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.
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.
Wisconsin politics were shaken up this year with the signing of new legislative maps that ended over a decade of extreme and effective Republican gerrymandering.
It was the first time in Wisconsin history a Legislature and a governor of different parties agreed on legislative redistricting, the Legislative Reference Bureau told Wisconsin Watch.
In a good Republican year across the country, Wisconsin Democrats flipped 14 seats in the Legislature — largely because of those new maps. It wasn’t enough to win a majority in the Assembly or the Senate, but the resulting 54-45 and 18-15 splits better reflect Wisconsin’s swing-state status.
Wisconsin’s congressional maps were not redrawn. Republicans kept six of the state’s eight congressional seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The state’s current congressional maps were drawn by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and approved by the then-conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2022. The last time a governor of one party and a Legislature of another agreed on congressional maps was in 1991.
Evers’ maps were slightly more favorable to Democrats than the previous decade’s maps, but they didn’t change that much because the court established a “least change” rule when deciding which maps it would approve. That meant they would largely conform to the Republican maps that had been in place since 2011.
In March, the now-liberal high court denied a request to reconsider the state’s congressional maps before this year’s elections without stating a reason. Evers had asked for changes to the congressional maps soon after he signed the new legislative maps into law in February. Those maps were approved by the GOP-controlled Legislature.
Elias Law Group filed a motion in January asking the court to revise the congressional boundaries ahead of the 2024 election. The Democratic law firm argued that new maps were justified after the court abandoned the “least change” approach when deciding on the legislative map challenge last year. In that case, the state Supreme Court said it would no longer favor maps that present minimal changes to existing boundaries.
Democrats argued that Evers’ congressional boundaries drawn in 2022 were decided under the “least change” restrictions later thrown out by the court in the legislative redistricting case.
Republicans pushed back, arguing that newly elected liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz prejudged the case during her 2023 campaign. They requested she recuse herself from the case. But Protasiewicz said she decided not to vote on the motion to reconsider the congressional maps because she wasn’t on the court when the underlying case was decided.
Republican Party of Wisconsin chair Brian Schimming in a statement called the court’s decision “the demise of Governor Evers’ latest attempt to throw out his own hand-drawn congressional maps.”
Republicans have retained control of six of Wisconsin’s eight House seats, with Democratic Reps. Mark Pocan and Gwen Moore safely controlling the two districts that cover Madison and Milwaukee. In comparison, Democrats held five of the eight seats in 2010 — the year before Republicans redrew the maps.
The 1st and 3rd districts are currently the only competitive congressional districts in Wisconsin, represented by Republican Reps. Bryan Steil and Derrick Van Orden respectively. Steil won his race this month with 54% of the vote, and Van Orden won with 51.4% of the vote.
Conservative Chief Justice Annette Ziegler and Justice Rebecca Bradley in their concurrence wrote the new majority’s “reckless abandonment of settled legal precedent” in the legislative redistricting case “incentivizes litigants to bring politically divisive cases to this court regardless of their legal merit.”
Representatives of Elias Law Group did not respond to Wisconsin Watch when asked if they anticipate another legal challenge to the congressional maps ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
“I remain very interested between now and 2030 in trying to find a way to get the court to … tell us whether partisan gerrymandering violates the Wisconsin Constitution. I believe it does,” Jeff Mandell, founder of the liberal legal group Law Forward, told Wisconsin Watch. “I believe the court will say it does when we present the right case.”
But Mandell said nothing has been drafted, and his group won’t bring a case to the Supreme Court unless it has “got the goods.”
Wisconsin Watch readers have submitted questions to our statehouse team, and we’ll answer them in our series, Ask Wisconsin Watch. Have a question about state government? Ask it here.
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.
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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.
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.
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Democrats flipped 10 Assembly seats and four Senate seats in Tuesday’s election. While they didn’t claim either majority, they have a chance of flipping at least one chamber in 2026.
Republicans performed much better than their historical averages in the newly drawn districts. On average their candidates in competitive races ran 3.6 points ahead, while Democrats ran 2.3 points behind.
One of the signs that the Republican 2011 gerrymander is dead was Democrat Joe Sheehan’s win in a unified Sheboygan Assembly district.
Wisconsin Republicans held on to the state Legislature in Tuesday’s election, but the flipping of 14 Senate and Assembly seats from red to blue provided the clearest evidence yet that the 2011 partisan gerrymander was real and is now dead.
Republicans will maintain majorities in both the Assembly and Senate — though at much slimmer margins than during the most recent legislative session. The math sets up a chance for the Democrats to retake at least one chamber in 2026, especially if Republicans face the usual midterm headwinds that check a new president.
Senate Republicans lost four seats, going from a supermajority that could override Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ vetoes to an 18-15 majority. The four Democratic pickups resulted from new voting maps legislative Republicans and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers agreed to after the newly liberal Wisconsin Supreme Court threw out GOP-gerrymandered districts last year.
The Democratic gains in an election environment favoring Republicans provided further evidence that Wisconsin’s Republican governor and Legislature in 2011 designed maps to allow their party to keep legislative control no matter how much statewide sentiment might change. The party re-upped those maps after the 2020 Census with help from the then-conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court.
The results show that “when people have a real choice at the ballot box, that they’re going to choose the person that best represents their values and the policies they want to see going forward,” Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein, D-Middleton, told Wisconsin Watch in an interview.
Entering the next election cycle, state Senate Democrats will hold 10 guaranteed seats (they were elected Tuesday) and be favored in six of the 17 seats up for election in 2026. That’s according to an analysis of past voting patterns in state Senate districts that does not yet include 2024 results. By comparison, Republicans will hold just six guaranteed seats while being favored in nine districts up for election in 2026.
That will leave both sides battling for two toss-up districts — currently held by GOP Sens. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, and Rob Hutton, R-Brookfield — to determine control of the chamber. On Tuesday, Democrats won two of the three Assembly seats in Hutton’s district.
In the state Assembly, where Democrats hoped new maps would help them win a majority, Republicans won 54 seats, according to unofficial returns, while Democrats captured 45 seats. That marks a 10-seat swing from the previous legislative session, when Assembly Republicans were just shy of the votes needed to override a gubernatorial veto.
That’s a remarkable outcome given Republican candidates almost across the board performed better than the historical GOP candidate averages in their districts. By comparison, Democrats performed worse in relation to the historical partisan makeup in 68 of the state’s 99 Assembly districts, according to a Wisconsin Watch analysis of past voting patterns and unofficial results. On average Republican candidates in competitive races ran 3.6 points ahead of the historical GOP average, while Democrats ran 2.3 points behind.
Incumbency also helped. Though Democrats unseated three Assembly incumbents, Republican incumbents outperformed the past voting trend of their new district by an average of 4.27 points, compared with 3.14 points of those who had never held office. Lawmakers with three or more terms under their belts like Reps. Tony Kurtz, Todd Novak, Travis Tranel and Nancy Vandermeer outperformed their district averages by more than 8 points.
Still, Democrats projected optimism that business in the Capitol wouldn’t proceed as usual this year.
“Things are going to change in the Legislature,” Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer, D-Racine, said in a Wednesday statement. “Fair maps have allowed voters to hold legislators accountable, and this will change how policy is written and what bills move through the Legislature.”
Some Republicans on Wednesday downplayed the Democratic gains.
“(Democrats) spent weeks and months talking up trying to take over at least the Assembly and they didn’t, frankly, come close to doing it, including losing some of the key races,” said Republican Party of Wisconsin Chair Brian Schimming. “The truth of the matter is, they had their one moment when they had a huge turnout to take over this year, and they failed in both houses.”
“Majorities matter in the Legislature,” he added.
An election worker counts ballots on Election Day, Nov. 5, 2024, at Milwaukee Central Count at the Baird Center in Milwaukee. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Speaking to reporters at the Capitol, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, declared Republicans would not compromise with Democrats if it meant “expanding welfare, having boys play girls sports and all the craziness that the national Democratic Party stands for,” WisPolitics.com reported.
Republicans will also have a chance to pick up seats in two years, Vos said.
Assembly Democrats lost five races on Tuesday in districts with a Democratic edge, including Novak’s in southwest Wisconsin that carries a 13-point Democratic advantage based on past election results. Republicans won all districts in which they have an edge. Among the 14 toss-up districts, those with less than a 10-point spread based on past election results, Democrats won five and Republicans won nine.
Sheboygan Democrat defeats GOP incumbent in reunited city
In Sheboygan, local Democrats celebrated on Election Night as the majority blue city elected a local Democratic candidate to state office for the first time in over a decade.
Former Sheboygan Area School District superintendent Joe Sheehan defeated freshman Rep. Amy Binsfeld, R-Sheboygan, under new legislative maps that reunited the 26th Assembly District after the 2011 redistricting process blatantly split the city in half, extending to surrounding rural areas to secure two Republican seats. Sheehan, whose campaign slogan was “together again,” led Binsfeld by less than 900 votes, according to unofficial results.
“Some people were choosing not to vote because they just didn’t feel, for a decade, that their vote made any difference,” Sheboygan County Democratic Party co-chair Maeve Quinn said. “It got to the point where nobody wanted to run for the office either.”
But fair maps meant the candidates actually had to get out and earn the vote, Sheboygan Mayor Ryan Sorenson told Wisconsin Watch, saying it strengthened the democratic process in their “light blue city” where the seat wasn’t completely safe.
“We realized the cards were really stacked against us when we had local representation because of the city being cut in half,” Sorenson said. “Sheboygan is the urban center for the county. When you loop us in with small, rural communities that are 45 minutes away, it really dilutes our voice.”
Sheboygan County Democratic Party co-chair Mary Lynne Donohue, who ran for the district in 2020 as a “sacrificial lamb,” told Wisconsin Watch the new maps had been a “rallying cry.” Both Quinn and Donohue noted their office saw far more volunteers, distributed signs and campaign surrogates this cycle than in previous election years, with over 40 door-knocking volunteers stopping in on both Saturday and Sunday before Election Day, they said.
“This place was like a ghost town in 2022,” Donohue said.
UW-Oshkosh student Theodorus Guigley casts a ballot. Students and community members voted at the Culver Family Welcome Center at UW-Oshkosh in Oshkosh, Wis., on Nov. 5, 2024. (Julius Shieh / Wisconsin Watch)
The Chmura-Moore family, consisting of parents Sharon and Dylan and kids Sophia and Elliot, went to the polling site at Oshkosh Public Library in Oshkosh, Wis., on Nov. 5, 2024. Donning raincoats and umbrellas, several dozen voters lined up at the library before 7 a.m. (Julius Shieh / Wisconsin Watch)
The heightened energy is a sign of revival after 13 years of gerrymandering dampened the democratic process in places like Sheboygan all across the state.
