A Bucky Badger who marched in the No Kings protest in Madison said he didn't mind missing the football game for such and important event. | Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner

Tens of thousands of Wisconsinites participated in No Kings marches and rallies Saturday, with turnout exceeding the June No Kings rallies in Madison, Milwaukee, Green Bay and even in smaller towns including Hayward. 

An estimated 20,000 marchers descend on the Capitol in Madison

Protesters, many wearing inflatable animal costumes and carrying signs, gathered in McPike Park in downtown Madison and marched one mile up East Washington Avenue to the Capitol, shutting down intersections and blocking the major thoroughfare for blocks, following the Forward Marching Band.

Marchers chanted “Show me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like!” and “We are unstoppable! A better world is possible!”

The march started a little before the UW-Madison football team was scheduled to kick off against Ohio State. A Bucky the Badger who came to the march said he wasn’t upset about missing the game for the protest. “The People’s Bucky believes in democracy… Without democracy, there would be no games,” he said.

Candy Neumeier, a former teacher who drove down from outside of Oshkosh for the rally, said she was attending to “stand up for our rights,” which are “being trampled on by this wannabe dictator and his crew.” She wore a trash bag with Jeffrey Epstein’s face and President Donald Trump’s hand drawn on it. “I really believe that we need to release the Epstein files.”

From a stage set up on the Capitol steps, Ali Muldrow, a Madison school board member and activist who emceed the rally, said there are about 20,000 people at the protest in Wisconsin’s capital city.

Dane County Circuit Court Judge Everett Mitchell told the crowd,“Yes, judges are out here, too. I might get in trouble on Monday, but I’m here right now.” 

“You’re living in the redefinition of our democracy right now. Our legal systems are being retooled, reconfigured, and realigned to incentivize ultimate power… The war for civil rights is being waged all over again,” Mitchell added.

Ben Wikler, former Democratic Party of Wisconsin chair, tied the protests and pushback against Trump to the crucial state level elections that will take place in Wisconsin in 2026, including the spring state Supreme Court election, the race for an open gubernatorial seat and races that will determine control of the state Senate and Assembly in the fall.

“The only way to break democracy in America is to break it in the states,” Wikler said. “If Trump wants to be king, he’s going to need people in offices like the governorship who certified elections in the state of Wisconsin and offices, like our state Supreme Court, who will be in his back pocket. Wisconsin, are we going to be in Trump’s back pocket next year?”

The crowd shouted, “No!”  

“Are we gonna be on the streets instead and talk to people who maybe never voted before, but are ready to vote now because they understand what is at stake?” Wikler asked to the sound of cheers. “Are we gonna get out of the boat, and are we gonna win elections and are we going to defend democracy?” 

“Let’s fight! No kings! Forward!” Wikler shouted. 

— Baylor Spears

Milwaukee tops 18,000

More than 18,000 protesters filled downtown Milwaukee as part of the No Kings day events taking place across Wisconsin and the country Saturday to protest the administration of President Donald Trump.

A large number of people at the protest said they were motivated to come Saturday as a direct response to what they see as heavy handed actions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In recent weeks, ICE has increased its presence in Wisconsin, conducting raids of migrant workers in communities including Madison and Manitowoc.

The protest attendance topped the 16,000 that attended the No Kings protest in the city in June — despite sister events taking place in the Milwaukee County suburbs of Cudahy, Greenfield and Shorewood, and additional events in nearby Waukesha County.

The crowd gathered at Cathedral Square Park, just blocks from city hall, before marching on a 1.8 mile course through downtown.

Mirroring protesters that have gained attention for wearing inflatable costumes during confrontations with federal agents in cities such as Chicago and Portland, Ore., attendees in Milwaukee were dressed as dinosaurs, aliens and unicorns.

At the park, Jim Baran, a Brown Deer resident, sported a banana costume and flew an upside down U.S. flag — a maritime code for distress. Baran said he wanted to attend the protest to show he’s “not going to stand for shenanigans” from the Trump administration.

“He’s selling America, he doesn’t care about Americans,” Baran said.

Stephanie Jacks, a New Berlin resident, said she came to the Milwaukee protest so residents of the city know people in the surrounding communities support it.

“There’s no due process,” she said. “There’s no checks and balances.”

