurately.
In fact, the results in Milwaukee couldn’t have arrived much sooner. Under state law, election officials can’t start processing the hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots until the morning of Election Day. This year, they got a late start because of delays in getting workers settled, but were still expecting to be done around 2 or 3 a.m. Then it became clear the midday decision to redo the count would add more time to the process.
But those explanations have done little to curb the false conspiracy theories that have been proliferating on the right, including from losing U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde.
Election officials have for years known that the slightest mistakes, or even perceived errors, can trigger false claims. In this instance, the failure to follow a critical security step occurred in the state’s most scrutinized election facility, despite new procedures meant to reduce such errors.
For people with a conspiratorial mindset, such an oversight can’t be explained away as just a mistake, said Mert Bayar, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public. The errors can provide conspiracy theorists a feeling of validation because those errors make a “conspiracy theory more realistic … more believable.”
For those people, he said, election errors are instead perceived as “part of a plot to steal an election.”
Instead of considering the 2024 Milwaukee mistake a simple oversight, Bayar said, conspiracy theorists may think that the tabulator doors “cannot be left unlocked unless they’re trying something tricky, something stealth.”
Genya Coulter, senior director of stakeholder relations at the Open Source Election Technology Institute, said Milwaukee can still fine-tune its processes and checklists.
“I don’t think anybody needs to be demonized,” she said, “but I do think that there needs to be some retraining. That would be helpful.”
Milwaukee error initially drew complaints, but not suspicion
It was an election observer who first noticed the open tabulator doors and alerted election officials. Around 2 p.m., Milwaukee’s current election chief, Paulina Gutiérrez, went from tabulator to tabulator, monitored by Democratic and Republican representatives, to lock all of the doors. Two hours later, she made the call to rerun all ballots through the tabulators.
The tabulators had been in full view of partisan observers and the media, but behind a barrier that only election officials and some designated observers, like representatives for both political parties who accompany election officials during some election processes, can enter. Any tampering would have been evident, Gutiérrez said, and there was no sign of that.
For that reason, some Republicans at central count opposed recounting all the ballots and risking a delay. U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, who went to central count on Election Day to learn more about the error, said he didn’t think anything nefarious happened, though he said the election operation there was “grossly incompetent.”
Coulter said the decision to start the counting over again was “the right call for transparency’s sake.”
Hovde, who lost his Senate race in a state that Donald Trump carried, invoked conspiratorial language to describe what happened.
“The results from election night were disappointing, particularly in light of the last minute absentee ballots that were dropped in Milwaukee at 4 a.m. flipping the outcome,” he said Monday in his concession speech. “There are many troubling issues around these absentee ballots.”
In an earlier video, Hovde criticized Milwaukee’s election operation and spread false claims about the proportion of votes that his opponent, U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, received from absentee ballots. That led to a skyrocketing number of posts baselessly alleging election fraud in Wisconsin.
In a statement, the Milwaukee Election Commission said it “unequivocally refutes Eric Hovde’s baseless claims regarding the integrity of our election process.”
Why Milwaukee’s results were late
There’s no proof of fraud or malfeasance in Milwaukee or anywhere else in Wisconsin on Election Day. But a few key factors combined to delay Milwaukee’s results until 4 a.m.
First, Milwaukee central count workers started processing and tabulating ballots around 9 a.m., long after the 7 a.m. start time allowed under state law. The delay was a matter of getting dozens of central count workers organized and at the right station in the large facility.
The more high-profile one was the failure to close the tabulators, which prompted the decision to count 31,000 absentee ballots all over again.
But both of those slowdowns could have been less consequential had Wisconsin election officials been able to process absentee ballots on the Monday before Election Day, as some other states allow. Such a change could have allowed election officials to review absentee ballot envelopes, verify and check in absentee voters but not count votes. An effort to allow election officials to do so stalled in the state Senate this year.
Checklist change could ‘improve transparency’
Milwaukee election officials may have avoided the situation entirely — and could avoid similar situations in the future — by modifying their central count checklist, said Coulter, from the Open Source Election Technology Institute.
Currently, the checklist states that at the start of Election Day, the tabulator doors should be locked and sealed. It’s not clear why that step was skipped. Gutiérrez didn’t respond to questions for comment about who was in charge of the process or whether that person faced disciplinary action.
But the step likely wouldn’t have been overlooked, Coulter said, if the checklist required the official in charge of locking the tabulators to be accompanied by a representative from each major political party.
“That’s a relatively painless change that … I think it would improve transparency,” Coulter said.
“There needs to be an emphasis on having two people from different political affiliations performing all duties that involve the tabulator,” she said.
Another pre-processing step on the checklist calls for people working at the tabulators to make sure the numbered seals pasted over the tabulator doors are intact. It doesn’t call for checking that the tabulator doors are locked.
To avoid a repeat situation, Coulter said, “they should also check to make sure that the door to the power button is properly locked, and what to do if it isn’t.”
Election officials recognize the scrutiny they face over errors, Coulter said, and they sometimes focus more on avoiding mistakes than running election operations.
“It’s like a racecar driver … If you focus on the wall, you’re going to wind up hitting that wall,” she said. “You have to train your mind to think about the curve and not the wall, but unfortunately, it’s really hard for election officials to do that, especially in high-pressure jurisdictions.”
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
Marquette University’s John Johnson analyzed voting data for Wisconsin’s 2024 U.S. Senate and presidential elections. “Our electorate is increasingly polarized by education,” Johnson writes.
The youngest voters in Wisconsin shifted slightly toward Republicans in both races while other age groups shifted Democratic in the Senate race and Republican in the presidential. The poorest and richest areas in Wisconsin more often vote Democratic, while the middle class areas have leaned Republican.
Wisconsin has one of highest percentages of tipped workers in the US
The Tax Policy Center’s August 2024 analysis showed that about 5% of workers in the state of Wisconsin work “tipped” jobs. The data analysis classifies tipped employees as dining room staff and the majority of people working in personal care or service jobs (nail technicians, hair stylists, etc.). In July 2024, Wisconsin’s state minimum wage for tipped workers was slightly higher than the federal standard of $2.13 per hour.
Chronic absenteeism has improved among students, but remains high
Wisconsin Policy Forum’s October 2024 analysis showed that students of all ages are chronically absent, defined as missing more than 10% of school days in a year under any circumstances.
The issue is most common at the high school level, where nearly one in four students is chronically absent. Chronic absenteeism reached a peak following the pandemic, and while the 2023 rates are lower than the 2022 rates, they have not returned to pre-pandemic norms.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
On Nov. 5, Wisconsin voters approved nearly 78% of the 138 school district referendums across the state.
That’s higher than the 60% passage rate this past spring, but the percentage of K-12 referendums approved statewide has been declining since 2018, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum.
The 70% approval rate of all school referendums this year was a 10 percentage-point decrease from 2022 and was the lowest passage rate in a midterm or presidential election year in the last decade.
But more and more districts are going to referendum as state aid has fallen far behind inflation over the last 15 years. A total of 241 questions were posed in 2024, the most ever held in a single year, according to the Policy Forum.
Almost half of Wisconsin’s 421 school districts went to referendum this year, asking for a record total of nearly $6 billion from taxpayers — up from a previous record of $3.3 billion in 2022. Voters ultimately approved $4.4 billion in additional taxes.
School districts are increasingly holding operational referendums, asking residents to take on a recurring tax hike just to cover everyday costs like utilities, routine maintenance and staff salaries. Capital referendums are one-time asks for big projects like a new school.
This year, 66% of operational referendums passed statewide, while 76% of capital referendums passed. There were 148 operating referendums held, the most on record, according to the Policy Forum.
The reliance on school referendums comes amid a heavy debate over state-imposed revenue limits and funding for public education.
Revenue limits were created in the early 1990s to keep in check school property tax increases. In 2009, the state Legislature decoupled per-pupil revenue limits from inflation, and districts have had to manage tighter budgets ever since, especially as inflation in recent years has exceeded revenue limit increases.
Wisconsin’s per-pupil K-12 spending increased at a lower rate than every other state in the nation besides Indiana and Idaho between 2002 and 2020, according to the Policy Forum.
School districts across the state are also grappling with declining enrollment, mainly caused by a drop in birth rates.
“Schools are funded based on the number of students we have, so as we have fewer students, our budget shrinks,” Kenosha Unified School District Superintendent Jeffrey Weiss told Wisconsin Watch.
When costs exceed the per-pupil revenue available to the district, state law allows them to go to referendum to ask their voters to authorize their district to exceed their revenue caps at the expense of property taxpayers.
State revenue limits have fallen more than $2,300 behind inflation per student behind inflation even in smaller school districts like Hudson, generating millions in lost revenue.
The 2023-25 state budget included a yearly increase of $325 per student to the state-imposed revenue limits. But that increase still lags behind inflation, Wauwatosa School District Superintendent Demond Means told Wisconsin Watch.
“Are they providing more money to schools? Yes, but they’re still behind. They’ve dug a hole for themselves,” Means said. “They have to come to grips with the fact that they have created an obstacle and a gap that they have to fill.”
Schools are still reeling from a freeze in revenue caps in the 2021-2023 budget, Means said, in which the Legislature provided zero increases to public school funding immediately following the pandemic. Wisconsin ended its 2024 fiscal year with a $4.6 billion budget surplus.
Republican lawmakers tout the $1 billion they added to the budget for public schools last year, emphasizing that education is the largest portion of the state budget. The increase was part of a deal struck between the GOP-controlled Legislature and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers to simultaneously increase funding for private school vouchers.
Democrats argue the state has fallen so far behind, $1 billion isn’t nearly enough.
“Those are just red herrings,” state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jill Underly told Wisconsin Watch. “They’re trying to distract because public education has always been one of the most expensive components of our state budget. It just is. It’s a labor-intensive operation, and labor costs money.”
Underly recently called for a $4 billion increase in public school funding in the Department of Public Instruction’s state budget request. It includes a proposal to tie revenue limits to inflation again.