Get-out-the-vote volunteers continued to filter into the office on Election Day, including Bryan Cones and Mike Schoen, who came from Chicago to knock on doors in Sheboygan for Democrats up and down the ballot. Cones, originally from Tennessee where Republicans have gerrymandered districts around Nashville, understands how skewed maps make people feel like their vote doesn’t count.
Another volunteer, Patrice Worel-Olson, said she had never before volunteered with the party but did so this year because of the new maps. “We have a chance,” she said.
Donohue was one of the original plaintiffs in a federal redistricting case that challenged the Republican gerrymander of the state Assembly. The U.S. Supreme Court threw out the case on a technical issue. In a more recent legal challenge, a liberal-majority Wisconsin Supreme Court tossed out the state’s Republican-friendly 2020 maps, leading to lawmakers in both parties to approve today’s more balanced maps.
Sheehan’s campaign raised nearly $1.3 million to Binsfeld’s $330,000, with the Democratic Assembly Campaign Committee and the Republican Assembly Campaign Committee investing heavily in each race.
Binsfeld had a falling out with the Sheboygan County GOP earlier this year after she distanced herself from its anti-abortion stance and member concerns about election integrity, according to party chair Russ Otten. The GOP refused to distribute her campaign signs, and Otten predicted she would fall short in the race without local party support.
In stark contrast with Donohue’s ill-fated 2020 campaign, which raised $75,000, Sheehan told Wisconsin Watch he knocked on over 4,000 doors in the district, where voters shared their enthusiasm for his chances.
“That’s incredible that we got a voice, and now we can talk about some of the issues that really affect Sheboygan, which gerrymandering did not allow,” Sheehan said in an interview.
At the Sheboygan County Democratic Party headquarters on Nov. 5, 2024, local party co-chair Mary Lynne Donohue sits at her computer. Donohue ran for Assembly in 2020 as a “sacrificial lamb” because she lived in a Sheboygan district that had been gerrymandered to prevent Democrats from winning. On Tuesday her party won the new Sheboygan district made possible by new legislative maps. (Hallie Claflin / Wisconsin Watch)
End note: The polls were right
Republicans celebrated the continued legislative majorities alongside Trump’s victory in the state and nationally. Democrats breathed a sigh of relief as Sen. Tammy Baldwin eked out a win to secure a third term.
The results also brought relief to Marquette University Law School poll director Charles Franklin. The final Marquette poll had both races in a statistical tie with Kamala Harris up by a point and Baldwin up by two. Trump in fact won by 0.8 points and Baldwin won by 0.9 points — well within the poll’s margin of error.
“We missed the president by 1.9 points and the Senate by 1.1 points, better than our 2.2 average error,” Franklin told Wisconsin Watch in an email. “SO I get to keep my job.”
Election Day involves more than quickly marking a ballot and anxiously awaiting election returns.
Filing dispatches from across Wisconsin during Tuesday’s general election, our reporters examined how residents participated in the democratic process. Voters and election workers brought joy, angst and purpose to the polls.
In some cases images told their stories more powerfully than words.
Here is the best of Wisconsin Watch’s photography from Election Day, portraits of what we saw and who we met.
Jonathan Walton, Ward 29 chief Inspector, middle, makes an announcement as the polls open on Election Day on Nov. 5, 2024, at Madison East High School in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Volunteer poll worker Seth McClure hands a ballot to Lisa Wilber of Madison, right, during Election Day on Nov. 5, 2024, at Madison East High School in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Elliot Chmura-Moore helps his father, Dylan, submit his ballot. It was the 20th vote submitted on Election Day, Nov. 5, 2024, at the Oshkosh Public Library polling place in Oshkosh, Wis. (Julius Shieh / Wisconsin Watch)
Shane Worden, one of the first 20 voters of the day at the Oshkosh Public Library in Oshkosh, Wis., gives a thumbs up to a poll worker after inserting his ballot into a voting machine. (Julius Shieh / Wisconsin Watch)
Election workers count ballots at Green Bay Central Count in the Green Bay City Hall building on Nov. 5, 2024. (Julius Shieh / Wisconsin Watch)
An observer leans back and watches while election workers count ballots at Green Bay Central Count in the Green Bay City Hall building on Nov. 5, 2024. (Julius Shieh / Wisconsin Watch)
Town of Westfield poll worker Frank Traina assists fellow poll worker and chief election inspector Lacey Baumann as she casts her ballot on Nov. 5, 2024, at Westfield Town Hall in Marquette County, Wis. (Bennet Goldstein / Wisconsin Watch)
UW-Oshkosh students Adam Ketter, left, and Jacob Young spent the day as poll workers. Students and community members voted at the Culver Family Welcome Center at UW-Oshkosh in Oshkosh, Wis., on Nov. 5, 2024. (Julius Shieh / Wisconsin Watch)
A voter heads to the polls on Election Day on Nov. 5, 2024, at Mary Ryan Boys & Girls Club in Milwaukee. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
A ballot is temporarily stuck in the tabulation machine during Election Day on Nov. 5, 2024, at Milwaukee Central Count at the Baird Center in Milwaukee. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)Jefferson Davis, a Republican election observer, left, and Republican Party of Milwaukee County Chairman Hilario Deleon, right, talk to each other after learning that the doors of the tabulation machines were not properly sealed during Election Day on Nov. 5, 2024, at Milwaukee Central Count at the Baird Center in Milwaukee. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)Alvonia Missouri of Milwaukee, joined by her great-grandchildren, Tyriah Smith, 5, left, and Tyron Smith, 7, right, registers to vote during Election Day on Nov. 5, 2024, at Mary Ryan Boys & Girls Club in Milwaukee. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Sharon Brown, a volunteer poll worker, center, helps Iyana Simpson, 21, right, prepare to vote for her first time during Election Day on Nov. 5, 2024, at the Clinton & Bernice Rose Senior Center in Milwaukee. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)Volunteer poll worker Beverly Cooley cheers after helping Jayvonte Wingard, 18, right, vote for his first time on Election Day, Nov. 5, 2024, at the Clinton & Bernice Rose Senior Center in Milwaukee. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)Devin Hildebrand casts a ballot as his daughter Ivy, 2, wears a voting sticker from her mother, Lily, at Green Isle Pavilion in Allouez, Wis., on Nov. 5, 2024. (Julius Shieh / Wisconsin Watch)Voters cast their ballots at Allouez Village Hall in Allouez, Wis., on the evening of Nov. 5, 2024. (Julius Shieh / Wisconsin Watch)Paulina Gutiérrez, executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission, prepares to clear the flash drives used to store the final vote count during Election Day on Nov. 5, 2024, at Milwaukee Central Count at the Baird Center in Milwaukee. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Election workers count ballots on Election Day, Nov. 5, 2024, at Milwaukee Central Count at the Baird Center in Milwaukee. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Election workers count ballots during Election Day on Nov. 5, 2024, at Milwaukee Central Count at the Baird Center in Milwaukee. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
People cheer as 8th Congressional District candidate Tony Wied makes a victory speech at the Legacy Hotel in Green Bay, Wis., on Nov. 5, 2024. (Julius Shieh / Wisconsin Watch)
An attendee of 8th Congressional District candidate Tony Wied’s election night gathering is seen at the Legacy Hotel on Nov. 5, 2024, in Green Bay, Wis. (Julius Shieh / Wisconsin Watch)
Tony Wied celebrates his 8th Congressional District victory at the Legacy Hotel in Green Bay, Wis., on Nov. 5, 2024. (Julius Shieh / Wisconsin Watch)
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An impassive portrait of George Washington watched Tuesday’s Election Day proceedings from his perch above the entrance of Westfield Town Hall.
Washington’s expression offered no hint that the Marquette County, Wisconsin, town was recovering from political tumult: fierce divisions on a three-member board that culminated in September when voters ousted their town chair in a recall election.
Westfield’s election inspector and chief election inspector soon resigned, along with its treasurer and a town supervisor. The same evening the board approved those resignations, the town clerk, that meeting’s notetaker, handed in her notice.
None of the resignees nor the former board chair, Sharon Galonski, responded to requests for comment for this story.
Several news outlets, including the Associated Press, reported the events, prompting questions about how the resignations might affect Westfield’s preparation for the general election.
But interim Town Clerk Courtney Trimble said the media blew the situation out of proportion. Volunteers immediately stepped forward following the poll workers’ resignations. Trimble said she had a list of 12 who offered their names.
“I’m confident in their ability,” she said Tuesday. “These elections always feel — I don’t want to say ‘pressure’ — there’s more training that you put in.”
‘Hopefully, tomorrow the commercials will stop!’
Westfield’s polling place occupies its white clapboard-clad town hall, surrounded by cornfields and conifers. The converted one-room schoolhouse dates to the mid-1800s, and chalkboards line its interior walls. Scotch-Irish settlers, attracted by the area’s fertile soil and nearby springs, founded the community.
Here, voters trend conservative. During the 2020 election, they handily handed then-incumbent President Donald Trump 333 votes — nearly two-thirds of ballots cast.
Election greeter Chris Vander Velde stood at the hall’s entrance Tuesday, directing voters to wait in the foyer. They shuffled to the registration table, where poll workers Frank Traina and Susan Porfilio sat. Those caught in the day’s periodic downpours squeaked on the hall’s wooden floors.
Such orderly proceedings were unlike the tempest 2024 presidential cycle, marked by the unexpected withdrawal of President Joe Biden, two assassination attempts against Trump and the rapid ascent of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee.
“Hopefully, tomorrow the commercials will stop!” said one voter who arrived mid-morning in a white and black plaid shirt and sparkly flip-flops.
She and Vander Velde laughed.
Behind her librarian glasses, Porfilio instructed electors to sign the register before continuing to the four voting booths arranged along the room’s perimeter.
The morning hustle? Distinctly ordinary.
Voters visited Westfield Town Hall in Marquette County, Wis., to cast ballots on Election Day, Nov. 5, 2024. (Bennet Goldstein / Wisconsin Watch)
One voter forgot her photo identification but returned later with the card in tow. A smiling man’s registration incorrectly appended the suffix “Sr.” to his name.
“I have no idea why,” he told Porfilio.
Traina checked IDs and reminded people the ballot was double-sided with the school referendum on the back
“Thank you for working the polls,” a voter in a maroon windbreaker told him.