A Milwaukee resident who only gave their name as J. and said they were a first generation Mexican-American, was dressed in an inflatable alien costume in an effort to make Trump claims of violent protesters seem silly and “take the wind out of their sails.”

“This alien is anti-ICE,” they said.

Kelly, a Milwaukee resident who declined to give a last name, said she’s a former deputy sheriff who is “appalled” by the actions of ICE agents. “I can’t believe what they’re doing,” she said. “The level of incompetence, no training, no supervision, no rules. It’s just insane.”

— Henry Redman

Green Bay rebuffs ICE

On Green Bay protestors’ march downtown, one of their chants was “No KKK, no fascist USA, no ICE.”

By the Brown County Courthouse in downtown Green Bay, protestors sang advice for interacting with law enforcement, including “Ask if you’re free to go, ask for a lawyer, protect yourself and neighbors and record, record, record.”

A speaker called for the crowd to go to their sheriffs about sheriffs’ partnerships with ICE, report possible ICE activity to the advocacy group Voces de la Frontera “so we can protect the immigrants who are amongst us,” tell legislators to pass a bill allowing drivers’ licenses for immigrants without legal status and support families they know who have been separated. 

Other speeches included concerns related to public education, trans rights, Israel and Palestine and free speech. 

Rick Crosson, candidate for northeast Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional District, came to the protest. He told the Examiner that “for us, it’s about getting back what the Constitution had intended. And that is, have the people run the show. No kings, no dictators, no autocrats.”

Green Bay’s Neville Public Museum is looking for donations that reflect people’s experiences with “No Kings.” In a Facebook post, the museum provided a list of items it is specifically looking for, which includes protest or counter-protest signs, photographs, journal entries and digital recordings. 

“It is our responsibility to collect the stories of today to help create understanding in the future,” the museum explained in a statement. 

— Andrew Kennard

Hayward sees record crowd

 

A protest in Hayward, Wisconsin, hometown of Sean Duffy,  Secretary of Transportation topped 1,200 participants, the largest protest ever in the small northern Wisconsin city with a population of about 2,500. 

Joan Ackerman of Hayward said the protesters are not “un-American,” as some Republican politicians have claimed, but just want to exercise their freedom of speech about things happening in the country that concern them.

Kay, a woman  from Barnes, Wisconsin, who carried a sign that said “fight truth decay,” said she came to the protest in Hayward “because of the current political environment.” She added, “We have become so divisive because of misleading and alternative facts. We need objective news that is non-partisan.”

Natalie of Hayward, who carried a sign that said, “Health care is a right,” said she was at the protest because she doesn’t  like the direction the country is headed. “We need to make it safe for our kids,” she said.

Steve, another Hayward resident who is an Air Force veteran of the Vietnam War, explained that he feels the country is moving away from the core principles of democracy he fought to defend.

 

Gary Quaderer, Sr., a Vietnam Army vet and spiritual leader of the Lac Courte Oreilles Tribe said this is the first protest he has ever participated in. “I thought it was very important,” he said. “I don’t like where the country is headed. … I just wanted to come out with all these other good people here just to protest what was going on.”

Paul DeMain, editor of the national News from Indian Country newspaper based in Hayward said the gathering was historic, the largest protest Hayward had ever seen.

 

— Frank Zufall

‘Love of country’ in Janesville

In a downtown park in Janesville, Wisconsin, organizers estimated 1,000 or more people turned out on a warm, sunny Saturday morning. 

In addition to packing the sidewalks at the intersection of Court and Main streets at the corner of Courthouse Park, rally goers milled through the park space. Many sat in the well surrounding the stage, where a handful of speakers made brief remarks.

“There are 93 rallies in Wisconsin,” said U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Black Earth). Pocan recalled the words of the Republican U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson a few days ago.

“They’re trying to falsely call this a Hate America rally,” Pocan said. “People who are here today are the ones who love their country. This rally is really showing that love of country over everything else.”

Another speaker was state Sen. Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit), whose district includes Janesville. 

“We are here to peacefully demonstrate — as the First Amendment gives us the right to do — and to call on our government to do better, to respect our rights, to respect the Constitution, and to do right by the American people,” Spreitzer told the crowd. 