“The fact that we’ve gone to referendum now three different times in the last six years is a sign that state funding is really becoming a challenge,” Means said. “A community like Wauwatosa does not take going to a referendum lightly.”
The district just passed operational and capital referendums totaling $124.4 million. That translates to a $630 annual tax increase on a $300,000 home, according to district calculations.
While passage rates are typically higher in a presidential or midterm election year due to voter turnout, some referendums still failed. School districts like Hudson, serving many rural, conservative townships, are now faced with a choice: cut programs and staff or push to referendum again in April. Its $5 million operational referendum was voted down on Nov. 5.
The referendum would have increased property taxes annually by $5 on a $500,000 home, according to district calculations.
“These are recurring expenses. This is literally to make ends meet,” Hudson School District Superintendent Nick Ouellette told Wisconsin Watch.
State lawmakers like Rep. Shannon Zimmerman, a Republican who represents the city of Hudson, have suggested that schools need to close and consolidate in light of declining enrollment. Ouellette said it’s not that simple.
The district is receiving less per-pupil funding from the state due to a steady drop in students. But enrollment is not declining at a fast enough rate to immediately close and consolidate schools and classrooms, Ouellette said.
“You lose the revenue, but you don’t lose the expense,” Ouellette said. “You have to allow things to drop enough before you can cut.”
Ouellette said blame is often directed at the school districts with claims that they are mismanaging their budgets or not “living within their means.”
“State lawmakers are well aware that if they continue to not fund schools, it will force local school districts to ask their property tax payers to pay more,” Ouellette said. “So they understand they are raising taxes.”
In Hudson, 54% of the school district’s budget is paid by local taxes, 39% is covered by state aid and 3% comes from federal aid, according to the Policy Forum. A decade ago more than half of the district’s operating revenue came from state aid.
“They’re placing school systems in a very precarious position,” Means said. “Local communities are, in essence, bailing out the Legislature, and that has to stop.”
Forward is a look ahead at the week in Wisconsin government and politics from the Wisconsin Watch statehouse team.
Flanked by Sam Liebert, left, and Scott Thompson, center, Nick Ramos of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign addresses reporters Thursday outside a Wisconsin state office building. The three criticized Republican Senate candidate Eric Hovde for not conceding after vote tallies reported that Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin finished the election with 29,000 more votes than Hovde. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)
Voting rights advocates joined the calls Thursday for Republican Senate candidate Eric Hovde to back away from accusations he made earlier this week that something went wrong with vote-counting in the election Hovde lost to Sen. Tammy Baldwin.
“This is a direct attempt to cast doubt on our free and fair elections. And this is not only disappointing, it’s unnecessary,” said Sam Liebert, Wisconsin state director for All Voting is Local at a news conference Thursday morning. The nonpartisan, nonprofit organization advocates for policies to ensure voting access, particularly for voters of color and other marginalized groups.
“The rhetoric of questioning our democracy is more than just words, but it contributes to chaos and confusion, which undermines public trust in our elections and the officials who administer them,” Liebert said.
The news conference, held outside the state office building that houses the Wisconsin Elections Commission, was organized by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a nonpartisan voting rights and campaign finance reform advocacy group.
Speakers emphasized Wisconsin’s history of ticket-splitting and the near equal division of Republican and Democratic voters. For that reason, they said, victories last week by Republican Donald Trump in the presidential race and Baldwin, a Democrat, in the Senate race shouldn’t be viewed as remarkable or suspicious.
“Donald Trump won, Tammy Baldwin won, Kamala Harris lost, and Erik Hovde lost,” said Scott Thompson, an attorney with the nonprofit voting rights and democracy law firm Law Forward. “The people of Wisconsin know it, and I think Eric Hovde knows it too.”
“What you’re doing is creating divisions, and that cannot be accepted here in Wisconsin,” said Nick Ramos, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.
During the campaign, Hovde “said all the right things — he talked about how he would honor the election results, talked about … there’s no time for us to continue these types of conspiracies and lies,” Ramos said. But since the election, he added, Hovde has shifted his attitude.
Hovde so far has declined to concede the U.S. Senate election, although The Associated Press called the race for Baldwin, the Democratic two-term incumbent, early Wednesday, Nov. 6. With 99% of the vote counted, Baldwin had a 29,000-vote lead over Hovde, a margin of slightly less than 1%. She declared victory after the AP call.
Eric Hovde speaks in a video posted on Tuesday in which he questions how ballots were counted in his election loss to Sen. Tammy Baldwin. (Screenshot | Hovde campaign on X)
Hovde’s first public statement came a week after Election Day. In a video posted on social media Tuesday, he said he was waiting for the vote canvass to be completed before he would comment on the outcome.
“Once the final information is available and all options are reviewed, I will announce my decision on how I will proceed,” Hovde said.
Nevertheless, Hovde questioned the vote totals that were reported from Milwaukee’s central count facility, where the city’s absentee ballots are consolidated and tallied.
About 108,000 absentee and provisional ballots were counted in the early hours last Wednesday, with Baldwin garnering 82% of those votes, according to the Milwaukee Election Commission. In Milwaukee ballots cast in-person Tuesday, Baldwin won 75% of the vote.
Both Republican and Democratic analysts have pointed out that Democrats have disproportionately voted absentee over the last several elections and that the outcome Milwaukee reported last week was in line with those trends.
In his video, however, Hovde highlighted the late-counted ballots. He falsely called Baldwin’s lead in that tally “nearly 90%,” claiming that was “statistically improbable” in comparison with the in-person vote count.
Hovde said that because of “inconsistencies” in the data, “Many people have reached out and urged me to contest the election.”
Ramos pointed out Thursday that Wisconsin lawmakers had introduced a bill with bipartisan support that would have allowed election clerks to begin counting absentee ballots the day before Election Day — ending the late-night tally change from absentee votes that have become a regular feature in Milwaukee.
The legislation passed the Assembly but died in the state Senate. “We have folks in the state Legislature that would rather play political games and would rather see moments like this than actually fix the problem,” Ramos said.
While Hovde spoke skeptically about the vote count in his video, in a talk radio interview after it was posted he described the election outcome as a “loss.”
Hovde is “talking out of both sides of his mouth right now,” Ramos said. “And so, on the one hand, we get to hear him say things like, you know, ‘It’s going to take me a while to get over this loss,’ and then we get to watch a video that gets broadly disseminated across X and Facebook and Instagram, where … he’s literally talking about how he does not believe what happened in Milwaukee and how the numbers shifted [in the ballot counting] aren’t accurate.”
In his video Hovde said that “asking for a recount is a serious decision that requires careful consideration.”
Counties must send their final vote canvass reports to the Wisconsin Elections Commission by Tuesday, Nov. 19. Candidates then have three days to make a recount request.
State law allows candidates to seek a recount if they lose by a margin of less than 1%, but it requires the candidate to pay the cost if the margin is more than 0.25%.
“He certainly can pursue a recount, although it looks like he’s going to have to pay for it himself,” said Thompson. “[But] Eric Hovde does not have the right to baselessly spread false claims and election lies.”
Recounts don’t usually change who wins
Election recounts are rare, but recounts that change the original election outcome are rarer still.
In areview of recounts in statewide elections over the last quarter-century, the organization FairVote found only a handful in which the outcome changed, all of them in which the margin of victory was just a fraction of the less-than-1% margin that separates Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin, who leads Republican Eric Hovde by 29,000 votes.
FairVote looked at nearly 7,000 statewide elections from the year 2000 through 2023 and found a total of 36 recounts. Recounts changed the outcome of just three of those elections, however, FairVote found, and none of those were in Wisconsin.
In each of the three recounts the original margin of victory was less than 0.06%.
A lawsuit that could determine whether Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe can keep her job is coming before the state Supreme Court on Monday. The case focuses on the legality of appointees staying on after their terms expire, rather than any matter of her performance as the state’s top election official.
Republicans targeted Wolfe, a nonpartisan appointee, after Donald Trump lost Wisconsin in the 2020 election. Since then, she has endured criticism from Trump supporters for several decisions that the election commission made, as well as for some memos she sent to clerks who run local elections.
As Wolfe’s term expired in the summer of 2023, the election commission deadlocked on her reappointment. Shortly after, the Republican-controlled state Senate voted to fire her in a move that it later said was only symbolic, but that triggered a protracted fight.
She and the Wisconsin Elections Commission sued Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, a Republican, who pushed to oust Wolfe following the expiration of her term. The lawsuit also names Senate President Chris Kapenga and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, both Republicans, as defendants.
Wolfe has now spent the last 16 months as a holdover appointment. During much of that time, it wasn’t clear who would be running the commission during the 2024 presidential election. Wolfe stayed in her role despite the pressure from the right, simultaneously becoming one of the most respected — and scrutinized — election officials nationwide.
One day after the presidential election, Wolfe said that she was “completely committed to seeing through this election,” which has yet to be certified. But she didn’t clarify whether she was seeking to stay in her role beyond the fall.
Lawsuit comes after years of scrutiny, legal battles
The Wisconsin Elections Commission is composed of three Democratic and three Republican commissioners. Wolfe, as the administrator, can issue recommendations to the commissioners on guidance they issue to local election officials, but she has no vote. The commissioners are the ones who decide whether to approve them.
Still, Wolfe has been a scapegoat for election conspiracy theorists seeking to blame somebody for Trump’s loss in the 2020 election.
After the 2020 presidential election, Wolfe was blamed for a slew of decisions by the commissioners, like letting local officials cure mistakes on absentee ballot envelopes and bypassing a state law that ordinarily requires sending election officials to conduct elections in nursing homes. She was also criticized for issuing a memo about using drop boxes in 2020, two years before the high court banned them. (The court reversed that decision this year under a new liberal majority.)
Some went further, saying baselessly that Wolfe led a wide-ranging conspiracy to commit fraud to rig the 2020 election in Joe Biden’s favor. Late last year, some legislative Republicans tried but failed to impeach Wolfe.
Wolfe’s term expired in July 2023, and the Senate appeared poised to reject her confirmation had she been reappointed. All three Republicans on the commission voted to reappoint Wolfe at the time, which would set her up for a Senate confirmation vote.