“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be,” Traina said. With every flick of his arm, his “In God we trust” tattoo peeked out from under his Harley-Davidson T-shirt.
Residents of all ages flocked to the polls.
“No ID?” Traina jokingly asked a curly-haired kid, waiting, as their family signed in.
The child mumbled, hands in pockets.
Later, a young woman in a red raincoat and glasses stepped before Porfilio.
“Have you ever voted here before?” Susan asked.
“No, it’s my first time voting in general,” the woman said.
By 10:30 a.m., over half the town’s electorate had cast ballots, including absentee and early voters.
Porfilio chatted with a man in a Lake Michigan shirt. She checked his voter number.
“And I’ll give you your license back,” Porfilio said.
“You heard my house burnt down, right?” he said.
“No!” she said. “When was that? Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah,” he muttered.
‘Take our township back!’
Across the room, Chief Election Inspector Lacey Baumann supervised the Dominion ballot drop box, the last stop on the voters’ town hall circuit.
Baumann awoke at 3:30 a.m. to milk her 53 goats so she could be at the town hall by 6 a.m., an hour before the polls opened. What started as a COVID-19 pandemic pastime became a side hustle, where she and her family make soaps, lotions, laundry detergent, bath salts and lip balm.
“I just want to confirm that there are two initials on the backside box of your ballot,” she told a woman in sweatpants. “You’re gonna put it in the machine where the arrows are. When you hear the second ‘ding,’ you’ll be good to go.”
Lacey’s twin sister, Lindsay Baumann, won Westfield’s recall election in September. Her campaign pledged to “take our township back!” and she bested Galonski by 32 votes.
Lacey Baumann, chief election inspector for the town of Westfield, casts her own ballot the morning of Nov. 5, 2024, at Westfield Town Hall in Marquette County, Wis. (Bennet Goldstein / Wisconsin Watch)
From the first meeting in 2023 when its members were sworn in, turmoil marked Westfield’s town board. Members sparred during meetings. Discussion routinely veered into accusations of malfeasance.
The recall petition charged Galonski with a litany of offenses, including initiating the termination of the volunteer fire department without considering citizen input and consulting the town board, spending taxpayer dollars in excess and denying a board supervisor access to town property.
At an August board meeting, Galonski defended her actions and rejected one attendee’s call to resign to spare the town the cost of a recall election.
“I haven’t done anything wrong — not a thing. Everything has been done according to the law and by vote of the board,” Galonski said. “The majority of the board has taken action on many of the things that you want to do a recall on.”
‘It’s our right. It’s our privilege’
Voters continued to stream into Westfield’s town hall for the rest of the day. The town reached another turnout milestone.
“That’s what it’s all about,” Vander Velde said. “It’s our right. It’s our privilege. It’s our responsibility.”
Vander Velde, who moved to Westfield more than three decades ago, enjoys chatting with fellow residents on Election Day, but another reason she enjoys working the polls is the chance to learn the rules and regulations. She calls herself a “law and order person.”
“Government is really of the people,” Vander Velde said. “The people in this township are really good, close people, and you expect your government to respond that way.”
As anxious Americans awaited news of the presidency’s fate, Baumann, the town’s newly elected chair, said she felt the political slugfest in her community was over.
“It seems like there’s a lot more happier people,” she said. “We’re getting somewhere.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
An odd standoff brewed Tuesday afternoon at a polling place in Kenosha’s Lincoln Park neighborhood: Two groups of election observers began scrutinizing each other.
Tanya Mclean, executive director of Leaders of Kenosha, stood outside the Oribiletti Center with two volunteers who joined her effort to protect against voter intimidation at the polls. Minutes after they arrived, a woman wearing an election observer sticker walked up to monitor the volunteers. She photographed them and occasionally typed in her phone.
Soon, two police officers arrived to monitor both groups. As if to settle the dispute, an officer took out a tape measure and walked 100 feet from the door. Wisconsin law bars “electioneering,” or attempts to influence elections within 100 feet of a polling place door. The rules extend to nonpartisan observers, who additionally can’t talk about the contests on the ballot, handle election documents, make calls, or interact with voters unless requested.
But if anyone thought Mclean and her colleagues were doing so, she couldn’t understand why. Dressed in yellow sweatshirts that read “Election Defenders,” the women had done little more than stand near the door and keep an eye on their surroundings.
In the end, the volunteers moved 10 feet further from the door, ending the standoff without incident.
While joy and enthusiasm for the democratic process permeated many Wisconsin polling places on Election Day, the brief episode in Kenosha exemplified how suspicion and unspoken tension played out elsewhere, said Mclean, whose four-woman group pushes for racial justice and progressive social issues.
A chief inspector asked Mclean to leave a separate polling place earlier in the day, accusing her of electioneering with little explanation, she said. And just minutes before police arrived in Lincoln Park, a man approached her group to ask if they were working as election officials — or simply out to create “visual antics.” When they said they were there to observe, he left, ripping a Kamala Harris/Tim Walz yard sign from a nearby lawn, carrying it away.
“It’s been interesting, and not in a good way,” Mclean said. “It’s not the voters who have been the problem. It’s people tasked with observing elections who assume we’re here for nefarious reasons. They just assume we’re here to disrupt.”
Mclean doesn’t remember this kind of suspicion during the 2020 election, which unfolded months after Kenosha police shot Jacob Blake, sparking a protest that left two dead and another wounded. While Mclean said the city has since taken steps to move past the protests, some tensions still linger.
“A lot of issues that needed to be addressed during that time and that fed into those feelings of uprising are still there,” she said. “In some ways, I feel like we’re in the same place.”
Several volunteers from Chicago joined Mclean Tuesday in helping drive voters to the polls and look out for voter intimidation.
“By comparison, Illinois is a safe state,” said Ivy Czekanski, who drove to Kenosha to volunteer. “We don’t see the same kind of intimidation there as we do in Wisconsin.”
She added, “I was also here in Kenosha in 2020, and this is the first time I’ve seen people so whipped up about voter intimidation. They’re observing us, and we’re observing them, and it becomes this dueling effort to watch each other.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Former President Donald Trump declared victory in the 2024 presidential election early Wednesday morning. Hours later the Associated Press affirmed the win after results showed Trump narrowly won Wisconsin by about 33,000 votes or 1 point.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin won another term as well, though by her narrowest margin yet. The Associated Press called the race at 12:42 p.m. Wednesday. Baldwin’s Republican challenger Eric Hovde trailed by less than a percentage point, falling short of Trump’s total by more than 50,000 votes. It’s the latest case of split-ticket voters having clout in Wisconsin after Democratic Gov. Tony Evers won re-election in 2022 while Sen. Ron Johnson won a third term by a narrower margin.
Democrats broke a Republican supermajority in the state Senate, flipping enough seats to set up a possible takeover of the chamber in 2026. They also narrowed the Republican majority in the Assembly, electing a representative from Sheboygan for the first time since Republicans gerrymandered the state’s legislative districts in 2011. But several Republican incumbents won new districts that favored Democrats.
Trump spoke to a crowd at Mar-a-Lago in West Palm Beach, Florida, after the Associated Press projected Trump would win Pennsylvania, a critical state considered a must-win for Vice President Kamala Harris.
“America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate,” Trump said.
The Associated Press described Trump’s victory as an extraordinary comeback for a former president who refused to accept defeat four years ago, sparked a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts.
The victory validates his bare-knuckle approach to politics. He attacked his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, in deeply personal – often misogynistic and racist – terms as he pushed an apocalyptic picture of a country overrun by violent migrants. The coarse rhetoric, paired with an image of hypermasculinity, resonated with angry voters – particularly men – in a deeply polarized nation.
As president, he’s vowed to pursue an agenda centered on dramatically reshaping the federal government and pursuing retribution against his perceived enemies.
The results cap a historically tumultuous and competitive election season that included two assassination attempts targeting Trump and a shift to a new Democratic nominee just a month before the party’s convention. Trump will inherit a range of challenges when he assumes office on Jan. 20, including heightened political polarization and global crises that are testing America’s influence abroad.
His win against Harris, the first woman of color to lead a major party ticket, marks the second time he has defeated a female rival in a general election. Harris, the current vice president, rose to the top of the ticket after President Joe Biden exited the race amid alarm about his advanced age. Despite an initial surge of energy around her campaign, she struggled during a compressed timeline to convince disillusioned voters that she represented a break from an unpopular administration.
Harris’ campaign manager announced earlier in the night that Harris would address her supporters Wednesday.
The Associated Press called Wisconsin’s 10 Electoral College votes for Trump at 4:34 a.m. Wednesday. A tabulator problem forced election workers in Milwaukee to restart their count of absentee ballots earlier in the day Tuesday.
Here’s when other high-profile statewide races here in Wisconsin were called by the Associated Press:
2022 U.S. Senate race: Wednesday, Nov. 9, 11:46 a.m.
Check out the Wisconsin Watch voter guide for results from the Associated Press for each individual race in Wisconsin.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Republicans poised to hold 6-2 House edge
Republicans were poised to win all six seats they currently control in Wisconsin’s House delegation.
As of Wednesday morning the Associated Press had called winners in every race but the 3rd Congressional District, where Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden had an 11,000-vote lead over Democratic challenger Rebecca Cooke with 99% of votes reported.
Incumbent Democrats Mark Pocan and Gwen Moore and Republicans Bryan Steil, Scott Fitzgerald, Glenn Grothman and Tom Tiffany won their races.
Tony Wied celebrates his 8th Congressional District victory at the Legacy Hotel in Green Bay, Wis., on Nov. 5, 2024. (Julius Shieh / Wisconsin Watch)
Thanking his family, friends and Trump, newcomer Republican Tony Wied gave a victory speech to a crowd of supporters at The Legacy Hotel in Green Bay, Wisconsin. He defeated Democratic candidate Kristin Lyerly by nearly 15 points.
Wied’s campaign victory in Wisconsin’s largely red 8th Congressional District came as no surprise. Previous Rep. Michael Gallagher, also a Republican, won the district by comfortable margins during each election cycle between 2016 and 2022.
Wied credited much of his success to an endorsement from Trump, saying that Trump’s “support for me (during) this campaign was second to none.”
Even before Green Bay precincts reported any significant results, local Republican candidates felt confident about the election.
Patrick Buckley, candidate for the 89th Assembly District, said he thought efforts to reach voters and canvass would end up paying off.
“We did a wonderful job, and hopefully voters will see that,” Buckley said. “I think for Republicans, it should be a good night.”