“We’re also here to say that we are a welcoming community, that immigrants make our community stronger, that LGBT people make our community stronger, that people of color make our community stronger, that people with disabilities make our community stronger.,” Spreitzer said. “We are here to stand up for everybody’s right to coexist as part of our community and to get ahead in life.”

Spreitzer acknowledged that for opponents of the president, Saturday’s rally was but one step in a much longer struggle.  

“This is not going to be the last time we’re going to have to keep getting together and doing this,” he said. “I know it is going to be a long fight, but we’re going to win that fight. We’re going to take our country back.”

Virtually every speaker made a point of emphasizing the peaceful intentions and means of participants in the protest. 

State Rep. Ann Roe (D-Janesville), offered her mother’s advice for people who may be confronted by supporters of the president. 

“You know what my mom used to say? Kill them with kindness,” Roe said. “Nothing makes them madder.”

In a brief interview, Roe said that as she wandered through the crowd, she encountered a variety of people she has known from various aspects of her life, all taking part.

“I have seen neighbors here. I have seen people I’ve worked with and we’ve never discussed politics,” Roe said.

“It sounds corny, but that’s what gives me hope. We’re back to the old ways — one-on-one conversations. By remaining kind and open as a long-term strategy, That’s what keeps us from devolving into chaos.”

— Erik Gunn

In Kenosha, resistance through building community

Across the state in the city of Kenosha, a crowd of about 2,500 people filled the sidewalks on both sides of Sheridan Road, Downtown Kenosha’s primary north-south thoroughfare, along a four-block stretch.

Signs, the vast majority of them home-made, filled the air. So did the steady honking of passing cars as drivers sounded their horns in support of the demonstrators throughout the three-hour gathering. The sign-waving crowd cheered back in response.

Organizers had envisioned a dance party theme for their afternoon No Kings protest. A Michael Jackson impersonator lip-synched to recordings of Jackson’s biggest hits while effortlessly mimicking Jackson’s trademark dance steps on the concrete walkway of Civic Center Park. 

“We couldn’t drag people away from their chanting and cheering,” said Sheila Rawn, one of the principal organizers for Hands Off Kenosha, which put together the local version of the No Kings demonstration.

“We chose to not even try to have speakers because people don’t want to come and hear speeches,” she added. “They want to stand on the street.” 

Rawn and a co-organizer, Jennifer Weinstein, were both dressed in lion costumes. People were invited to “dress as your favorite king or queen that would do better than the wannabe king that we have in the White House,” Rawn explained. “Yeah, so, no kings — but if we did have a king, you know, like a lion king would make a better king. King Kong would make a better king. A monarch butterfly would make a better king.”

It’s part of the group’s philosophy of “tactical frivolity,” Weinstein said. 

“For the record, We were planning costumes before all the Portland stuff,” Rawn said, referring to the national attention that a Portland protester in a frog suit got recently.

Hands Off Kenosha launched in the spring, an outgrowth of the April 5 Hands Off rally. Having gone to Chicago and Milwaukee for large protest events during Trump’s first administration, “it was important to me to be like, ‘No, we’re doing it here,’” Rawn said. “Kenosha is the fourth largest city in Wisconsin. We are big enough to have our own protests.”

Memories of the unrest Kenosha experienced in 2020, when self-styled militia members clashed with protesters and teenager Kyle Rittenhouse shot three men, two of them fatally, an act for which he was later acquitted, have lingered, she acknowledged. 

“I have definitely had conversations with lots of people who have said they’re nervous about coming because the community is still grappling with what happened in 2020,” Rawn said. “And so there are some people who are afraid that violence could happen, but we’ve got over a six-month track record of being peaceful and playful and joyful. And we have been really intentional.”

On a table at one end of the park, bags and bags of personal hygiene products overflowed — a collection that the organizers made part of the event. They had a school supply drive at an August protest and have conducted food drives as well. 

“It’s important to us to include mutual aid,” Rawn said. “Building community is its own form of resistance.”

— Erik Gunn

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A version of this story was originally published by WPR.

Thousands of protesters across the state joined the second wave of nationwide “No Kings” protests on Saturday.

The protests were held in cities and rural communities in all parts of Wisconsin. Protesters said they hoped to bring attention to what they call an authoritarian power grab by President Donald Trump.