But Democratic election commissioners abstained from the vote. They cited a 2022 Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling stating that appointees can stay in their roles past the expiration of their terms, a decision that Democrats had previously opposed.
That meant Wolfe wasn’t formally reappointed and therefore not subject to another Senate confirmation proceeding. Senate leaders acknowledged that later, but still took a vote to fire her, leading to the current lawsuit.
“This case is fascinating because the shoes are all on the wrong feet,” said Jeff Mandell, founder of the liberal legal group Law Forward. “And maybe what that shows is that there’s less — maybe on all sides — there’s less of a matter of principle and Constitution than of political convenience.”
Mandell has long pushed back against the false accusations against Wolfe and other election officials in Wisconsin that arose from the 2020 election. Still, he said, “it’s not ideal” for democracy for Wolfe to be in her role past her term.
The debate further demonstrates how both Democrats and Republicans have been relying more on hardball tactics to accomplish their policy goals recently, said Barry Burden, a political science professor at UW-Madison.
Those tactics escalated as Senate Republicans slow-walked or outright rejected appointments, many of them made by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, to critical roles in state government.
The various twists in the fight are examples of dysfunction in the appointment processes that can “undermine trust in those processes and in those institutions,” said Bryna Godar, a staff attorney at the University of Wisconsin Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative.
“Whether or not you think that (Wolfe) should continue in her role, I think it is important
for appointment processes and confirmation processes to happen in the way that they’re supposed to happen,” Godar said.
Under state law, the election commission administrator serves a four-year term. Election commissioners are supposed to appoint a new administrator if the current position is vacant.
Until the Senate confirms an appointment, the law says, the commission would be overseen by an interim supervisor selected by a majority of commissioners. If the commission doesn’t appoint somebody within 45 days of the vacancy, a legislative committee can appoint an interim administrator.
Republican legislators are pointing to that law now in their attempt to force commissioners to appoint an administrator, saying the current state of play “would allow a partisan minority of WEC to keep in place a holdover administrator indefinitely,” without a process for Senate confirmation.
But some of the Democrats supporting Wolfe say they’re just following the 2022 Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling.
“When the law has things you can do, you use the law the way it allows you to use it,” said Ann Jacobs, a Democrat on the election commission.
The high court’s 2022 ruling about holdovers makes clear that Wolfe can be a holdover, Jacobs said, adding, “if the Legislature wants to change the law, they have every ability to do that.”
“The Legislature has hijacked the appointment process for all appointees, not just WEC, where they don’t act on them, so they try to maintain control over appointees by refusing to either confirm or reject them, and I don’t think that’s good government either,” Jacobs said.
Wisconsin Watch reporter Jack Kelly contributed to this report.
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Monday will hear oral arguments in a high-profile case that could, at least partially, determine the future of abortion rights in the state.
The case was filed by Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul and Gov. Tony Evers in the days after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade in 2022. It challenges the state’s 1849 abortion ban, which was believed for almost 18 months to ban most abortions in Wisconsin.
The case is perhaps the most high-profile litigation to reach the state Supreme Court since a redistricting case that resulted in the court’s now-liberal majority throwing out Republican-gerrymandered legislative districts. New districts implemented after that decision resulted last week in 10 additional Assembly seats and four additional state Senate seats for Democrats, though Republicans maintain majorities in both houses.
The arguments will focus on two issues: First, whether the 1849 law applies to consensual abortions. Second, whether the 1849 ban was “impliedly repealed” when the Legislature passed additional laws — while Roe was in effect — regulating abortion after fetal viability.
A Dane County judge ruled in late 2023 that the 1849 statute applied to feticide, not consensual abortions. That decision was appealed, resulting in Monday’s high court hearing.
Attorneys for Sheboygan County District Attorney Joel Urmanski, who is one of the prosecutors named in the case and has said he would prosecute violations of the 1849 law, argued in briefs submitted to the court that Dane County Circuit Court Judge Diane Schlipper’s interpretation of the law was incorrect.
They argued the “plain meaning (of the law) prohibits consensual abortion.” The statute, in part, provides: “Any person, other than the mother, who intentionally destroys the life of an unborn child is guilty of a Class H felony.”
Accordingly, attorneys for Urmanski argued, the law should apply to consensual abortions for three reasons.
“First, a doctor who performs an abortion is a person other than the mother of an unborn child,” they wrote.
“Second, ‘unborn child’ is defined in (the statute) as ‘a human being from the time of conception until it is born alive.’”
“Finally, a consensual abortion involves the intentional destruction of the life of the unborn child,” Urmanski’s lawyers continued.
“There really should be no dispute that a consensual abortion falls within the scope of the prohibition of (the 1849 ban),” they argued.
Lawyers for Urmanski also argued that the 1849 law was not repealed because it does not conflict with more recent abortion statutes and those laws did not “clearly indicate a legislative intent to repeal (the 1849 law).”
Attorneys for the state Department of Justice — and the district court’s ruling — relied heavily on a 1994 Wisconsin Supreme Court decision. In that case, a man was charged under a portion of the 1849 law “for destroying the life of his unborn quick child by violently assaulting his wife five days prior to her anticipated delivery date.” The man argued the statute applied to abortion, not feticide, but the state Supreme Court disagreed.
In that case, the court concluded that at least portions of the 19th-century law “is not an abortion statute. It makes no mention of an abortive type procedure. Rather, it proscribes the intentional criminal act of feticide: the intentional destruction of an unborn quick child presumably without the consent of the mother.”
“It is a feticide statute only,” the court wrote.
The precedent established in the 1994 case means the 1849 law cannot be applied to consensual abortions, attorneys for the state argued.
On the issue of whether the ban was “impliedly repealed,” the state points to two other cases, both from 1971. A “later-enacted law impliedly repeals an earlier law where an ‘irreconcilable’ conflict exists between the two laws — where the later-enacted statute ‘contains provisions so contrary to or irreconcilable with those of the earlier law that only one of the two statutes can stand in force,’” attorneys from DOJ argued, citing one of the two cases.
Additionally, a law is implied repealed “by the enactment of subsequent comprehensive legislation establishing elaborate inclusions and exclusions of the persons, things and relationships ordinarily associated with the subject,” the attorneys wrote, citing the second case.
Monday’s arguments mark the first of two high-profile abortion cases the court will hear this term. The second, filed by Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, asks the court to declare that abortion access is a right protected by the state constitution.
The court has not scheduled oral arguments in the second case.
Forward is a look ahead at the week in Wisconsin government and politics from the Wisconsin Watch statehouse team.
After Democrat Tammy Baldwin won reelection to her U.S. Senate seat in Wisconsin, conspiracy theorists skeptical of the outcome pointed to a misleading results table to claim that there were more ballots cast than registered voters in some wards of Oak Creek, a Milwaukee suburb.
The table on Milwaukee County’s results website appeared to show four Oak Creek wards where more than 100% of registered voters cast ballots, including one with 1,256 registered voters and 1,271 ballots, and another with 1,006 registered voters and 1,019 ballots.
Turnout in Oak Creek “was impressive late at night for Senator Baldwin,” said a social media post from Seth Keshel, a prominent conspiracy theorist who has hundreds of thousands of followers across social media. The post, which was accompanied by an image with data from the county’s table, has already received hundreds of reactions and shares.
The table’s turnout percentages, which were based on numbers on the page showing the county’s unofficial results, were based on the number of registered voters these wards had the day before Election Day. They didn’t take into account the number of people who registered to vote on Election Day, City Clerk Catherine Roeske said.
Oak Creek hadn’t yet officially tallied the number of same-day registrants, but Roeske estimated that it was about 2,700.
After Votebeat told Michelle Hawley, Milwaukee County’s election director, about the increasingly viral claim, the county added a note to its results page to clarify that “the number of registered voters displayed are as of the day before the election. In Wisconsin, state law allows voters to register on election day, and as a result, it is possible for a ward to have over 100% participation.”
Turnout in many Milwaukee County municipalities was “super impressive,” Hawley said, surpassing most elections before it.
There’s another flaw in the premise of the social media posts that some kind of malfeasance in Oak Creek helped put Baldwin over the top: Her Republican opponent, Eric Hovde, is the one who carried the city. He got roughly 550 more votes than Baldwin — about 10,700 to 10,150 — according to unofficial results, and topped her total in one of the four wards that were listed with more than 100% turnout.
Oak Creek was among the last few municipalities in Wisconsin to report election results, along with neighboring Milwaukee, Green Bay, Oshkosh, and Racine. Conspiracy theorists often use late-arriving results that cause a swing as a pretext to circulate false claims about election fraud.
Before those cities’ numbers came in, early and unofficial results showed Hovde leading Baldwin by about 63,000 votes. Still, at that point, conservatives already recognized that Hovde was unlikely to win, given that the outstanding votes were from cities that mostly lean Democratic.
The largest chunk of still-unreported votes that would deliver Baldwin a win would come from Milwaukee, which she won by about 143,000 votes. Milwaukee County posted the city’s results at around 4:30 a.m., after a delay caused by a recount of absentee ballots.
At that time, Oak Creek’s results were still outstanding, even though it had far fewer ballots to count.
Oak Creek’s central counting site processed over 12,700 absentee ballots and was adequately staffed, Roeske said, but as work went late into the night, the city lost many of its poll workers to fatigue. She also cited rules that prevent election officials from pre-processing absentee ballots.
Some “amazing” staff lasted late into the night though, Roeske said.
Once Oak Creek and the other cities’ results were in, unofficial results showed Baldwin in front by just under 30,000 votes. The Associated Press called the race for Baldwin just before 1 p.m. on Wednesday. Hovde had not conceded as of early afternoon Thursday. Unofficial results showed him within the 1% margin to request a recount.
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
For the first time in years, the northern shores of Lake Winnebago in Neenah and Menasha feature a competitive Assembly race.