Buckley, a first-time Assembly candidate, lost to Democrat Ryan Spaude, also a first-time Assembly candidate, in the Green Bay district.
Attendees at Cooke’s watch party followed the tug-of-war over Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District for hours Tuesday night.
The campaign projected incoming results at the front of the event in downtown Eau Claire. Mild cheers broke out a few times as Cooke took a slight lead, but by 10 p.m. enthusiasm for result updates dampened.
Cooke didn’t give a victory or concession speech during Tuesday’s event which ended long before the outcome was finalized. But Cooke told WPR and Wisconsin Watch that if things didn’t go in her favor she’d tell her supporters “that we ran a hell of a race.”
“We really left no stone unturned,” Cooke said. “We’ve really pulled people off the sidelines. People who don’t always see themselves reflected in the political process and I’m really proud of the work that we’ve done in that way.”
– Julius Shieh, Addie Costello
Citizenship voting amendment passes
Wisconsin voters approved a constitutional amendment that prohibits foreign nationals from voting in the state.
Republicans across the country have been pushing voters to adopt constitutional amendments that explicitly prohibit non-U.S. citizens from voting. The move was spurred by the District of Columbia and municipalities in California, Maryland and Vermont allowing non-citizens to vote in local elections.
The Wisconsin Constitution states that every U.S. citizen who is at least 18 can vote. The amendment revises that language to read that only U.S. citizens can vote in federal, state and local elections held in Wisconsin.
The amendment was on the ballot in seven other states besides Wisconsin this cycle, according to Ballotpedia. North Dakota, Alabama, Florida, Colorado, Ohio and Louisiana have already adopted it.
Democrats contend the measures could create hurdles for legal voters and lead people to believe that the problem of noncitizens voting is bigger than it really is. Data from states indicates that voting by noncitizens is rare, although Republican officials in Alabama, Georgia, Ohio and Texas have highlighted voter registration reviews that turned up potential noncitizens.
– Todd Richmond, The Associated Press
Republicans return smaller Assembly majority as incumbents win new districts
Despite less friendly voting maps and considerable spending from Democrats, Republicans won a majority in the Wisconsin Assembly, extending 13 years of GOP control of the Legislature’s lower chamber by two more years.
Republican success on Tuesday was fueled in part by incumbents. Rep. Todd Novak, R-Dodgeville, defeated Democratic challenger Elizabeth Grabe in a district that a Wisconsin Watch analysis of previous voting patterns suggested was almost 56% Democratic, according to unofficial results. Rep. Pat Snyder, R-Schofield, breezed past Democratic challenger Yee Leng Xiong in a district that a Wisconsin Watch analysis rated as just 2% more Republican than Democratic.
The election results were a gut punch for Democrats, who were eager to win back a majority in the Assembly for the first time in more than a decade after the liberal-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court threw out Republican-gerrymandered voting maps last year.
In the months leading up to the election, Democrats were confident they could win back the majority. Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer, D-Racine, told reporters during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago that her party would win a 52-seat Assembly majority in the fall. They missed the mark on Tuesday.
Trevor Ford, a spokesperson for the Republican Assembly Campaign Committee, offered a simple assessment of returns early on Wednesday: “Wisconsin Assembly Republicans will hold the majority.”
The exact size of the majority was unclear as of early Wednesday morning.
There were a few bright spots for Democrats, who seemed poised to return to Madison in January with bolstered ranks. In the 26th Assembly District, Joe Sheehan unseated Republican Rep. Amy Binsfeld in a district that reunited the city of Sheboygan into one Assembly district.
A spokesperson for the Assembly Democratic Campaign Committee didn’t return a request for comment early Wednesday.
– Jack Kelly
Nov. 6, 12:30 a.m.
Democrats break GOP supermajority in state Senate
Democrats broke Republicans’ two-thirds supermajority in the state Senate on Tuesday, according to unofficial results, reining in overwhelming GOP control in the chamber that threatened the veto authority of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers.
The exact number of seats each party will control come January remained unclear as of early Wednesday morning, though Republicans had secured the 17 seats needed for a majority while Democrats flipped at least two seats and were leading the vote totals in two others, dropping Republicans below their current 22-seat supermajority.
One flip came in the 14th Senate District, a Democratic-leaning toss-up district that stretches from the Madison area north and west to encompass Portage, Wisconsin Dells, Baraboo, Reedsburg and Richland Center. Democrat Sarah Keyeski defeated incumbent Sen. Joan Ballweg by 2 points, according to unofficial returns.
Another came in the 30th Senate District, where redistricting had caused incumbent Republican Sen. Eric Wimberger to move into the 2nd Senate District, where he will replace retiring moderate Republican Sen. Rob Cowles. Democrat Jamie Wall, a business consultant and third-time Democratic candidate, defeated Republican Allouez village president Jim Rafter, in the 30th.
“Senate Democrats have broken the Republican’s manufactured supermajority, and I remain optimistic for our candidates who are still awaiting final vote tallies,” Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein, D-Middleton, told Wisconsin Watch in a statement.
Results in the 8th and 18th showed Democrats poised to further chip away at the GOP majority, but the races were too close to call as of early Wednesday morning. Those gains could help Democrats secure a majority in 2026, when the other 17 recently redrawn Senate seats are up for four-year terms.
A spokesperson for the Committee to Elect a Republican Senate did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Wednesday.
– Jack Kelly
Nov. 6, 12:30 a.m.
Sheboygan incumbent loses Assembly seat without local GOP support in newly drawn toss-up district
A freshman Republican Assembly member’s fight to hold her Sheboygan seat was complicated after she lost the support of the Sheboygan County GOP earlier this year. The infighting could be a sign of the changing face of the Republican Party in Wisconsin.
Freshman Rep. Amy Binsfeld, R-Sheboygan, views the local party as extremist and distanced herself from it in January due to its anti-abortion stance and member concerns about election integrity, according to local party chair Russ Otten.
“I find that incredible in a person who’s running as a Republican in a very tight race,” Otten told Wisconsin Watch.
Text messages posted by the county GOP in September show Binsfeld asked the party to distribute her campaign signs, but they refused to do so after she declined to meet with the party’s leaders, Otten said.
“I feel you should probably confirm that choice with all Republican voters in the 26th District being you are willing to give up a seat to the Democrats in November,” Binsfeld wrote in the exchange. “I’m asking for signs to be available to Republican voters.”
Binsfeld did not immediately reply to Wisconsin Watch’s request for comment.
“She does not like the fact that our county party has become a patriot-driven party,” Otten said. “She is a cohort of Robin Vos in Madison, and we see Robin Vos as part of the problem.”
Binsfeld lost to Democratic newcomer Joe Sheehan, who decided to run earlier this year after new legislative maps reunited the city of Sheboygan, which was split in half to secure two Republican seats under Wisconsin’s previously gerrymandered maps. The district is now a toss-up, with a slight Democratic lean.
– Hallie Claflin
Update: Nov. 6, 1 a.m.
Stephanie Rushing, Milwaukee Election Commission election services coordinator, sorts through rejected absentee ballots on Election Day, Nov. 5, 2024, at Milwaukee Central Count at the Baird Center in Milwaukee. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Milwaukee setback stands out in otherwise smooth Wisconsin election
Polls closed across Wisconsin after an Election Day marked most notably by a human error in Milwaukee that prompted city election officials to count 31,000 absentee ballots all over again, potentially delaying the state’s results for hours.
In Milwaukee, election chief Paulina Gutiérrez projected that the city’s counting of absentee ballots would go well into Wednesday morning, partially a result of her decision Tuesday afternoon to make election workers count 31,000 absentee ballots all over again because some staff didn’t lock tabulator doors in the early morning.
For security reasons, those panel doors — which cover the on/off switch and sometimes a slot for USB drives — are to be locked during counting, though other security measures ensured there was no chance of tampering.
The decision to restart the count, city spokesperson Jeff Fleming said, was “out of an abundance of caution.”
Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe said the commission didn’t weigh in on the city’s decision to rerun the batch of ballots, but she praised the city’s transparency throughout the process.
After Gutiérrez made that decision, the city put out an all-call to every Milwaukee employee to help election officials count the ballots that had already been tabulated. Between 30 and 50 city staff from health, fire and other departments came to help, city spokesperson Caroline Reinwald said.
Paulina Gutiérrez, executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission, prepares to clear the flash drives used to store the final vote count during Election Day on Nov. 5, 2024, at Milwaukee Central Count at the Baird Center in Milwaukee. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
“Things are moving really smoothly right now and quickly, so hopefully this isn’t actually that much of a delay,” she said.
But Republican leaders criticized the oversight that led to the second count. U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin called Milwaukee’s central count “grotesquely disorganized.” State GOP Chair Brian Schimming said about election officials, “You had one job,” adding that the election operation had gone “ridiculously wrong.”
Johnson said his concerns about Milwaukee election officials’ oversight could be alleviated if they present him video logs of the central counting site as well as records from the initial and second count of the 31,000 absentee ballots, including how they’re split by party. There are video streams of central count, but vote totals weren’t exported in the manner that Johnson was seeking, though each vote has a paper trail, city officials stated.
Election Day in Milwaukee was also marked by a lawsuit filed by the Republican National Committee, alleging that GOP election observers were being restricted at city election sites. The GOP walked back its claims at a Tuesday hearing, conceding there weren’t any issues.
Outside of Milwaukee, election officials faced few issues.
In Thornapple, a northern Wisconsin town that faced a Justice Department lawsuit over its decision not to use accessible voting machines in the past, election officials did have a voting machine in use, said Erin Webster, a local resident who was an election observer on Tuesday.
The state had a surge of early in-person voting, but election officials said that Tuesday was still very busy. Melissa Kono, who has been a clerk in the small northern Wisconsin town of Burnside since 2013, said it was the most intense election she had ever administered in terms of turnout.
— Alexander Shur, Votebeat
11 p.m.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Milwaukee election officials started counting the city’s absentee ballots all over again Tuesday afternoon after an observer noticed that the panel doors on the city’s 13 tabulators weren’t properly closed.
By the time city officials decided to restart the counting around 4 p.m., over 30,000 absentee ballots had already been fed into the tabulators, Milwaukee spokesperson Caroline Reinwald said. The city had more than 106,000 absentee ballots in total by mid-day Tuesday.
A Republican observer at the city’s central counting facility pointed out that the panel door that covers a tabulator’s on and off switch — and, in at least some cases, slots for inserting USB drives to export election results — was unlocked after workers had been using the tabulators for several hours. Milwaukee Election Commission Executive Director Paulina Gutiérrez then went from tabulator to tabulator, monitored by representatives from the Democratic and Republican parties, to secure each one between 2 and 2:30 p.m.