In Milwaukee, crowds at Cathedral Square Park chanted and marched. Many held signs making fun of the president; some wore costumes — a frog suit, an inflatable Cookie Monster — joining a trend that began during protests of immigration raids in Portland, Oregon. There were many American flags, upright and upside down, along with flags of other nations.

Chad Bowman, a member of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community or Mohican Nation, donned a ceremonial ribbon shirt and part of his dancing regalia. Bowman says he is proud to be an American. 

“I’m Native, and I believe in this country,” Bowman said. “I believe in democracy, and Trump and his cronies are ruining it.”

A Milwaukee protester wearing an inflatable unicorn costume and swinging an American flag said she dressed that way “because it’s ridiculous to suggest that we’re criminals, or illegal or terrorists.” She said her name was Mary but declined to give her full name, fearing retaliation for her participation in the protests. She said she has family members who are federal employees who are not working due to the ongoing federal government shutdown.

“They can’t stand not being able to do what they are … passionate about doing for the American people,” she said.

In Madison, thousands marched from McPike Park on their way to the state Capitol. Many carried American flags as a marching band played.

Joe Myatt of Janesville carried a sign bearing a quote from Thomas Jefferson. He said he’s concerned about the “shift towards authoritarianism” in the U.S. and around the world.

“Basically, Trump’s trying to consolidate as much force into the office of the presidency and he’s violating the Constitution by doing it,” Myatt said. 

Parto Shahidi of Madison said she showed up at the protest to support freedom and democracy. Shahidi said those rights are the reason she came to the U.S. from Iran 30 years ago.

“I became a U.S. citizen just for that,” she said. “And if I want to lose it, I will go back home — there is no freedom there.”

And as in Milwaukee, many protesters posed for photos in inflatable get-ups. That included multiple people dressed as frogs, and Leo Thull of McFarland, who wore a hot dog suit.

“Seeing America slowly descend into fascism is terrifying,” he said. “But with fascists like these, I feel like the greatest power we have is to be more ridiculous than they are. That’s why I’m dressed up as a hot dog today.”

Donna Miazga of Waunakee carried a sign that said “They blame immigrants so you won’t blame billionaires.”

She said she’s been disturbed to by “Gestapo”-like images of arrests by masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who “take people without due process.”

“I feel like it’s just about splitting us in two and fostering hate toward people who are even the slightest bit different,” Miazga said of the Trump’s approach to immigration.

The last major nationwide No Kings protest was in June, when as many as 5 million people took to the streets, including thousands in Milwaukee and an estimated 15,000 in Madison.

As in the case of earlier protests, communities throughout the state hosted demonstrations and marches. National organizers boasted that more than 2,700 events are planned nationwide, including in Wisconsin from Superior to Kenosha.

In Appleton, hundreds lined the streets of downtown. Organizers said nearly 1,000 people attended in the Door County community of Juddville. In the Wausau area, as many as 1,000 protesters lined Rib Mountain Drive. Protesters demonstrated in Janesville, Spooner, Waupaca and Rhinelander, among dozens of other locations.

In Rice Lake, which has a population of about 9,000, more than 700 people attended a rally, said organizer Mark Sherman — including some in frog, unicorn, shark and fairy costumes.

“We had a fun, peaceful, beautiful rally on a beautiful day,” said Sherman, 76, of Rice Lake.

He noted that he and a fellow Rice Lake organizer are both veterans, and said they were moved to get involved because of the oath they took to defend the U.S. Constitution.

Organizers of the rallies include labor unions, local Democratic Party chapters and aligned advocacy groups. The national organizers say the goal of the protests is to build a nonviolent movement to “remind the world America has no kings and the power belongs to the people.”

Republican leaders including House Speaker Mike Johnson have called the events “hate America rallies.” On social media, Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden called the event “Election Denier Fest 2025.”

Editor’s note: WPR’s Rob Mentzer contributed to this story.

Wisconsinites protest Trump administration at ‘No Kings’ rallies — with signs and unicorn suits is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

The Journey to Justice Bus at Madison Christian Community Church on Sunday, Oct. 12. | Photo by Frank Zufall/Wisconsin Examiner

Solitary confinement, the practice of putting someone in isolation in a small cell, is not a topic you expect to hear discussed at church on Sunday.