After retiring from his decades-long political career in 2021, former Neenah mayor and state Rep. Dean Kaufert is returning to politics in a bid to represent the 53rd Assembly District as a Republican. Challenging him is lifelong Neenah resident and Democrat Duane Shukoski, a political newcomer who previously worked as an environmental health manager at Kimberly Clark.
Kaufert is running on a conservative platform supporting a referendum on a 14-week abortion ban, lowering taxes and continuing public funding to private voucher schools. Shukoski is running a progressive campaign to ensure abortion access, repeal anti-union legislation and expand Medicaid funding.
Redistricting
For more than a decade, Neenah has been represented in the Assembly by Republicans, sharing the 55th Assembly District with rural parts of Winnebago County. Neighboring Menasha, meanwhile, has consistently remained a Democratic stronghold, as it has shared the more urban 57th Assembly District with Appleton.
Since redistricting, the two Fox Valley cities have been grouped together in the 53rd Assembly District. Now, according to a Wisconsin Watch analysis, Democrats and Republicans in the district are separated by less than five points, ranking the 53rd Assembly District among the most competitive races in Wisconsin’s Legislature.
‘I’m not an extremist’
Kaufert has a lengthy resume — after starting his political career on the Neenah City Council in 1986, he won a bid to represent the 55th Assembly District in 1990 and remained there until 2015, after he was elected Neenah mayor.
But in an opening statement during an October candidate forum hosted by the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, Kaufert refrained from identifying as a conservative and emphasized bipartisanship.
“I’m not an extremist on any issue,” Kaufert said. “This isn’t working, the partisan divide (in Madison). I’m a proven person that was well respected on both sides of the aisle.”
Kaufert did not make himself available for an interview for this story.
Dean Kaufert, Republican candidate for the 53rd Assembly District, speaks during a candidate forum held by the League of Women Voters in Neenah, Wis., on Oct. 3, 2024. (Julius Shieh / Wisconsin Watch)
A progressive proposal
Shukoski, a lifelong Neenah resident, grew up under the state’s foster care system before working up the Kimberly Clark corporate ladder, starting as a union worker and eventually becoming environmental health manager.
“I’m not a politician,” Shukoski said during the October candidate forum. “I’m a retired Kimberly Clark employee. I come from the working class and I care about the working class.”
When asked about his political ideology, Shukoski said that he “would lean more progressive.” He identified a strong social safety network during his youth as a large source of support, and he counted his background as a strong influence on his political positions.
“The fact that Winnebago County and the state took care of me has inspired me to run and to give back to my community,” Shukoski said.
Shukoski’s platform includes accepting federal funding to expand BadgerCare, to enshrine Roe v. Wade into the state’s constitution and to repeal 2011 Act 10, a law that crippled public sector unions in the state.
Democrat Duane Shukoski, candidate for the 53rd Assembly District, speaks during a candidate forum held by the League of Women Voters in Neenah, Wis., on Oct. 3, 2024. (Julius Shieh / Wisconsin Watch)
Cost of living
Some of Shukoski’s main focuses are poverty and the cost of living. In a statement on his campaign website, Shukoski said that he hopes to “ease the cost of living and make childcare more affordable.”
Shukoski also spoke about rising housing costs and homelessness, referencing his previous work as a volunteer for Pillars, an organization focused on providing housing and other resources to populations experiencing homelessness.
Kaufert had a different perspective on the cost of living.
“Things seem to be going a lot better than they used to, other than inflation,” Kaufert said. “Minimum wage is raised in this country, more people are working. Salaries are up.”
While unemployment rates have remained low and median household incomes have increased in recent years, Wisconsin’s minimum wage has remained at the federal level of $7.25 per hour since 2009.
Kaufert also spoke against implementing social welfare programs. “There’s no doubt that there’s a shortage of adequate quality affordable housing,” Kaufert said. “But rent control, things like that, aren’t the answer.”
Kaufert claimed individual financial choices are the cause of the problems for people experiencing poverty.
“You see people who don’t have the financial means to do the things that they should be doing, but they all got a 65-inch screen TV. They got cigarette butts on the front porch. They got a $1,000 cell phone,” he said. “I’m not willing to give a handout.”
Labor
Both Kaufert and Shukoski claim to support unions.
Kaufert, one of only four Republicans who voted against Act 10, said he has worked with unions in the past. “I know the leaders and we work well, and to be painted as an extremist just isn’t fair,” he said.
But Kaufert now defends Act 10, calling it “the best thing that ever happened to this state.” He spoke against the idea of repealing Act 10, saying that “to just come and say we’re going to overturn everything is not the right answer.”
Shukoski, on the other hand, has openly called to overturn Act 10, saying that it is one of the first things he hopes to achieve in office.
A former union member, Shukoski has received endorsements from several unions, including UAW and AFL-CIO. Shukoski spoke in favor of unions, saying that with stronger unions, “we’re all lifted up. The economy does better. Wages are better.”
According to a 2023 Treasury Department report, unions “serve to strengthen the middle class and grow the economy at large.”
“I raised a family on union wages back in the ‘80s. You can’t do that today,” Shukoski said. “We need to strengthen our unions.”
Abortion
In a September Facebook post, Kaufert said that he would support a “statewide referendum on (the) 14-week abortion bill,” echoing AB 975, a Republican-backed bill that sought to ban abortions after 14 weeks.
In the post, Kaufert also said that he was pro-life and would support “exceptions for rape, incest or life of the mother” and “legislation for birth control to be sold over the counter by pharmacist(s).”
Kaufert has previously supported anti-abortion legislation, including 2013’s SB206, which forced those seeking an abortion to have an ultrasound and mandated that physicians provide a verbal description of the fetus.
“It’s none of my business. It’s none of the government’s business for what women do in situations like that,” Shukoski said.
Education
Kaufert and Shukoski diverge further on education in Wisconsin.
Over a decade ago, Kaufert introduced legislation to give tax credits to parents who enroll students in private schools. Instead the state expanded the Milwaukee private school voucher program statewide. Kaufert said he would continue the expansion of school choice.
He also said Wisconsin’s public schools are adequately funded.
“Public school spending has increased every single year of the state budget,” Kaufert said. “To people that say public schools aren’t being funded adequately, public schools are.”
Public school spending has increased every year except in 2011, when Kaufert joined Republicans in passing a budget with an $834 million cut to Wisconsin’s K-12 budget. The lost funding to schools was offset by requiring teachers to contribute more to retirement and health insurance premiums. Between 2002 and 2020, Wisconsin’s public school system experienced the third-lowest school funding increase in the nation, and the state’s growing school voucher system continues to divert hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars toward private schools each year.
Shukoski, on the other hand, is critical of the voucher program and said that public education spending has to increase.
“Schools in this district have closed. My elementary school has closed,” Shukoski said. “This is what happens when you defund or you underfund schools for 14 years.”
On environmental issues, Kaufert said that “climate change probably exists.”
He also said that it “is more of a global problem than it is a Wisconsin problem,” adding that more has to be done federally and internationally to address the issue.
Shukoski cited his environmental work at Kimberly Clark when speaking about climate change, saying in a statement on his campaign website that he had worked closely with the Department of Natural Resources and had helped improve environmental standards at several Kimberly Clark facilities.
Shukoski also called for increased funding in the event of future climate emergencies, citing recent disasters such as Hurricane Helene.
“We all know climate change is real,” Shukoski said. “When we fire our scientists and we don’t fund the DNR or underfund, that hurts the state.”
Kaufert spoke against accepting increased federal funding for BadgerCare. He also warned that federal child care subsidies would be “one-time money” and that it could lead to increased tax costs.
Shukoski said that he would support programs to increase child care funding in the state, saying that “our working families need the help.” He also favors BadgerCare expansion, saying it would “improve healthcare access, support local hospitals, and prevent medical bankruptcies” in a statement on his campaign website.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
For the first time in over a decade, control of the state Assembly is up for grabs after new legislative maps were approved in February, ending gerrymandering in Wisconsin — at least for now. Democrats now have a shot at a slim majority in one of the Legislature’s two houses, and the outcome of eight tight races could determine whether they flip the 99-member chamber.
There are 14 Assembly races to watch in districts with a partisan makeup that skew less than 10 percentage points in favor of either Democrats or Republicans, and eight of them are true toss-ups. The partisan splits of Assembly Districts 26, 30, 61, 85, 88, 89, 92 and 94 each hover within 3%, according to a Wisconsin Watch analysis of past voting patterns. Four of them are a tick more Republican, and the other four lean barely Democratic.
If election results align with the partisan lean — however slight — of each district, that would put Republicans at a one-member majority of 50-49 in the Assembly. If Democrats keep the four seats and flip one of the four Republican-leaning toss-ups, they will emerge with a 50-49 majority.
To calculate the partisan makeup of each district, Wisconsin Watch used a composite of election results in each district from the 2018 gubernatorial race, 2020 presidential race and 2022 gubernatorial race.
The additional six Assembly races in districts with a partisan makeup that skew less than 10 percentage points in favor of either party are worth watching but likely won’t be as close as the eight toss-ups. Those are districts 14, 21, 41, 49, 53 and 91. Four lean Democratic, while two lean Republican. Assuming the results of these races align with partisan makeup of each district, the fight for a narrow Assembly majority will come down to the aforementioned eight races.
Even a narrow Republican majority would be a remarkable turnaround from 2022. Republicans currently hold a 64-34 majority in the Legislature, with one Democratic vacancy.
The Republican majority in the state Senate is not likely to flip this year — only half of the seats are up for election this cycle — but Democrats are looking to make gains that could help them win a majority in 2026, when the map is more friendly to them.
In 2011, GOP lawmakers under former Gov. Scott Walker shaped Wisconsin’s legislative boundaries to secure a strong Republican majority in this 50-50 swing state, creating one of the most extreme and effective gerrymanders in the nation. A federal redistricting case challenging the Republican gerrymander of the Assembly went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018, where it was thrown out on a technicality.
In 2012, former President Barack Obama won Wisconsin by more than 200,000 votes. Despite receiving less than 50% of the total votes that year, Republicans won 60 of the 99 seats in the Assembly and held on to their Senate majority.