City election officials said there was no indication any of the tabulators had been tampered with — and that it would have been clear if somebody had accessed them. The slots are used at the end of the night, when election officials insert USB drives to export election results before driving them to the county to submit the data.
If the off buttons were “tampered with, it would completely turn off,” Gutiérrez told Votebeat. “That would be very evident of tampering, so we just properly locked them and resealed them.”
There were no USB drives in any of the tabulators, she added.
The decision to restart the count, city spokesperson Jeff Fleming said, was “out of an abundance of caution.”
“We have no reason to believe that there was any compromise to any of the machines,” he said. “But because they were not fully sealed — human error — … we are going to zero them all out again and rerun the ballots that had already been processed.”
Re-tabulating all of the ballots may take up to three hours, Fleming said. City officials initially said the count could go until 2 or 3 a.m.
Votebeat spoke with multiple Republicans at central count who were aware of the oversight. None said they were concerned about any possibility of tampering.
Before the decision to restart the tabulation process, Republican Party of Milwaukee County Chair Hilario Deleon, who watched Gutiérrez reseal each machine, told Votebeat that he doesn’t think anything nefarious happened.
“I’m not worried about it, although it is a concerning thing when those things are supposed to be locked,” he said.
“Both observers were able to see whether or not there’s flash drives in any of the machines. There’s no flash drives in the machines, there should be no flash drives until the end of the night,” he said, adding that he appreciated Gutiérrez’s transparency.
But Deleon expressed frustration over the decision to restart counting and said local Democrats and city election officials disregarded his view on that matter.
“Let them continue doing their job,” he said. “So many more ballots still have to be counted. Why are we adding more time onto this?”
“It’s just going to be extra work for everyone, and any chance to get these numbers maybe by midnight or 1 a.m., that might have just been pushed back,” he said.
A ballot is temporarily stuck in the tabulation machine during Election Day on Nov. 5, 2024, at Milwaukee Central Count at the Baird Center in Milwaukee. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Jefferson Davis, a former Menomonee Falls village president and conservative election activist who has entertained and promoted conspiracy theories, similarly said he wasn’t concerned.
“We had observers at each station as they were taken, and we didn’t see anything that would cause us concern,” he said.
Davis told Votebeat that he welcomed the decision to restart the count as a transparency measure.
Milwaukee election officials typically follow a checklist at central count to ensure that the tabulators are secure, and that thumb drives carrying vote totals end up where they’re supposed to, aren’t tampered with, and remain tracked through a full chain-of-custody process. It appeared one of the earlier steps of closing the panels wasn’t done correctly.
Claire Woodall, formerly the Milwaukee election chief, said there are multiple layers of security to prevent tampering, of which the seal is “the most visible but superficial.”
“Rigorous cross checks exist in the election system, including audit logs that track every action on the tabulator,” she said. “I am confident that this was human error in how the doors (were) closed and seals placed, as no one present at Central Count has presented any concerns of tampering.”
Ann Jacobs, a Democratic commissioner on the Wisconsin Elections Commission, also watched Gutiérrez as she resealed and locked each tabulator.
“Elections are run at the municipal level and at this point, it is up to the Milwaukee Election Commission and the Milwaukee city attorney’s office to decide what their plan is, in light of what’s happened,” she told Votebeat.
National Republicans — long critical of the heavily Democratic city and its elections — decried the mistake.
“This is an unacceptable example of incompetent election administration in a key swing state: voters deserve better and we are unambiguously calling on Milwaukee’s officials to do their jobs and count ballots quickly and effectively,” Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley and Co-Chair Lara Trump wrote in a media statement.
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.
Ray Mendoza doesn’t care who you vote for. He just wants you to vote.
To Mendoza, 54, the right to vote is too precious to squander. That’s how the Milwaukee man feels after surrendering that right for the roughly 20 years he spent in a federal penitentiary and on probation.
“I encourage everybody, if you’re a convicted felon and you’re not on probation or parole, get out and vote. Use your voice,” Mendoza last week told a reporter outside Milwaukee’s Frank P. Zeidler Municipal Building, where he voted for the third time in his life — casting an in-person absentee ballot.
Video by Trisha Young / Wisconsin Watch
Each state sets its own process around removing and restoring voting rights following a felony conviction. Maine and Vermont are the only states that allow people to vote while still in prison. People in Florida can’t vote until completing their sentence and paying all fines and fees — a requirement some critics have likened to poll taxes that barred African Americans from voting during the Jim Crow era.
Wisconsin automatically restores voting rights after someone is “off paper,” meaning they have completed their prison sentence and time on probation or extended supervision. In a state of roughly 6 million people, that puts voting off limits for the roughly 23,000 in state prisons and more than 45,000 serving probation or extended supervision for felony convictions.
Those figures represent just a fraction of people living with felony convictions on their criminal record.
Mendoza regained his right to vote in 2019 after completing his prison bid and probation. But even now, voting stirs an anxiety he can’t fully shake. He feels at times as if restoration is a ruse to send him back to prison for unwittingly violating some rule.
“I’m waiting for somebody to come up and say, ‘You’re under arrest for fraudulent voting,’” he said of the back-of-mind feeling. “But I know I’m registered. I know I’m legit.”
Nevertheless, he votes, and he urges all eligible voters to do the same, telling them: “If you don’t vote, you don’t have any right to complain.”
Still, he recalls meeting community members who plan to sit out on Election Day, believing their vote counts for little. Mendoza’s experience helps him see things differently.
He asks: “If your vote wasn’t important, why is that the first thing they take when they take your freedom?”
Mendoza now hopes his work and perspective will shape a more peaceful Milwaukee, where he lived before going to prison for participating in a violent crime that included charges of attempted murder and kidnapping.
Mendoza, a Marine Corps veteran, began turning his life around even before going to prison. Just before his 1997 conviction, Mendoza publicly denounced the life of gang violence he previously embraced. When a Milwaukee police officer shot a man named James Rey Guerrero who was allegedly fleeing police, Mendoza worked with community leaders and police to calm tensions and organize a nonviolent prayer vigil.
At his sentencing hearing, family members and community leaders pleaded with the judge to show leniency, citing his work in the community, court transcripts show.
“There were a lot of threats against Milwaukee police by gang members who were upset with what had transpired, and Ray was very instrumental in helping to kind of calm that and allow that prayer vigil in March to go on,” an employee of Milwaukee’s Social Development Commission told the judge.
But redemption would have to wait. Mendoza was sentenced to 20 years in a federal penitentiary.
Ray Mendoza, 54, fills out an in-person absentee ballot at the Frank P. Zeidler Municipal Building in Milwaukee on Oct. 30, 2024. He voted for the third time in his life after regaining his voting rights in 2019 following nearly 20 years in prison and on probation. (Trisha Young / Wisconsin Watch)
His path to rehabilitation wasn’t a straight line. He said he spent his first 13 years in and out of solitary confinement, contemplating how to return to selling drugs without getting caught.
“All the way up until year 14 of my sentence, my mind said, ‘Well, I’m gonna come home and I’m gonna make a phone call and I’m gonna get a truckload of drugs and up here so I can get back to work,’” he said.
But returning to old habits, he eventually realized, would return him to prison.
“One day I was sitting in the hole, and I just say, ‘You know, if I want to go home and stay home, I gotta change the way I think. I gotta change the way I live my life, and I gotta change the way I view everybody else and everything else around me,’” Mendoza said. “I refuse to go back to prison.”
He’s kept the promise he made to himself. After his release, Mendoza went to work as a violence interrupter, sharing his experiences and helping to head off gunfire. More recently, he began work as a restorative justice coach at The Northwest Opportunities Vocational Academy, designed for students determined to be at risk of not graduating.
“According to (Milwaukee Public Schools), these (students) are the worst of the worst of the school system. Those are the ones that I love the most. Those are my favorites,” Mendoza said.
He sees a version of himself in every young person he works with. For them, his message is simple: They don’t have to go through the pain and heartache he endured. They can do things differently.
On this Election Day, the nation, including Wisconsin, faces partisan divisions so deep that some have vowed to move to another country if their preferred presidential candidate loses.
But where many see hopelessness, Mendoza sees something different.
“I don’t think things are hopeless right now. I’ve seen hopeless,” he said.
“I see opportunity. Even with all the negativity that’s going on in our city, I still see opportunity, not for me, not for people my age, not for people in the work that I do, but for the young people.”
Wisconsin’s early voting period finished Sunday, and a couple of things are clear: Voting by absentee ballot, which spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic, remains very popular, and Republicans are coming around to it despite mixed messages from party leaders.
As of Nov. 4, a day out from the election, voters cast and returned over 1.5 million absentee ballots, including nearly 950,000 cast at early voting sites. Ballots are still arriving by mail — the deadline for them to reach clerk’s offices is 8 p.m. on Election Day — but already, the total number of returned absentee ballots exceeds the total from the 2008, 2012 and 2016 presidential elections.
“Clerks were a little surprised by turnout,” Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe said Friday. “Everything still went really smoothly, but I think our local election officials were surprised to see the volume of in-person absentee.”
The volume was so high, Wolfe said, that the commission bought extra absentee ballot return envelopes in case municipalities ran out. None had run out as of Friday, she said.
Republican areas coming around to absentee voting
Statewide, the total number of returned ballots is about 20% lower than it was at this point in 2020, when COVID-19 pushed voters to rely on mail voting far more than usual.
As of Monday, no county had received more returned ballots than it had at this point in the 2020 election, but the six counties closest to their 2020 levels — Washington, Adams, Waukesha, Ozaukee, Florence, and Walworth — have Republican majorities.
In Walworth County, a southern county with just over 100,000 residents, county and municipal election staff anticipated an embrace of early voting, but “I don’t think we thought it was going to be the volume that it is,” County Clerk Susi Pike said. “It’s a lot different than any other election, for sure.”
One municipality in Walworth County that typically had early in-person voting only by appointment had open early-voting hours this time around, Pike said.
Voters like the availability of in-person early voting, Pike said, because it provides more flexibility and reduces the likelihood of people not being able to vote if, for example, weather is bad on Election Day.
The state doesn’t track the partisan breakdown of the early voting data, but polling shows a growing Republican embrace of voting before Election Day — at least, some versions of it.
Among likely voters in Wisconsin who said they would vote early in person, 52% support Donald Trump while 47% support Kamala Harris, a Marquette Law School Poll released Oct. 30 showed. Among those who planned to vote by mail, 70% support Harris, while 30% support Trump.