But on Oct. 12, at the Madison Christian Community, was a stop of the 18-city, nationwide Journey to Justice Bus Tour, that included two panel discussions focused on the topic, one with four state legislators, including two candidates for governor.

Visiting the Journey to Justice bus, standing in a bathroom-sized solitary jail cell replica and hearing the real-life stories of those who had spent part of their lives confined in such spaces, visitors gained a visceral appreciation of the United Nations declaration that punishing people with more than 15 consecutive days in solitary is a form of  torture.

In the Hollywood presentation, the practice is reserved for hardened criminals, a safeguard against violence that’s necessary to keep good order and discipline.

But the reality is that small procedural violations, medical conditions, mental health crises sometimes even pregnancy are reasons people inside our prisons end up isolated for multiple days at a time.

Those who have experienced solitary confinement, otherwise known as restrictive housing or segregation, say it is traumatizing and even years after they’ve been released from prison, they are still reliving dark memories.

The Solitary and Conditions of Confinement Legislation panel at the church included four Democratic state legislators, including gubernatorial hopefuls  Sen. Kelda Roys and Rep. Francesca Hong, both of Madison. Roys, an attorney, has served on the Judiciary Public Safety Committee and worked on the Innocence Project when she was a law student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Milwaukee area Reps. Darrin Madison and Ryan Clancy also participated. Madison is a former organizer for Youth Justice Milwaukee and a member of the Correction Committee. Clancy sits on the Corrections Committee and has served on the Judiciary and Law Enforcement Committee.

Jen Ann Bauer, who spent five and a half years in prison and is currently serving the remainder of her sentence on community supervision said she was put in solitary confinement at least four times, with the longest lasting 90 days.

“When people hear you’re in solitary confinement, they think discipline, and it is so much more to the detriment of human beings,” she said. “It is isolating. It is defeating. It is control and it is torture. We are often placed in solitary confinement for protection or safety measures, minor and major rule violations, or simply for struggling with trauma and mental health. And let’s be honest, most incarcerated people are already trauma survivors. So I ask, how is isolating a wounded person somehow equal to safety? Solitary doesn’t lock a body in a cell. It locks a person inside their own mind. Time stops and pain does not.”

In solitary, Bauer said, she paced the floor just to remind herself that she still existed.

“Women survive through connection, through relationships, and so when you take away human contact, you take away the very thing that keeps us alive,” she said. “No one is built to handle 23 hours a day in a cell. That’s not discipline, that’s psychological torture.”

She added  that in solitary there is no interaction with outside family members, weakening relationships with children.

Observing  people who spent time in solitary,  she said, she saw that they changed for the worse.

“People with dreams come out of solitary unable to make eye contact, unable to trust and unable to believe in themselves or the world around them,” she said. “Solitary doesn’t confine a body. It suffocates the heart. It doesn’t correct behavior. It destroys identity. Solitary confinement causes psychological and emotional distress, more harm, more trauma. Solitary confinement is not a tool. It is a wound, and it is a wound the system continues to inflict on people and then blame them for bleeding.”

Ventae Parrow agreed with Bauer that solitary confinement  had no redeeming  impact on him in prison other than causing him to reflect on what he wanted for his life. He questioned who had the authority to determine whether one should be in solitary, and noted that many who experienced it came out angrier.

“And now you got angry humans coming out back to the community with the vengeance in their heart and their mind versus rehabilitation,” he said.

Tom Denk, an advocate with several WISDOM affiliates and a member of the Mental Health Action Partnership, moderated the panel. Denk, who had also spent time in solitary confinement, noted there is a high rate of mental illness among incarcerated residents, 45%, and the experience of being isolated exacerbates their conditions.

“The use of solitary confinement or restrictive housing is a correctional practice with significant ethical implications,” said Denk. “Prolonged isolation has been associated with severe psychological distress, including anxiety, depression and increased risk of self-harm. It also worsens existing mental health conditions and contributes to higher rates of recidivism.”

But Denk said solitary is often chosen as a method to address psychosis instead of treatment.