With the help of skewed maps, the GOP’s lock on the state Legislature persisted for over a decade. That changed last year. The election of liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz led to a liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The new court tossed out the still-GOP gerrymandered maps approved by the previous conservative-majority Supreme Court after the 2020 Census.
Earlier this year, Republican lawmakers agreed to pass Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ proposed legislative maps to prevent the state’s liberal high court from drawing the new districts. It was the first time a politically divided Wisconsin Legislature and governor agreed on legislative maps.
Read about the eight toss-up districts that could decide the fate of the state Assembly here:
Assembly District 26
This toss-up district encompasses the city of Sheboygan and runs south along the lakefront toward Oostburg. It leans slightly Democratic.
Freshman Rep. Amy Binsfeld, R-Sheboygan, will face Democratic newcomer Joe Sheehan, a former Sheboygan Area School District superintendent and executive director of the Sheboygan County Economic Development Corp. This new toss-up reunites the Democratic-leaning city of Sheboygan, which was split in half under the state’s previous, gerrymandered districts. Binsfeld served as chair of the Speaker’s Task Force on Truancy. She was also the lead author on a constitutional amendment that would require a two-thirds supermajority of the Legislature to approve sales, corporate and income tax increases.
This western Wisconsin toss-up district encompasses River Falls, extending north to Hudson. It leans slightly Republican.
Rep. Shannon Zimmerman, R-River Falls, seeks a fifth term in the Assembly. He served on the Speaker’s Task Force on Artificial Intelligence and also serves on the Legislature’s powerful Joint Finance Committee. He faces a challenge from Democrat Alison Page, a former nurse who eventually became CEO of Western Wisconsin Health. She’s running to protect abortion access in Wisconsin and improve health care in rural parts of the state.
This toss-up district covers the southwestern Milwaukee villages of Greendale and Hales Corners and parts of Greenfield. It leans slightly Democratic.
This district features a rematch from 2022. Freshman Rep. Bob Donovan, R-Greenfield, will once again face off against Democrat LuAnn Bird, whom he defeated by just a few hundred voters. Donovan served on the Milwaukee Common Council for 20 years. In the Legislature, he serves as vice chair of the Assembly Committee on Local Government. He’s running for re-election because the district “needs a tested fighter for public safety and the interests of the common man, woman, and child, to bridge the gap between Madison and local governments,” according to his campaign website. Bird, who is a former executive director and lobbyist for the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, is running because “extreme MAGA politicians are taking away women’s rights to reproductive health care” and “blocking common-sense gun safety laws that would save lives and make our communities safer,” according to her campaign website.
This toss-up district covers Wausau, extending to also include Weston to the east. It leans slightly Republican.
Incumbent Rep. Patrick Snyder, R-Schofield, faces a challenge from Democrat Yee Leng Xiong, who served on the DC Everest School Board and the Marathon County Board of Supervisors where he advocated for mental health services in schools, expanding a 911 dispatch line and enhancing public safety providers. He wants to fund domestic violence and sexual assault service providers and focus on the economy, environment and health care. Snyder, who has served in the Assembly since 2017, has spent time on the Schofield City Council. He has worked to improve broadband expansion, cut taxes, advocate for veterans and police, and alleviate the workforce crisis.
This toss-up district covers the southeastern part of Green Bay, including Allouez and Bellevue, and stretches down toward De Pere. It leans slightly Republican.
First-time candidates Republican Ben Franklin and Democrat Christy Welch, both of De Pere, will face off in the Nov. 5 election. Franklin is an Air Force veteran and small business owner. Welch, who serves as chair of the Democratic Party of Brown County, is centering her campaign around Medicaid and child care expansion, increased public education funding and reproductive rights.
Assembly District 89
This southwestern Green Bay district includes Ashwaubenon and borders the Fox River to the east. It is a toss-up district that leans slightly Democratic.
Two candidates with law enforcement experience will vie for the toss-up seat in the Nov. 5 election. Patrick Buckley of Green Bay, a Republican and chair of the Brown County Board, is a former Green Bay police officer and business owner. Ryan Spaude of Green Bay, a Democrat, serves as a prosecutor in the Brown County District Attorney’s Office.
Assembly District 92
This western Wisconsin toss-up district encompasses Menomonie and Chippewa Falls and lies to the north of Eau Claire. It leans slightly Republican.
Incumbent Rep. Clint Moses, R-Menomonie, faces former Rep. Joseph Plouff, D-Menomonie. First elected in 2020, Moses chairs the Assembly Committee on Health, Aging and Long-Term Care. He also serves on the Assembly Agriculture Committee. Plouff served in the Assembly between 1997 and 2005. He’s running again to curb gun violence, protect the environment and “make Wisconsin work for the people.”
This western Wisconsin toss-up district covers parts of La Crosse and Trempealeau counties. It includes the cities of Galesville and Onalaska and the villages of Ettrick, Holmen and West Salem, along with part of the north side of La Crosse. It leans slightly Democratic.
Incumbent Rep. Steve Doyle, D-Onalaska, faces a rematch against Republican Ryan Huebsch, of Onalaska, in the Nov. 5 election. Huebsch lost to Doyle by only 756 votes in 2022. Doyle has represented the 94th District since 2011. He has served on several bipartisan legislative task forces, including one on suicide prevention. Huebsch is endorsed by the La Crosse County sheriff, Wisconsin Right to Life, the NRA and multiple state senators and representatives. His father, Mike Huebsch, previously represented the 94th District for 16 years, served as Assembly speaker and served in Gov. Scott Walker’s Cabinet.
With Election Day almost upon us, many Wisconsin voters may feel anxious about facing unexpected obstacles, such as an intimidating poll watcher, or an election official challenging their eligibility.
That’s understandable, given the bitter legal fights and climate of suspicion surrounding recent election cycles.
Here’s a guide to some questions you may have on Election Day, issues you could face and what to do in those situations.
People are intimidating me at a drop box. What should I do?
Since the Wisconsin Supreme Court legalized drop boxes in July, election officials and municipal boards across the state have authorized the use of around 80 drop boxes. But drop boxes have been a target of suspicion from conservatives since 2020, when Donald Trump and his allies began fanning conspiracy theories about them.
Residents of the municipalities with drop boxes can return their ballots to them (check your municipality for more information because some municipalities close their drop boxes before Election Day), and people are also free to observe those ballot boxes. Both groups are subject to a few rules.
Voters can return only their own ballot to a drop box — no one else’s — unless they are assisting a voter who is hospitalized or has a disability, the Wisconsin Elections Commission said. In other words, you can’t return a ballot for your nondisabled spouse, but you can likely do so for an elderly parent who is in the hospital or uses a wheelchair.
Conspiracy theories about drop boxes being used for fraud have inspired calls for citizens to monitor them. They’re allowed to do that, but “not if the watching interferes with voting,” the election commission stated. People who interrupt voting proceedings risk six months in jail, and those who “prevent the free exercise of the franchise” through abduction or fraud risk a felony charge that carries up to a 3½-year prison sentence.
If somebody impedes your ability to vote at a drop box, you can contact law enforcement. But a person simply watching you put your ballot in the box at a reasonable distance likely isn’t in the wrong.
Somebody challenged my eligibility. Can I still vote?
Like many other states, Wisconsin has a process allowing election officials and eligible voters to challenge a voter’s eligibility. With Republicans drawing attention to the issue of noncitizen voting — which doesn’t really happen much — we may see more voters being challenged this year.
During in-person voting, a poll worker or any Wisconsin voter can challenge somebody’s eligibility to vote based on assumptions or specific knowledge about age, residency, felony status, citizenship, or certain other criteria. State law also allows clerks challenging a voter’s registration form on the basis of citizenship to ask that person to provide proof of citizenship.
But a challenge “based on an individual’s ethnicity, accent, or inability to speak English is unacceptable,” a Wisconsin Elections Commission manual says.
When a challenge happens, the poll worker places the challenger under oath and asks the person to provide the reason and evidence for the challenge. The challenged voter can provide a rebuttal, and the challenger can either withdraw the challenge or stick with it.
If the challenge isn’t withdrawn, the voter takes an oath of eligibility and proceeds to vote, with the election official marking on the ballot that it was challenged.
After the election, the local canvassing board can disqualify the ballot if its members can prove that the person who cast it wasn’t eligible.
Note that challengers have limits, too. If a challenger appears to be disrupting the voting process frivolously, an election official can issue a warning or summon law enforcement to remove the person.
Do I need to worry about election observers?
Not if they’re obeying the rules.
Anybody who’s not a candidate up for election is allowed to observe elections being conducted at a polling place, central count facility and other voting sites. Observers have no designated duties. They’re simply people who want to watch election proceedings, some to ensure compliance with election rules and others to understand how the voting process works.
Election observers are typically a welcome presence for election officials. But some observers can be unruly, and others may not be familiar with the rules of observing an election. The Wisconsin Elections Commission provides a primer on what they can and can’t do. Here are some of the key parts of it.
Election observers can’t electioneer, talk about the contests on the ballot, handle election documents, make calls, or interact with voters unless requested. At a polling place and clerk’s office, observers can’t use video and still cameras. At a central count location, however, video and still cameras are allowed as long as they’re not disruptive and don’t show any completed ballots.
If you see potential wrongdoing, or if an observer is intimidating you at your polling site, you can report the activity to an election official at the site.
I’m not registered to vote yet. Can I still vote?
Wisconsin allows for same-day voter registration on Election Day, but not the Saturday, Sunday or Monday before. For those seeking to register on Election Day, you need to bring to your polling site proof of residence along with a photo ID to vote. Proof of residence documents must contain the voter’s name and current address. A state ID or driver’s license with your current address could serve as both your proof of residence and voting ID, as long as it has a photo.
What if I don’t have a document required to vote?
In Wisconsin, people seeking to vote must bring a photo ID. People seeking to register must bring proof of residence and provide the number on a state-issued ID or the last four digits of their Social Security number, information that allows election officials to check registants’ eligibility.