The percentage of Republicans voting early by mail and in person has increased since the last presidential election.
In 2020, 78% of Republicans planned to vote on Election Day, while 12% planned to cast a ballot early in person and 7% planned to vote by mail, according to the Marquette Law School Poll. In 2024, 70% of Republicans planned to vote on Election Day, with 19% planning to cast a ballot early and 10% by mail.
That change has come as Republican leaders emphasize early voting, a departure from 2020, when Trump and his allies baselessly alleged widespread fraud related to the casting of absentee ballots.
“We can’t keep walking into Election Day 100,000-200,000 votes down and expect we’re going to make it up in 13 hours between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m.,” Wisconsin Republican Party Chair Brian Schimming said.
Still some Republicans, including Trump, have persisted in casting doubt on some absentee voting methods. Trump has already said this election is rigged, and U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde, a Wisconsin Republican, called for monitoring drop boxes to ensure people aren’t “jamming fake ballots.”
In solidly Republican Washington County, voters have already returned about 54,000 ballots, just 2% fewer than at this point four years ago.
Voting by absentee ballot voting was less embraced in some outstate, mostly Republican counties. As of Monday, seven counties had 40% or fewer absentee ballots in this election than in 2020, and all but one voted for Trump that year.
In Clark County, where voters have returned under 2,000 absentee votes compared with nearly 3,500 in 2020, County Clerk Christina Jensen said voters typically wait until Election Day to vote.
Still, Jensen added, the pandemic changed county residents’ voting habits, and she fielded more calls about early voting this year than any year before it.
In Wisconsin’s Democratic strongholds of Dane and Milwaukee counties, voters continued to embrace early voting. Dane County voters had returned over 202,000 ballots, the elections commission stated on Monday, compared with just under 249,000 at this point in 2020. Milwaukee County voters returned about 230,000 this time around, compared with 314,000 at this point in 2020.
Early voting ran smoothly despite persistent printing delays
Even with higher in-person early voting numbers than ever before, early voting ran relatively smoothly. But voters faced long lines and delays across the state for several days, especially during the first week of early voting, because of a printing issue related to the state’s voter registration and election management system.
It remains unclear what caused the printing problem, but it resulted in up to 15-minute wait times to print each label that election officials typically stick on every absentee ballot, usually before voters cast their vote. The election commission encouraged local election officials to hand-write the information usually printed on the label, like a voter’s name and address, which some did.
The issue went away for most of the second week of early voting, but popped again on Friday as election officials across the state tried to print 20,000 labels in an hour, said Ann Jacobs, a Democratic commissioner on the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
Wolfe, the administrator, credited the increase in early voting turnout to “a lot more awareness on all of the options that are available.”
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.
Wisconsin is one of four states, along with Arizona, Georgia and Michigan, that have received non-credible bomb threats, the Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed to Wisconsin Watch. In a statement, the FBI said the threats came from email accounts with Russian domains.
Madison was one of the cities targeted, according to a city official, who said that the Madison Police Department coordinated with federal officials to determine they were fake. As a result, no polling places were evacuated — unlike in Georgia, which temporarily cleared two polling places and, as a result, has extended voting in some locations. The Madison Police Department has not responded to a request for comment.
Russian disinformation targeting Wisconsin has also appeared on social media. At least two accounts have shared a video of a person getting assaulted at a polling place, claiming it shows a supporter of Vice President Kamala Harris attacking a voter supporting ex-President Donald Trump. A spokesperson for the Wisconsin Elections Commission said they had seen the video but had “not heard any reports of attacks or violence at polling places today.”
Darren Linvill, a Clemson University professor who researches disinformation, said it has all the hallmarks of content produced by Storm-1516, a pro-Russia disinformation campaign that Linvill and his team first publicly identified in 2023.
Multiple federal agencies, including the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, have recently warned that foreign influence campaigns from Russian and elsewhere would target swing states “to undermine public confidence in the integrity of U.S. elections and stoke divisions among Americans.”
“Storm-1516 has already hit both Georgia and Pennsylvania, Wisconsin is a natural third target as another battleground state,” Linvill said by email. “They want to incite violence, and this is attempting exactly that.”
— Phoebe Petrovic
7:34 p.m.
Milwaukee to restart ballot count
Milwaukee election officials started all over again counting the city’s absentee ballots Tuesday afternoon after an observer noticed that the panel doors on the city’s 13 tabulators weren’t properly closed.
By the time city officials decided to restart the counting around 4 p.m., over 30,000 absentee ballots had already been fed into the tabulators, Milwaukee spokesperson Caroline Reinwald said. The city has over 106,000 absentee ballots in total.
BREAKING: Milwaukee is going to recount every absentee ballot that had been counted because of this issue. They had already tabulated 30,000 ballots.
That decision came after a Republican observer pointed out that the panel door that covers a tabulator’s on and off switch — and, in at least some cases, slots for inserting USB drives to export election results — was unlocked after workers had been using the tabulators for several hours. Milwaukee Election Commission Executive Director Paulina Gutiérrez then went from tabulator to tabulator, monitored by representatives from the Democratic and Republican parties, to secure each one between 2 and 2:30 p.m.
City election officials said there was no indication any of the tabulators had been tampered with — and that it would have been clear had somebody accessed them. The slots are used at the end of the night, when election officials insert USB drives to export election results before driving them to the county to submit the data.
“If (the off buttons) were tampered with, it would completely turn off,” Gutiérrez told Votebeat. “That would be very evident of tampering, so we just properly locked them and resealed them.”
There were no USB drives in any of the tabulators, she added.
The decision to restart the count, city spokesperson Jeff Fleming said, was “out of an abundance of caution.”
“We have no reason to believe that there was any compromise to any of the machines,” he said. “But because they were not fully sealed — human error — … we are going to zero them all out again and rerun the ballots that had already been processed.”
Tom Kertscher of Wisconsin Watch met up with Jefferson Davis, a Republican election observer, to ask what he does on Election Day.
What a GOP election observer sees at Central Count in heavily Democratic Milwaukee
Jefferson Davis, a believer of the discredited claim that widespread fraud was committed in Wisconsin in the 2020 election, liked some of what he saw Tuesday serving as a Republican observer at Central Count in heavily Democratic Milwaukee.
Working at the Baird Center convention facility downtown, where muffled conversations among some 200 people was about all that could be heard, city election coordinator Stephanie Rushing explained why ballots on one table had been rejected (missing signatures, commonly). Colored wristbands showed that the pairs of people opening the envelopes containing absentee ballots were mixed (Republican, Democratic or independent).
But Davis, the former village president in the Milwaukee suburb of Menomonee Falls, also seemed quick to spy a potential conspiracy.
Davis wondered aloud why some tables weren’t fully staffed (lunch breaks explained some of that); why workers weren’t working faster (a ploy to delay counts until after observers left, he conjectured); and why a tabulation machine needed attention when ballots jammed up (the fix was quick).
Then, about 2 p.m., an observer discovered the tabulation machines had not been properly “locked.” It wasn’t clear whether the oversight made the machines vulnerable, but it forced a recount of 30,000 ballots and raised concerns about the overall election administration in Milwaukee.
Jefferson Davis, a Republican election observer, left, and Republican Party of Milwaukee County Chairman Hilario Deleon, right, talk to each other after learning that the doors of the tabulation machines were not properly sealed during Election Day on Nov. 5, 2024, at Milwaukee Central Count at the Baird Center in Milwaukee. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Davis’ concerns this year focused on absentee ballot processing and on computer flash drives.
Absentee processing:All ballots are counted on Election Day, but processing absentee ballots is more involved. Absentee ballots, either cast at early voting sites or sent through the mail, arrive at polling places in envelopes that must be checked for things such as signatures from the voter and a witness. Then the envelopes are opened and the ballots are fed into a tabulator. The process is centralized in some communities, such as Milwaukee.
Flash drives: In Milwaukee, flash drives — thumb-size data-storing devices — are to be cleared and reformatted before being put in sealed envelopes; the process is witnessed and both a Democrat and a Republican are among the observers who sign a certification of the process. After the polls are closed and all ballots are processed, voting results from the tabulation machines are exported to the flash drives. Witnesses also sign a document certifying that the exports were done. The flash drives are then transported to Milwaukee County, with a Democrat and a Republican traveling with the drives and an election inspector in the same vehicle.
A mistake in 2020led to new procedures for handling the flash drives that Davis praised. Then-Milwaukee election director Claire Woodall reported to the Wisconsin Elections Commission that one flash drive had been misplaced, but never left unmonitored, in the process of transporting the drives to the county.
“That’s not happening again tonight,” Davis said.
— Tom Kertscher
5 p.m.
A line of people formed early Tuesday morning before voting officially began at La Escuela Fratney Elementary School, 3255 N. Fratney St., where Milwaukee voting districts 119 and 120 vote. Wisconsin Watch asked several Milwaukee voters what they are hoping for from the 2024 election. Watch to see what they said. (Trisha Young / Wisconsin Watch)
‘Voter rescue’ effort in Milwaukee
Supermarket Legends volunteers are doing their “voter rescue” efforts at three early voting sites in Milwaukee. The aim is to redirect voters who go to early voting sites that aren’t also polling places, and thus don’t host voting on Election Day. The left-leaning nonpartisan group, which takes its name from doing voter registration outside of supermarkets, redirected 800 people to their local polling places in the 2020 presidential election.
On Monday, volunteers went to two early voting sites in Milwaukee and encountered 760 voters trying to cast ballots, co-coordinator Linea Sundstrom said. She said it was the first time the group did a rescue effort on the day before Election Day. Early voting ended Sunday. As of 11:40 a.m., about 480 Election Day voters were helped, Sundstrom said.
– Tom Kertscher
Trisha Young of Wisconsin Watch went to the E&R Church polling location in Waukesha to ask voters what they are hoping for from the 2024 election.
Milwaukee count starts late
Milwaukee's central count kicked off at 9 a.m., a little late. Could start at 7 a.m. under state law, but delays to begin there are are somewhat typical. This is likely to have an effect on when we see results at the end of the night.
There were also counting delays in Wisconsin. Absentee ballot processing and counting began at Milwaukee’s central count just before 9 a.m. Tuesday — just under an hour later than city election officials had intended to start, and about two hours after the state allows election officials to begin processing absentee ballots. The delay was mostly due to the extra time needed to check in workers and put them in the right area of central count, Milwaukee spokesperson Melissa Howard said.