Talib Akbar, vice president of the non-profit advocacy group WISDOM, the organizer of the event, said any rule violation in prison could result in being sent to solitary. He said even being a couple of feet outside a cell door could result in being sent to solitary.

The Wisconsin Examiner recently heard from a former resident of Oshkosh Correctional Institution who said he was put in segregation after calling the nearby fire department to report concerns over the prison’s fire safety protocols. He claims that when the fire department called the prison’s facility manager, the manager became upset that the resident didn’t follow the chain of command, and the resident was placed in segregation.  

The panel also addressed the types of medical treatments residents receive in solitary.

Megan Hoffman Kolb whose father, Dean Hoffmann, died in solitary confinement at Waupun Correctional Institution in 2023,  said her father, who suffered from mental illness for 30 years, didn’t consistently get the right medication for the first 80 days in Waupun and never received a psych intake exam, which he was supposed to have received.

She said when her father recorded a credible threat from his cellmate, the prison’s response was to place him in solitary.

“In solitary, he was locked alone in a concrete cell, 24 hours a day, no books, no paper, no phone calls home, no medication,” she said. “The lights were left on constantly. Silence was deafening, broken only by the sounds of people crying out down the hallway. He told staff he was suicidal, hearing voices and couldn’t sleep. A correctional officer responded, ‘What do you want me to do about it?’”

She added, “Solitary confinement is not just isolation. It’s sensory deprivation. It’s a slow unraveling of a person’s mind in a small space. Days blur together, hope disappears for someone already struggling with mental illness, unbearable, and it’s not just emotional, it’s biological. Prolonged solitary confinement literally changes the brain.”

After nine days in solitary, Kolb said, her father took his own life by hanging himself from the cell door. She had viewed the video of his body being removed.

She said the cost of solitary is the trauma the family has experienced, along with the lawsuits, investigation and broken communities, and at the end of the day, taxpayers are being asked to pay for all of it.

“We are pouring millions into a system that tortures instead of treats,” she said, “and families like mine are left paying the ultimate price.”

Regarding the cost of operating solitary, Akbar noted that prisons have to assign more correctional officers (COs) for supervision there because they are considered more dangerous areas, which also raises the cost.

Rep. Clancy said he is against solitary and the ultimate goal should be to ban it outright, but a more attainable goal is proposed legislation that would restrict solitary to 10 days and require 15 hours a week of programming while in solitary to ensure there are visits by people.

“When you talk to people at the DOC and they say, ‘Well, we looked at your legislation, it is onerous. There’s no way we’re going to be able to do that.’ We’re like,‘Great, then don’t put people in solitary.’”

He added, “Please understand that the goal here is to end solitary, but it’s also to bring to people’s minds the real harm from it.”

Rep. Madison said he grew up with a friend who went to prison and was put in solitary, and when his friend got out he still struggled with isolation. One time, the friend wasn’t able to contact Madison and then attempted suicide but didn’t die.

“I was reminded that it is our correctional system that creates the conditions where folks, even when they are released into the community, feel locked up,” he said.

“We simply incarcerate too many people,” said Roys.  She added the goal should be to ensure public safety, not incarcerate people who don’t pose a threat. 

“If we actually want public safety, then we need to change the way we are thinking about that time when people are incarcerated, and it really should be that time that they are building their skills so that they are going to see that they can thrive, and that is why we need to be fostering relationships,” she said.

She also said there needs to be reform of the Truth-in-Sentencing law that is leading to longer prison stays without parole, resulting in more people in prison, and also reforming community supervision to change  a “gotcha” attitude — finding technical violations of those on extended supervision that would send them back to prison, instead of  focusing on helping people succeed in the community.

“If our parole officers, probation officers (POs) viewed their role as facilitating success, and they judged themselves not by how many people would get reincarcerated, but by how many people succeed and never have to be reincarcerated, that’s transformational, and you don’t necessarily need statutes to do that. You absolutely do need a strong will and strong leadership from the top director who says what we are doing.”

Hong said more could be done through executive orders and the governor’s clemency power to grant pardons. She also said she would like to invest more to hire social and mental health workers.

“The more helpers that we have in an institution, the fewer enforcers we need in that same institution,” Clancy said. 

“We have to stop saying that our jails and prisons are understaffed,” he added. “They are not understaffed. They are overpopulated.”