Without that documentation, you can cast provisional ballots in two instances:
The first is if you have a valid state-issued ID but were unable or unwilling to list the ID number when you registered. The second is if you are a registered voter but unable or unwilling to provide identification.
In either situation, you would be handed a provisional ballot, which election officials can count only if you provide the necessary documentation to poll workers by 8 p.m. on Election Day, or to their municipal clerk by 4 p.m. on the Friday following the election.
How can I make sure my absentee ballot gets counted?
A key step is to fill everything out in the presence of an adult witness. That witness can be at a distance as you complete your ballot, so you have privacy for your selections, but witnesses’ presence and the information they add to the ballot return envelope will matter.
On that envelope — once it’s sealed with the ballot inside — voters should include their complete name as it’s listed in the voter records and address. There’s also a blank to indicate which ward or aldermanic district you live in, which you can find by entering your voter information at myvote.wi.gov/Whats-On-My-Ballot.
Then, witnesses should provide their name, address and signature on the envelope. Witnesses must be U.S. citizens and at least 18 years old, and they can’t be a candidate on the ballot unless it’s the sitting municipal clerk.
A Wisconsin court ruling now allows for some leniency in the witness address section — an incomplete address is OK as long as an election official can discern where a voter lives — but the surest way to make the ballot count is for you and the witness to provide as much detail as possible.
How late can I mail my absentee ballot?
It’s probably too late already. Although some election officials may have arranged with their local post office to speed up ballot deliveries, the U.S. Postal Service and the Wisconsin Elections Commission suggested that voters mail their ballots back no later than Oct. 29. Many municipalities in Wisconsin route their mail through a different state or Milwaukee, adding to delivery times.
At this point, it’s best to return your absentee ballot to a drop box, if there’s an open one in your town, or in person to an election official. Check your local election website or call your clerk to find out whether drop boxes are available, and where it’s best to return a ballot.
How do I know whether my absentee ballot got counted or arrived on time?
Voters can go to myvote.wi.gov/Track-My-Ballot to see how their ballot moves through different stages of the absentee ballot process. Type your information there to see whether an election official received your absentee request, sent your ballot and received your completed ballot. An orange box indicates an issue with your absentee ballot that you should call your clerk about.
It can take up to seven days after sending it in for your ballot to be marked as received. If it’s been more than that, give your clerk a call.
How do I find my polling place?
On Election Day in Wisconsin, you can cast a ballot only at the one polling site that serves your ward. If you show up at the wrong site, poll workers may be able to help you find the right one. But they’re not able to issue you provisional ballots; you’ll have to cast a ballot at your designated polling site.
Wisconsin doesn’t have a centralized system to report election results. Rather, municipalities send unofficial results to their counties, and the state’s 72 counties are required to post those results to their website. That said, you don’t need to go county by county to find who’s winning statewide. National and local media will be compiling those results and posting them to their websites.
The big question is when the count will be complete. Madison typically sends its completed results to the Dane County clerk around 10 p.m., City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl said.
In Milwaukee — whose results the overall statewide outcomes will depend on — it’s likely going to take a little longer. Absentee ballots are processed and counted at a single location, and since state law prevents any pre-processing or counting until 7 a.m. on Election Day, city officials will have an estimated 80,000 absentee ballots to count beginning in the early morning.
That’s less than half as many as in the 2020 election, when the city had 169,000 ballots and finished counting at 3 a.m. on Wednesday.
Still, for this election “the estimate is sometime after midnight,” city spokesperson Melissa Howard said.
That time accounts for the counting and a relatively new, transparency-focused process to have city officials witness an election official exporting results from the central count tabulators and then transport those results to the county, Howard said.
Because smaller municipalities typically tabulate results quicker, and Republican voters tend to be clustered in small, rural areas, it may appear from early returns that Republicans are winning handily in the state.
But that’s simply a matter of which ballots, and how many of them, have been counted. The numbers should be expected to change significantly as results come in from larger municipalities that take longer to count their ballots and have more Democratic voters. There may not be a clear picture of who wins Wisconsin until the morning after Election Day, or later.
Remember, too, that these election results are still unofficial. Results can change through the canvassing process and recounts. But the unofficial results should give you a pretty clear indication of which candidates won which race.
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
Wisconsin Watch is previewing legislative races in toss-up districts ahead of the Nov. 5 election by focusing on key issues for voters and what candidates say they will do to address them. See more comprehensive information about the elections in our statewide voter guide.
Thanks to new legislative maps, a Sheboygan Democrat, Joe Sheehan, has a chance at winning a toss-up district that could help flip the Republican-controlled Assembly in November. Sheehan will face off against incumbent Rep. Amy Binsfeld in the 26th District where housing, child care and education are among key issues.
The district now covers the entire city of Sheboygan, including the city’s UW-Green Bay branch campus. Voters in the majority blue city had no chance of electing a Democratic representative to the Assembly after Republicans redrew Wisconsin’s districts to secure a majority in 2011. Under those gerrymandered maps, Sheboygan was blatantly split in half, creating two districts that stretched into rural areas favoring Republicans.
Under new legislative maps signed into law in February, the district is a toss-up with just under a 3-point Democratic lean, according to a Wisconsin Watch analysis of past voting patterns.
Sheehan told Wisconsin Watch he likely wouldn’t have entered the race if it weren’t for the new maps. He spent 20 years as superintendent of the Sheboygan Area School District and later served as executive director of the Sheboygan County Economic Development Corp. before retiring.
Mary Lynne Donohue, a Democrat who ran for the district in 2020 as a “sacrificial lamb,” told Wisconsin Watch that for years, left-leaning candidates almost never entered the race.
“That’s one of the horrible characteristics of a gerrymander,” Donohue said. “People stop participating because they know they can’t win.”
Donohue was one of the original plaintiffs in a federal redistricting case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court, challenging the Republican gerrymander of the state Assembly. The case was thrown out on a technical issue. In a more recent legal challenge, a liberal majority Wisconsin Supreme Court tossed out the state’s maps that were redrawn after the 2020 Census to still favor Republicans, leading to Republican lawmakers and the Democratic governor agreeing on the current maps.
Democratic energy in Sheboygan is extraordinarily high this election year, Donohue said.
Binsfeld was first elected in 2022. She currently represents the 27th District, but decided to run in this district after being drawn into the same district as longtime Rep. Paul Tittl, R-Manitowoc, in the new 25th. Binsfeld serves as chair of the Speaker’s Task Force on Truancy. She did not respond to Wisconsin Watch’s interview requests for this story.
Sheehan has raised nearly $1 million more than Binsfeld, with the Assembly Democratic Campaign Committee contributing more than $1 million of the $1.27 million his campaign has raised. The Republican Assembly Campaign Committee has contributed more than $220,000 to Binsfeld’s $330,000 fundraising total.
Joe Sheehan, a Sheboygan Democrat, poses outside the State Capitol in Madison, Wis., in this photo from his campaign Facebook page. (https://www.facebook.com/sheehanforassembly/)
Housing
Housing in Sheboygan has tightened, and the supply of all types of housing has not kept pace with household and employment growth. One recent study found that the city could be in need of more than 5,200 housing units over the next five years.
Sheehan said the solution is to lower the cost of a new home for buyers while still allowing developers to make the best profit, which requires subsidies from the state. The state has the ability to incentivize the development of certain types of housing, such as workforce and entry-level housing, he said. If elected, he says he will consult with housing experts.
He is not in favor of allowing municipalities to establish rent control, adding that this creates an artificial market that is not sustainable long term.
In an interview with WisconsinEye, Binsfeld said that she is also against rent control and that housing is best dealt with at the local, private level. When asked if the state has any role to play, she added that the Legislature can provide some grants for specific housing projects to incentivize developers.
Rep. Amy Binsfeld, R-Sheboygan, is seen during a Wisconsin Assembly session on June 7, 2023, in the State Capitol in Madison, Wis. (Drake White-Bergey / Wisconsin Watch)
Child care
Affordable and accessible child care has been a persistent issue across the state of Wisconsin, and cities like Sheboygan are no exception.
A Wisconsin Department of Children and Families child care supply and demand survey recently found that almost 60% of providers in Wisconsin have unused classroom capacity due to staff shortages. Providers report that if they were able to operate at full capacity, they could accept up to 33,000 more children. The state is losing hundreds of child care providers every year, according to DCF.
The Economic Policy Institute found that a typical family in Wisconsin would have to spend a third of its income on child care for an infant and a 4-year-old. Based on 2016 data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Department of Health and Human Services deemed child care affordable if it costs up to 7% of a family’s income.
The median hourly wage for a child care worker in Wisconsin is $13.78, according to May 2023 estimates from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Binsfeld authored a bipartisan bill signed into law by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers this year, increasing Wisconsin’s child and dependent care tax credit.
Along with her Republican colleagues, Binsfeld also helped author a slate of child care bills during the most recent legislative session.
The GOP-backed package included bills that would have allowed parents to contribute $10,000 in pre-tax money to an account to pay for child care and established a new category of large family child care centers that could serve between four and 12 children.
Others would have lowered the minimum teaching age of assistant child care providers from 18 to 16 and increased the permitted ratio of children to workers in child care facilities. Providers and advocates argued these efforts would not help solve current challenges in the child care field.
None of the proposals became law.
Sheehan said those kinds of bills are not long-term solutions. He did not identify or express support for other types of child care policy, but said if elected, he would consult experts, parents and caregivers on the issue.
Education
Sheboygan is one of 192 school districts that went or will go to referendum this year, which is almost half of all Wisconsin school districts. Many districts, including Sheboygan, have raised concerns that state aid has not kept up with inflation. In 2009, the state decoupled per-pupil revenue limits from inflation. Districts have had to manage tighter budgets ever since.
While Sheboygan’s public school district is set to go to a capital referendum in November, many districts are increasingly going to an operational referendum. Wisconsin’s per-pupil K-12 spending increased at a lower rate than every other state in the nation besides Indiana and Idaho between 2002 and 2020, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum.