The city remains on path to finish tabulating ballots by 2 or 3 a.m. Wednesday, Milwaukee election director Paulina Gutiérrez said on Tuesday.
Under Milwaukee rules, all of the city’s 106,000 absentee ballots are processed and tabulated at one central count location. State law doesn’t allow election officials to tabulate or process any ballots before Election Day, a policy that is largely responsible for the typically late uploading of absentee ballots.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers tried to change that policy this past legislative session, but it stalled in the Senate.
— Alexander Shur
1:10 p.m.
Volunteer poll workers Janan Dargiewicz, left, and Jessica Roulette, second from left, help Alvonia Missouri, 74, of Milwaukee, second from right, register to vote as Missouri’s great-grandchildren, Tyriah Smith, 5, third from right, and Tyron Smith, 7, right, wait on Election Day, Nov. 5, 2024, at Mary Ryan Boys & Girls Club in Milwaukee. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Alvonia Missouri of Milwaukee, joined by her great-grandchildren, Tyriah Smith, 5, left, and Tyron Smith, 7, right, registers to vote during Election Day on Nov. 5, 2024, at Mary Ryan Boys & Girls Club in Milwaukee. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
‘When it’s their time to come, I may be gone’: Voting excitement at Boys & Girls Club in Milwaukee
Cheers, clapping and cowbell ringing echoed throughout a gymnasium Tuesday as first-time voters were celebrated at the Mary Ryan Boys & Girls Club in the Sherman Park neighborhood of Milwaukee.
Casting a ballot was far from new for veteran voter Alvonia Missouri, 74. But she hoped the scene would inspire her great-grandchildren, ages 5 and 7, to participate in future elections.
“When it’s their time to come, I may be gone,” Missouri said, joined by the children.
Poll worker Jeannie Berry-Matos, an active Sherman Park Community Association member since 1996 who has previously volunteered at the polls, said she witnessed enthusiasm that made this year’s election stand out.
“People are coming in and they’re excited to vote,” Berry-Matos said. “I watch them bring their family members in. Grandmothers are saying, ‘it’s my granddaughter’s first time voting,’ so it’s pretty impactful.’”
– Joe Timmerman
4 p.m.
Volunteer poll worker Beverly Cooley cheers after helping Jayvonte Wingard, 18, right, vote for his first time on Election Day, Nov. 5, 2024, at the Clinton & Bernice Rose Senior Center in Milwaukee. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Republican who claimed fraud in 2020 election observing election in Milwaukee
Jefferson Davis, the former village president in the Milwaukee suburb of Menomonee Falls, is among the Republican Election Day observers. He’s focusing on the “central count” processing of Milwaukee absentee ballots, which is done at the Baird Center convention facility downtown. The observation process includes ensuring that envelopes for absentee ballots have proper signatures and that computer flash drives, which transmit the results to Milwaukee County officials, are secure.
Davis reiterated that he believes fraud “affected the outcome” of the 2020 presidential election in Wisconsin. But he said working with Milwaukee election officials “has plugged a lot of the holes that will make the administration of the election in 2024 one that will be open, honest and fair.”
Davis wasamongleaders in Wisconsin who claimed widespread fraud in Wisconsin in 2020. In 2022, Davis organized a rally at the State Capitol to seek support for a Republican resolution that aimed to retract Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes for Joe Biden in 2020.
There was no widespread fraud in Wisconsin. Reviews were done by the nonpartisan Wisconsin Legislative Audit Bureau, the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty and The Associated Press, and partial recounts were done in Dane and Milwaukee counties.
Anyone except a candidate running for election can be an election observer at polling stations and at central count sites in Wisconsin. Observers must sign in with their name and address and, if any, the organization they’re observing for; they must present photo identification and wear a badge while observing. Observers can challenge a voter’s eligibility, but can’t engage in electioneering. News media are also allowed to monitor polling places and central count sites.
– Tom Kertscher
Devin Hildebrand casts a ballot with Ivy Hildebrand, 2, in tow at Green Isle Pavilion in Allouez, Wis., on Nov. 5, 2024. (Julius Shieh / Wisconsin Watch)
‘Purple Watch Party’ in Green Bay celebrates democracy and civility
As happy hour approaches, Democrats and Republicans can cheer their favorite candidates or drink away their political sorrows at a variety of partisan election watch parties statewide.
Bipartisan options and nonpartisan options, however, are harder to come by.
The Greater Green Bay Chamber hopes to change this with The Purple Party, its first ever “bi-partisan election watch party.” The event is a product of the chamber’s Civic Engagement Committee, and organizers hope to “do something that celebrates the Democratic process and the power of the people.”
Organizer Patrick Noel was excited for the event. Noel said that he’s witnessed political divisiveness for years and wants people from all political backgrounds to “talk to each other and to have an actual conversation.”
“We all know political conversations aren’t always easy – it’s very complicated when you’ve got issues that are emotionally tied or when you’ve got different information than another person does,” Noel said. “We’re trying to give people the tools to do it, and the chance to talk to each other and learn from each other and learn new things.”
Matt Rentmeester, vice president of talent & education at the Greater Green Bay Chamber, said that he’s heard positive feedback from the community surrounding the event.
“It’s just a way to celebrate the core of what Election Day should look like,” Rentmeester said.
Rentmeester said that organizers are aware of the possibility for arguments to arise, but they’ve crafted ground rules to encourage attendees to leave their “partisan rhetoric behind and really be open to discussions with civility.”
“Whether people stick to this or not – we’ll find out tonight,” Rentmeester said.
The Purple Party will start at 7 p.m. in Hagemeister Park in Green Bay.
– Julius Shieh
3 p.m.
Green Bay Central Count offers update
Election workers count ballots at Green Bay Central Count in the Green Bay City Hall building on Nov. 5, 2024. (Julius Shieh / Wisconsin Watch)
In a Facebook post, Green Bay officials confirmed that 4,363 absentee ballots were counted as of 6:30 p.m.
The city said 20,154 absentee ballots were returned through Monday, and ballot drop boxes closed at 7 a.m. Tuesday. The city had yet to guess how long workers will be counting ballots at Green Bay Central Count.
– Julius Shieh
6:30 p.m.
UW-Oshkosh students cast ballots, many in their first presidential election
University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh graduate student John Schirger fills out his ballot. Students and community members voted at the Culver Family Welcome Center at UW-Oshkosh in Oshkosh, Wis. on Nov. 5, 2024. (Julius Shieh / Wisconsin Watch)
University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh students Adam Ketter, left, and Jacob Young, right, spent the day as poll workers. (Julius Shieh / Wisconsin Watch)
Students and community members lined up to cast their ballots Tuesday morning at the Culver Family Welcome Center at UW-Oshkosh in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
First-year UW-Oshkosh student Theodorus Guigley voted for the first time, heading to the polls together with fellow third-year student Skylar Kulick.
Both Guigley and Kulick said they felt stressed about the presidential election.
“I don’t know how it’s a choice,” Guigley said. “If it wasn’t such a ‘vote against the person you disagree with the most, for the person you disagree with the least’ (situation) I’d be voting for someone else.”
Guigley said that ranked choice voting and having viable third-party political options would improve the electoral system.
“I did my civic duty,” Guigley said.
Sophomores Adam Ketter and Jacob Young were working at the university polling area, standing at the entrance to greet voters and provide information. For both, 2024 marked the first presidential election in which they’ve voted.
Ketter and Young chose to work the polls to fulfill a requirement for a government class. Both will work at the UW-Oshkosh polling location for the entire day, staying until after polls close at 8 p.m.
Ketter said that he was glad to be able to vote. “I think this is definitely the most important election, maybe forever,” Ketter said.
– Julius Shieh
Madison woman: ‘It makes me cry every time I vote.’
As Kate Hable, 73, of Madison, walked out the doors of Madison East High School after voting this morning, she wiped tears away from her eyes.
“It makes me cry every time I vote,” said Hable, who has never missed an election. “It’s such a powerful thing that we get to vote. I care very much about what we do in this country, and it’s such a powerhouse. We owe this powerhouse our attention at any given moment.”
– Joe Timmerman
Kate Hable, 73, of Madison, poses for a portrait after voting in the general election on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, at Madison East High School in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Truths and falsehoods about elections
Wisconsin Watch fact briefs have sorted out a number of voting-related claims:
No, Donald Trump did not win Wisconsin in 2020; Joe Biden won by less than 1%, about 20,000 votes.
No, there was not widespread fraud in the 2020 election in Wisconsin; reviews were done by the nonpartisan Wisconsin Legislative Audit Bureau, the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty and The Associated Press, and partial recounts were done in Dane and Milwaukee counties.
No, 20,000 people in Wisconsin with the same phone number vote did not vote in the 2020 presidential election; records for more than 20,000 people listed with the same phone number in the Wisconsin Elections Commission system are for inactive voters who were given a default phone number.
Yes, groups in Green Bay, Wisconsin, offered free food and an open bar to voters in the April 2, 2024, election; it was canceled after a prosecutor said the campaign might violate Wisconsin law on election bribery.
Yes, Wisconsin was decided by less than 1 percentage point in four of the last six presidential elections.
Yes, over 80% of voting in some states is done by mail; in November 2022, there were seven states, all in the West (Wisconsin’s rate was 16.9%).
We also fact-checked many statements made by Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, JD Vance and Tim Walz when they campaigned in Wisconsin. We found that many claims about immigration, health care and the economy were false or misleading. Here’s a look.
– Tom Kertscher
Oshkosh voters arrive early to library polling location
Donning raincoats and umbrellas, dozens of voters lined up before 7 a.m. at Oshkosh Public Library in Oshkosh, Wis., to cast their ballots on Election Day, Nov. 5, 2024. (Julius Shieh / Wisconsin Watch)
Rain marked the start of Election Day at Oshkosh Public Library in Oshkosh.
Dozens of voters lined up in umbrellas and raincoats in the hour leading up to the 7 a.m. poll opening time. Some voters arrived as early as 6 a.m.
Shane Worden, 51, was among the first in line.
“I start working at 8 and don’t get off until 5,” Worden said. “I’d rather beat the 5 o’clock going home push. I’d rather go home and just chill out.”
Parents Sharon and Dylan Chmura-Moore stopped by the library to cast their ballots with their children, Sophia and Elliot, in tow.
Sophia and Elliot watched as their parents filled out ballots, and both helped as Sharon and Dylan entered the ballots into a voting machine.
“We’ve been bringing them since they were infants,” Dylan Chmura-Moore said.
By 7:30 a.m., the line to get to the polls had swelled, with hundreds waiting.
Shane Worden, one of the first 20 voters of the day at the Oshkosh Public Library in Oshkosh, Wis., gives a thumbs up to a poll worker after inserting his ballot into a voting machine. (Julius Shieh / Wisconsin Watch)
Elliot Chmura-Moore helps his father, Dylan, submit his ballot. It was the 20th vote submitted on Election Day, Nov. 5, 2024, at the Oshkosh Public Library polling place in Oshkosh, Wis. (Julius Shieh / Wisconsin Watch)
– Julius Shieh
Ex-incarcerated Milwaukee man cherishes regained voting rights
Ray Mendoza doesn’t care who you vote for. He just wants you to vote.
To Mendoza, 54, the right to vote is too precious to squander. That’s how the Milwaukee man feels after surrendering that right for the roughly 20 years he spent in a federal penitentiary and on probation.
“I encourage everybody, if you’re a convicted felon and you’re not on probation or parole, get out and vote. Use your voice,” Mendoza last week told a reporter outside Milwaukee’s Frank P. Zeidler Municipal Building, where he voted for the third time in his life — casting an in-person absentee ballot.
First-time voter Kristanna Alvarez Mercado cast her ballot Tuesday afternoon at Bethesda Lutheran Church in Eau Claire.
The 21-year-old moved here from Puerto Rico in 2017. She said she supported Harris for president long before a speaker at Trump’s Oct. 27 Madison Square Garden rally compared Puerto Rico to an “island of floating garbage” — a comment she called “unacceptable.”
“There’s amazing people there, and as a person who lived there I was like, ‘big no,’” she said, adding that issues surrounding women’s rights and abortion primarily motivated her to vote for Harris.
Fritz Soronen, 64, also cast his first ballot at the Eau Claire polling place, deciding to show up after hearing his son was voting.
Madilyn Kempen and Archer Paulson pick up stickers after casting their first presidential ballots in Eau Claire, Wis., on Nov. 5, 2024. (Addie Costello / Wisconsin Watch)
“I decided to come today because the way the economy is going and bad things are happening around the world,” Soronen said.
“I voted for Donald Trump,” Soronen said. “I thought he (Trump) did a great job last time he was in office.”
Madilyn Kempen, 18, and Archer Paulson, 20, cast their first presidential election ballots together.
Paulson, a student at Chippewa Valley Technical College, said a college get-out-the-vote campaign motivated him.
Kempen, who voted for Harris, said she showed up because this election felt important.
“I would just way rather have one president than the other,” she said.
– Addie Costello
6 p.m.
In Milwaukee housing projects, voters feel ‘great energy,’ not fears expressed in 2020
The Milwaukee nonpartisan group Common Ground is working near 10 polling sites that serve residents of Milwaukee public housing projects, said executive director Jennifer O’Hear. The work includes knocking on doors of residents in high-rise apartment buildings where voting is done in the same building and asking residents to contact family and friends to encourage them to vote, she said.
“There’s just a great spirit and a great energy,” O’Hear said. “In 2020, there was a real fear people had about whether they were voting properly and that their vote would be counted.
“I’m not getting that vibe that much this time. I’m hearing that everyone in their social circle is voting.”
– Tom Kertscher
11:30 a.m.
Effects of early voting shown in Milwaukee suburb
Three voters in the Milwaukee County suburb of Wauwatosa who voted late in the morning, including two who cast ballots at City Hall, said they didn’t have any wait time. Beth Strohbusch voted at Trinity Episcopal Church.
“I anticipated pulling into a full parking lot. There were only a few cars,” Strohbusch said. “There was no line and only two others casting ballots.”
— Tom Kertscher
1.5 million have voted so far. Here’s what it means for election night.
On election night, millions of Americans went to bed with former President Donald Trump leading among returns, only for them to wake up to Joe Biden having surpassed him in some states after large, mostly Democratic cities like Milwaukee processed absentee ballots into the early morning hours of Wednesday.
Trump used his election night lead to baselessly claim that he won the election. Eventually, on social media, he demanded that election workers “STOP THE COUNT!” as his paths to victory evaporated.
The delay in reporting election results was attributed to the massive increase in absentee ballots cast in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic — which broke heavily for Democrats. That wasn’t surprising given in the months leading up to Election Day, Trump questioned the validity of absentee voting. Some 1.9 million people voted via an absentee ballot in Wisconsin in 2020, far surpassing previous records, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
As of Nov. 4, a little over 1.5 million absentee ballots have been cast in Wisconsin. At the same time in 2020, more than 1.8 million absentee ballots had been returned.
Historically, with the exception of 2020, about 20% of Wisconsin general election voters in presidential election years voted via absentee ballots. This usually ranges from 600,000 to 800,000 votes. In 2024, the state broke a million votes on Oct. 30.
When counting absentee ballots, poll workers have to announce who cast a ballot, check the voter’s name off a poll list, open the ballot envelope, unpack the ballot and feed it into a tabulator. That process takes time, especially in communities like Milwaukee where absentee ballots are counted in a single location.
Five communities across the state swapped to central absentee ballot counts in 2024. In full, 41 cities, towns or villages use the centralized system. The cities of Milwaukee and Kenosha were the first to adopt this method, in 2007 and 2008 respectively. As of Nov. 4, there are a little over 400,000 absentee votes cast in municipalities that use the centralized system.
Despite fewer absentee ballots being cast, election officials are still warning that it will be a late night.
“I don’t think it’ll be that bad,” Paulina Gutiérrez, executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission, told WisPolitics.com about when to expect results from the city after polls close. “But it won’t be like a smaller election, and so it will be a late night.”
– Jack Kelly and Khushboo Rathore
Early voting in a nursing home: ‘It’s going to make a difference’
Arlene Meyer says she’s voted in every election since she was 21 — the legal voting age until 1971. Last month she cast her 17th vote for president from her nursing home.
“It was excellent,” Meyer said Friday. “Everybody had a chance to vote for whoever they wanted to.”
Local election officials brought voting machines into Pine Crest Nursing Home in Merrill, Wisconsin, weeks before election day. If a municipal clerk receives at least five absentee ballot requests from nursing home residents, special voting deputies can be sent into that facility to collect residents’ votes, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
The return of special deputies to nursing homes ahead of Election Day marks one clear difference from 2020, an election shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Backers of former President Donald Trump thrust nursing home voters into efforts to delegitimize President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman’s partisan investigation of the election identified a couple of cases of people in nursing homes who had voted despite a court adjudicating them “incompetent” and removing their voting rights.
Special voting deputies didn’t visit nursing homes in 2020, because WEC’s bipartisan members waived rules requiring them, seeking to limit COVID-19’s spread to vulnerable seniors. That meant nursing home staff were tasked with helping residents fill out ballots.
Trump’s allies seized on that context to baselessly claim thousands of adjudicated incompetent voters may have had votes cast in their name. A Wisconsin Watch investigation later found those claims to be dramatically inflated, though it also found the state lacks a statutorily defined system for ensuring those ruled mentally incompetent don’t vote. An attempt to create such a system failed to pass the state Senate earlier this year.
Meyer, a former Lincoln County Board Supervisor, said she remained fully competent to mark her ballot in this election.
“I’m 86 and mentally stable,” she said with a chuckle.
A bag of library books, most about history, sat next to her recliner. Her typical day at the nursing home starts with watching the news.
“I like to see what’s happening in the world,” Meyer said.
Asked why voting still felt important, Meyer responded: “Everything a politician does, it’s going to affect everybody, including me, even though I’m not out working or anything else. But yes, I think it’s very, very important, and I want to know what’s going on. … I got children here, I got grandchildren here. I got great grandchildren here, it’s going to make a difference.”
In Milwaukee, Kenosha and Racine, Souls to the Polls is offering free, round-trip rides to polling locations. Call their hotline at 414-742-1060 to book a ride.
Using the code VOTE24, 50% off of a ride to a polling location, up to a maximum of $10, will be covered by rideshare company Lyft. Rival Uber offers the same discount, accessible through the “Go Vote” option in the Uber mobile app. Additionally, e-scooter company Lime will be offering free rides of up to 30 minutes to a polling location in Milwaukee.
–Julius Shieh
Polls open in Wisconsin
It’s Election Day — and the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Voters here in Wisconsin will help pick the next president, choose a U.S. senator, send eight people to the U.S. House, elect state representatives and senators, decide whether to amend the state constitution and weigh in on scores of local ballot referendums.
Polls open at 7 a.m. in Wisconsin and close at 8 p.m. If you are still in line at 8 p.m. and haven’t yet had a chance to vote, stay in line. You will still be able to cast a ballot.
Even though the polls close at 8 p.m. here, expect it to be at least a few hours — and possibly longer — to get definitive unofficial results. Wisconsin is one of seven battleground states that will determine the outcome of the election. Here’s when polls close in the other six, but just like here, don’t expect to know who won each of these states right away.
All times listed in Central Standard Time:
Arizona: 8 p.m.
Georgia: 6 p.m.
Michigan: 7 p.m.
Nevada: 9 p.m.
North Carolina: 6:30 p.m.
Pennsylvania: 7 p.m.
If someone declares victory shortly after polls close — especially in the presidential election — be extremely skeptical. In 2020 former President Donald Trump declared victory while millions of votes still needed to be counted. And, as has been well documented, President Joe Biden won that election. Trump could once again prematurely — and potentially baselessly — claim victory again this year, with some members of his orbit urging the former president to address voters even earlier on election night than in 2020.
It’s important to remember that the results reported on election night are unofficial. At Wisconsin Watch, we look to the Associated Press and other reputable news organizations for our race calls.
The vote counting process will take time and varies by municipality in Wisconsin. Local election officials pick where absentee ballots are counted.
In most places, including Madison, absentee ballots that have been cast will be distributed to the polling location across the city where a voter would have cast a ballot in person to be tabulated throughout the day. In others, like Milwaukee and Green Bay, absentee votes are tallied in a central location.
Counting votes takes time. When counting absentee ballots, poll workers have to announce who cast a ballot, check the voter’s name off a poll list, open the ballot envelope, unpack the ballot and feed it into a tabulator, per the Journal Sentinel.
However, there are fewer absentee ballots this year than in 2020, which could help speed up election night returns. Election officials in Milwaukee are predicting that tabulation will be faster this year than in 2020, but still cautioned it will be a late night.
Finally, control of the Assembly is up for grabs, something that could upend the status quo of Wisconsin politics. Read more about the races that could determine which party wins a majority here.
– Jack Kelly
6 a.m.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
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