Last year, Binsfeld voted in favor of legislation that increased per-pupil revenue limits in public schools and increased tax funding for private voucher schools at the same time. It was passed as part of a compromise between Republican lawmakers and Evers.
Sheehan told Wisconsin Watch he would not have supported that bill, adding that it sets public schools further behind. He expressed concerns over the amount of state funding going toward private school vouchers compared with per-pupil state aid, a figure that doesn’t account for local property taxes.
“We’ve always supported parochial schools. They do their job, they do it well. That’s a choice people make,” Sheehan said. “But to fund them, and not only fund them, but at a higher level, that’s just wrong.”
He said the state has fallen behind in public school funding over the last decade, “and that needs to change.” He added that recurring referendums are divisive to communities and school districts.
When asked about K-12 education in a recent WisconsinEye interview, Binsfeld expressed support for school choice and said investing more money in special education will be a top priority for her if reelected.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
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Republicans and Democrats are looking to college as a key part of their strategy for electing their presidential and Senate candidates with the candidates making several appearances on college campuses in Wisconsin.
College students voting in their first presidential election are slightly more conservative than their older counterparts, but there’s also a growing gender gap with women more likely to support Democrats.
A new College Democrats chapter at Madison College seeks to mobilize more students on a campus that often gets overlooked.
With Election Day squarely in view, both Democrats and Republicans have shifted their focus to turning out every possible voter — including first-time presidential election voters on college campuses.
Every vote matters in Wisconsin. The last two presidential races in this critical battleground state have each been decided by about 21,000 votes, or 1%. And next week’s contest between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump could be even closer, with polls in Wisconsin and other battleground states suggesting there’s little daylight separating the rivals.
Those margins of victory happen to be less than half the number of students currently enrolled at just UW-Madison. It’s also just a fraction of the more than 160,000 four-year students at UW System campuses and Marquette University as of the start of the 2024-25 academic year — and that doesn’t include the thousands of other students who attend smaller private institutions spread across Wisconsin.
Many of those students come from out of state, establish residency on or near campus and are eligible to vote — establishing a bulky pool of potential voters for campaigns to target. On UW System campuses in 2023, for example, some 51,000 students were from states other than Wisconsin. As of the start of this school year, 57% of Marquette’s 11,300 non-international students were from out of state.
College students could be the margin maker in the presidential race. With a week to go, both sides are responding accordingly.
Democrats invest in college campuses
Trudging through a hilly Madison neighborhood, Joey Wendtland and Ty Schanhofer, a pair of UW-Madison students, were on a mission: Win votes for Democrats.
Earnestly, the two, along with a small group of other student volunteers, knocked on doors up and down the streets immediately west of the university’s towering football stadium in a neighborhood home to a mixture of students and non-students.
Each encounter with a resident followed the same formula: Do you have plans to vote? Who are you voting for? What issues do you care about most? Here’s where Kamala Harris stands on them.
“Three votes per ward was the difference in 2020,” Wendtland told one voter as he implored her to get three friends to vote — a nod to President Joe Biden’s narrow victory in the state four years ago.
Democrats are investing heavily this year in turning out students on college campuses. The Wisconsin Democratic coordinated campaign, a collaboration between the Harris campaign and the state Democratic Party, has seven full-time organizers dedicated to college campuses across Wisconsin in addition to a youth organizing director, a Harris campaign official told Wisconsin Watch. Many of those organizers have been on campuses since the fall of 2023, looking to build relationships with local College Democrats chapters, student volunteers and allied student organizations.
Ty Schanhofer, 21, volunteer coordinator of College Democrats of UW-Madison, canvasses a neighborhood west of campus on Oct. 17, 2024, in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Over the past year, the coordinated campaign has also been experimenting with a “relational organizing program,” the official said. Using a smartphone app, students are able to import their existing contacts and communicate with their friends, sharing material from a content library of premade, Wisconsin-specific infographics, videos and even memes about Harris and the presidential race.
Peer-to-peer organizing is the most effective way to motivate college voters, several student activists told Wisconsin Watch.
“The most effective way to get young people on your side — and what we’ve seen in the past election cycles — is just young people talking to young people,” said Matthew Lehner, chair of College Democrats of Wisconsin and a senior at UW-Eau Claire.
College students are better able to engage with other college students because they care about the same issues, he added, pointing to climate change, gun control, increasing the minimum wage and abortion rights as issues that many young people have shared views on.
Wendtland, a senior and chair of College Democrats of UW-Madison, said it was critical to “meet students where they’re at” and “talk to them about the issues they care about.”
But it’s also important “to generate that enthusiasm among our student base,” he said.
UW-Madison College Democrats has hosted events with prominent Madison-area Democrats, like U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan and state Rep. Francesca Hong, to get people excited about next week’s election, Wendtland said. The group has also hosted more casual events, including bingo nights and bracelet-making events, to provide a forum for students to gather and get energized about the Democratic ticket.
Democrats are also hoping to make inroads on campuses that haven’t been front of mind in past elections. A College Democrats chapter was formed last spring at Madison Area Technical College and now has around 50 members, according to Kai Brito, a founding member of the student organization.
In previous election cycles, Brito said, he and other students at MATC felt like they had been forgotten and that they didn’t have a voice in politics.
“But now we’re saying, ‘No, we do.’ And I think it’s really important when you have someone taking the lead and saying, “Yeah, we have a voice, and we’re going to use it,’” he said. “I think we’re going to have hopefully a much higher turnout than we would have if we didn’t exist, because we’re keeping the conversation alive on campus.”
College Republicans push forward, face hurdles
Even during a busy afternoon on the campus, few students approached the College Republicans table at UW-Madison, an overwhelmingly liberal campus. A pair of students snagged Trump signs, and others accepted fliers for an upcoming event with U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde. One student, who said he studies nuclear engineering, stopped to talk about Trump’s nuclear policy.
Getting students to vote Republican is more of an uphill battle on typically liberal college campuses. Undeterred, conservative student groups on campuses like UW-Madison and UW-Eau Claire press on with their efforts to appeal to young voters.
“A lot of the voters that we’re trying to get aren’t people who typically vote Democrat, but people who just typically don’t vote,” said Tatiana Bobrowicz, president of the UW-Eau Claire College Republicans.
A nuclear engineering student stops to talk with Thomas Pyle, UW-Madison College Republicans chair, and Korina Thomas about former President Donald Trump’s nuclear policy on Oct. 23, 2024, in Madison, Wis. (Hallie Claflin / Wisconsin Watch)
In Madison, the student group has set up a table on campus nearly every day in the weeks leading up to the election. Thomas Pyle, a college senior and chair of the UW-Madison College Republicans, said their efforts have been greeted by glares and even protesters in years past. Bobrowicz said students passing by their table on UW-Eau Claire’s campus have flipped them off and harassed them.
“Among Republicans, it’s more difficult, especially here at UW-Madison,” Pyle told Wisconsin Watch. “Having your voice heard, feeling comfortable in your vote and what you believe is really difficult when you’re surrounded by people who disagree with you.”
Turning Point Action, College Republicans of America, Young Republicans, the American Conservation Coalition and Trump Force 47 are among the larger conservative groups that have been active across Wisconsin’s campuses this year. Student groups also draw funding and support from their county GOPs, the Republican Party of Wisconsin and the Tommy Thompson Center on Public Leadership.
“It’s really the lose by less mentality,” Hilario Deleon, 23, chair of the Milwaukee County Republican Party, said of college voters. “We’re not going to win areas like Milwaukee outright, we’re not going to win Dane County outright, but if we increase our voter percentage even by a few points, we win the state.”
Young people are concerned about jobs and the economy, making Trump an attractive candidate, according to Pyle. The Democratic Party “demonizes” young men, and they don’t feel welcome, Deleon said, adding that Trump’s message resonates with college students in the workforce.
“I think it’s gotten the attention of a lot of students, especially those who work in the service industry with the no tax on tips, no tax on overtime,” Deleon said, referencing Trump’s proposals. “That’s huge. That’s a huge win for young voters.”
A pair of students stop to talk with Thomas Pyle and Korina Thomas at the UW-Madison College Republicans table about their upcoming event with Republican U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde on Oct. 23, 2024, in Madison, Wis. (Hallie Claflin / Wisconsin Watch)
Bobrowicz said she and her colleagues are trying to make Republican politics more fun, akin to how young women have engaged with the Harris campaign through the vice president’s appearance on Alex Cooper’s “Call Her Daddy” podcast and Charli XCX campaign merch. From friendship bracelets to catchy stickers, the GOP Eau Claire campus group is trying to make its conservative message appealing to young women.
Meanwhile, Trump appeals to young men on his own, Bobrowicz said.
“(Trump’s) personality is a personality that attracts young men. He has that business-like personality,” she told Wisconsin Watch in an interview. “You can tell he was a former celebrity and has that catchy type personality that I think young men look up to in a sense, and find kind of fun.”
The UW-Eau Claire College Republicans also recently started a podcast called “Right on Campus” to attempt to reach young listeners. They discuss current issues and what it’s like to be conservative students on a liberal campus.
The student groups have also hosted events with Republican speakers, including former Gov. Thompson, Hovde, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, to get young voters engaged and energized.
Finally, given the competitive nature of Wisconsin, Bobrowicz said, College Republicans often encourage out-of-state UW-Eau Claire students to vote in Wisconsin instead of in their home states, and they even try to get in-state students to vote in Eau Claire instead of their hometowns.
Swirling political environment
The 2024 race comes at a politically unique time among young voters, who have exerted meaningful influence in recent high-profile elections in Wisconsin.
In 2022, young voters helped fuel Gov. Tony Evers’ reelection, which, at 3.4%, was a landslide by Wisconsin standards. Wisconsin had the highest young voter turnout in the country in 2022, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, with 48.7% of 18- to 24-year-olds casting a ballot in the election.
In April 2023, during a nationally watched Wisconsin Supreme Court race, turnout on certain college campuses exploded, according to a Washington Post analysis. The energy among young voters that spring, at least in part, helped fuel Justice Janet Protasiewicz’s commanding 11-point victory — which flipped the high court to liberal control.
But this year’s contest between Harris and Trump could feature a twist: America’s youngest voters, 18- to 24-year-olds, report being more conservative than voters even just a few years older than them.
In a Harvard Youth Poll released in September, 23% of 18- to 24-year-olds identified as conservative compared to 29% who identified as liberal. By comparison, just 19% of 25- to 29-year-olds identified as conservative while 33% identified as liberal.
There’s also a growing gender gap among young voters, according to a Gallup analysis. Between 2001 and 2007, 28% of women and 25% of men ages 18 to 29 identified as liberal. Jump ahead to the period between 2017 and 2024, and a 15-point gap appears: 40% of young women identify as liberal while just 25% of young men say the same thing.
The shifts could mean campaign messages from past cycles might not resonate on campuses the same way today.
Joey Wendtland, 21, chair of College Democrats of UW-Madison, canvasses with stacks of literature supporting Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris and U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin on Oct. 17, 2024, in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
The 2024 campaign is unfolding as many Wisconsin Republicans have become increasingly hostile toward the UW System and college students.
During the state’s most recent budget negotiations, Republican lawmakers cut the system’s funding by $32 million in an escalation of a fight over diversity, equity and inclusion programs and sendings on college campuses. They set funding aside for programs aimed at growing the state’s workforce and eventually provided it to the UW System in February 2024.
Late last year, some Republican lawmakers also signaled they didn’t want out-of-state students to vote in Wisconsin: They proposed legislation that would have required the UW System Board of Regents to provide first-year out-of-state students with an application to request a ballot to vote in their home states.
When asked whether Republican policies affecting the UW System impact students’ votes, Pyle and Bobrowicz, the College Republicans leaders, said most students likely aren’t aware of it. Deleon agreed, adding that he spoke out against the party’s attempts to discourage out-of-state college voters from voting in Wisconsin because it sends a bad message to young people.
“These hostilities are happening because of their love for the state and because of their love for this institution,” Pyle said. “I think they’ve seen some issues with it in the past, and they want to do more to protect it, ensure our institution remains a world class institution… and that our taxpayers aren’t being stuck with a burden.”
‘Margin of victory’
In the waning days of the campaign, the focus on Wisconsin campuses has increased.
During a recent trip to Wisconsin, Harris held two events on UW campuses. First, she and billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban met with a class of UW-Milwaukee business students to discuss the vice president’s proposed economic policies. Then, later that day, she and Cuban held a UW-La Crosse rally that drew a crowd of 3,000, according to an estimate from her campaign.
Earlier this month, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic candidate for vice president, made a campaign stop at UW-Eau Claire with U.S. Sens. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisconsin, and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota.
Kai Brito, College Democrats of Madison College treasurer, helped start a new chapter at the Madison technical college last spring. He says it felt like students on the campus had been forgotten in previous cycles, but now they have a voice. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Walz, who spoke to a group of students, was introduced by Kirsten Thell, president of the UW-Eau Claire College Democrats. Standing in front of a wall of “BLUGOLDS FOR HARRIS-WALZ” signs, Walz declared, “We need you. This is not a hyperbole. I think it’s very realistic to believe that this race will be won going through Wisconsin and going through some of these counties.”
On Wednesday, Harris will hold a get out the vote rally on UW-Madison’s campus, a campaign official confirmed to Wisconsin Watch. She’ll be joined by Gracie Abrams, Mumford & Sons and other musicians.
Prominent Republican voices have also zeroed in on college campuses. Conservative commentator and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk made a fiery visit to UW-Madison in September on the first stop of his “You’re Being Brainwashed” tour. He made another appearance over the weekend with the NELK Boys, a right-wing influencer group on YouTube.
Kirk said 120 new voters were registered in just two hours during his first visit to the UW-Madison campus.
On Tuesday, Hovde will join American Conservation Coalition Action on UW-Madison’s campus for a campaign event focused on energy policy and the economy. Tony Wied, a Republican businessman who is running for the U.S. House in the Green Bay area, will hold an early voting event on the campus of St. Norbert College, a small Catholic college in De Pere.
And while the approach from both sides is different — a centralized, coordinated effort from Democrats while Republicans rely on grassroots and allied organizations — the flurry of recent campus events underscores how valuable the votes of college voters can be.
“College students will be the margin of victory in 2024,” Lehner, the UW-Eau Claire student and College Democrats leader, predicted. “So I think young people are enthusiastic about making their voice heard.”
Wisconsin Watch reporter Khushboo Rathore contributed reporting to this story.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Public education funding, child care affordability and tax cuts are key issues in the race for the 85th Assembly District — a toss-up district in north central Wisconsin that encompasses Wausau and Weston.
Rep. Patrick Snyder, R-Schofield, faces a challenge from Yee Leng Xiong, a school board and Marathon County Board member who also serves as executive director of the Hmong American Center.
Snyder has served in the Legislature since 2017. Prior to serving in the Assembly, he was a morning radio host for WSAU, and he served as outreach director for U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy. Snyder was drawn into the 87th Assembly District under new voting maps approved by lawmakers in February, moving him out of the 85th by a couple of blocks. If he wins, he said he and his wife plan to continue renting an apartment in the district.
The district is among the most closely divided in the state, according to a Wisconsin Watch analysis of recent voting patterns, and could be influential in determining which party controls the Assembly at the start of the next legislative session in January. Xiong has knocked on 7,000 doors in an area where Democrats are hoping not only to win an Assembly seat, but help Vice President Kamala Harris and U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin improve their margins in rural areas.
Here’s where both candidates stand on important issues in the district.
Yee Leng Xiong, a school board and Marathon County Board member who also serves as executive director of the Hmong American Center, is running as a Democrat in the 85th Assembly District race. (Courtesy of Yee Leng Xiong campaign.)
Rep. Patrick Snyder, R-Schofield, is seen at the State Capitol on Jan. 22, 2020 in Madison, Wis. He has served in the Legislature since 2017. (Coburn Dukehart / Wisconsin Watch)
Education funding
In an interview with Wisconsin Watch, Xiong said the state needs to provide additional funding to public schools in the state.
“When we invest in our teachers, when we invest in public education, we’re investing in the future of our nation,” he said.
In particular, he said the state should fund programs that help recruit and retain teachers and provide additional dollars for students with special needs.
He also said lawmakers “need to look at the funding formula (for public schools). We need to look at it, reevaluate and see if it’s actually still effective.” Xiong noted with concern that almost half of all Wisconsin school districts will have gone to referendum by the end of the year to pay for capital projects and operating expenses.
“That means that something’s not working,” he said.
In the short term, Xiong said, the state could tap into its sizable budget surplus to provide some immediate aid, but he added that’s not a sustainable solution. Instead, the state needs to reconsider the funding formula as a whole and determine if additional revenue streams need to be considered in order to bring long-term financial relief to public schools.
During the most recent legislative session, Snyder supported a bill that increased funding for public K-12 schools by $1 billion. The funding was tied to $280 million in new funding for private voucher schools. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers signed it.
Snyder did not respond to multiple interview requests for this story.
Child care affordability
The state should be doing more to address the shortage of child care providers in Wisconsin, and it should also be working to bring down the cost of child care, Xiong said.
In the immediate term, he said the state should be investing in Child Care Counts, a program created by Evers using federal COVID-19 funds to provide payments to child care providers on a regular basis to help keep their doors open. The program is credited with keeping thousands of child care facilities open during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
In October 2023, Evers extended the program through June 2025 using $170 million in federal funds. He has previously sought to include $340 million in the state budget to support the program, but that plan was scrapped by Republican lawmakers.
“Right now, the cost for child care is more expensive than tuition at (UW-Madison),” Xiong noted, a nod to a September 2023 Forward Analytics report that found that the average annual cost of infant child care in 2021 was $13,572. For the 2024-25 academic year, tuition at UW-Madison for a Wisconsin resident is $11,606.
He pointed to recent action from the Marathon County Board, which approved $200,000 to train 30 child care providers and open 240 additional child care slots in the county, as an example of a program the state should consider.
Snyder supported a slate of Republican-authored child care bills during the most recent legislative session. During the floor session, Democrats attached extending Child Care Counts as amendments to one of the bills. Snyder voted against the extension.
The GOP-backed package included bills that would have allowed parents to contribute $10,000 in pre-tax money to an account to pay for child care, created a $15 million loan program to help child care centers pay for renovations, established a new category of child care centers that could serve between four and 12 children, and increased the child-to-child-care-worker ratio allowed in some child care centers. None of the proposals became law.
Tax cuts
Lawmakers need to reduce taxes for middle class Wisconsin residents, Xiong said in an interview, criticizing Republicans for supporting a tax cut in the state’s most recent budget that would have largely benefited the state’s highest earners.
“We need to look into ensuring that what we’re doing is we’re supporting the middle class,” he said, noting that people should not have to worry “whether they can afford groceries this weekend, or whether they can afford the utilities.”
Snyder has supported significant tax cuts during his time in office. During the 2021-23 legislative session, he backed reducing the state’s third-highest tax bracket from 6.27% to 5.3% — a $2 billion cut. That rate covers income between $27,630 and $304,170 for single filers and between $36,840 and $405,550 for joint filers.
Snyder co-sponsored another plan that would have raised the annual amount of tax-exempt withdrawals from a retirement account from $5,000 to $75,000 for single Wisconsin residents age 65 and older and up to $150,000 for joint filers. It was vetoed by Evers, who said it would reduce revenue by $658 million in 2024-25 and $472 million in each subsequent fiscal year.
During the most recent budget cycle, Snyder backed a $3.5 billion income tax cut that would have focused its largest reductions on the state’s highest earners. The plan would have cut the top tax rate from 7.65% to 6.5% — a 15% reduction for high-earning joint filers who make $405,550 or more annually. It would have reduced the second-highest rate from 5.3% to 4.4%, a 17% decrease.
Evers vetoed those cuts from the budget but left in place reductions to the state’s bottom two brackets.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
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