Clancy also said the DOC should pay mental health staff as much, or more, as it does  guards, to help hire and retain staff.

Women in solitary

During a panel discussion on women in solitary, Juli Bliefnick said that after she was assaulted inside  a prison while eating lunch, she was placed in solitary for six days, and during that time she had her monthly period, but male guards didn’t allow her to shower or have clean clothes. She had a similar experience in a county jail.

“That’s some of the most dehumanizing experiences of my whole life,” she said.

In another jail, Bliefnick witnessed a friend who was eight months pregnant put in a cell and stripped naked to look for drugs as the friend screamed.

“You can even move from that environment for decades, and you can still dream about it,” she said.  “You can still think about it like til this day, like I can hear jingling keys, and I’ll still get like, you know, like a fear of like a guard coming to, you know, harass me about something or another, and it’s a terrifying thing because I’m not there anymore. You know, your brain tricks you into thinking that you are. You carry it with you no matter how long you’ve been removed from it.”

Jessica Jacobs, who has not been incarcerated for eight years, still said she is traumatized by her time in solitary.

“Various times I’ve been incarcerated, being stuck in a room like that kind of did something different to me that maybe other people might not understand,” said Jacobs, “but so I had post traumatic stress disorder already, and then the amount of treatment that I had to suffer and go through while I was incarcerated has made it worse. And so I find myself today, sometimes where I get overwhelmed or stimulated, I know my nervous system is out of whack, where I feel like I have to close myself up into my room, and that’s kind of weird, you know, and I feel like I have to lock myself up, and I just don’t even try to figure out what it is. I know that it’s connected to that.”

Jacobs said she remembers being locked up with a 17-year-old girl who had been sex-trafficked by her father, and the girl was missing her babies and was distraught and wanted mental health services, but Jacobs cautioned against it, knowing that seeking those services often meant being sent to solitary or being restricted to a chair.

“And the next thing I know, they hauled her off and stuffed her in solitary confinement by herself,” said Jacobs. “And then came the big banging and the cries began.”

Yolanda Perkins said her mother was in prison for 17 years and spent time in solitary, and that time changed her mother permanently.

“My mother hasn’t been incarcerated in about 20 years, but she won’t go into a room by herself,” said Perkins, adding, “It affects how she grandparents her grandchildren. It affects her communication with them. It affects her communication with society. And so she still struggles.”

Bliefnick spoke about her work with the Ostara Initiative, working with doulas to end the practice of putting pregnant and postpartum women in solitary for protective custody.

“Punishing women who are in that condition is actually a common practice,” she said, “and I mean, can you think of anything worse than putting a woman who just had a baby and had it ripped away from [her getting] 24 hours in solitary confinement like that? That’s like a horrible practice to begin with. It’s like they treat them like cattle, and then to put them in solitary confinement for their protection is like the cruelest thing that you could possibly imagine.”

This story has been updated to fix the photo captions identifying Jen Ann Bauer and Megan Hoffman Kolb

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St. John's Lutheran Church in Madison, Wis., is being converted into a 10-story high-rise that will combine a worship space with more than 100 affordable apartments. Lawmakers see the potential for much-needed housing on church-owned land, but opponents worry local communities could lose their authority over neighborhood development. (Video screenshot courtesy of St. John's Lutheran Church)

Growing up in a religious family, Florida Republican state Sen. Alexis Calatayud has seen how many church communities are no longer anchored to a single building in the way they used to be. Her small prayer groups take place over chats these days, not necessarily in person or sitting shoulder-to-shoulder in pews.

With churches in her Miami-Dade County district grappling with shrinking membership and aging buildings, Calatayud thinks those institutions can do good with their unused land, by acting as anchors of new housing rather than as bystanders in neighborhood redevelopment.

“When you look at someone sitting on a small church, on a 10-acre property with a dwindling congregation, the question becomes, ‘How can this entity continue to be the beating heart of the community?’” Calatayud said in an interview.

“I think it’s to create a village, where we can create more housing and even centralize other needs in the community on that land.”

This year, Florida enacted a measure, sponsored by Calatayud, allowing multifamily residential development on land that is both owned by a religious institution and occupied by a house of worship, so long as at least 10% of the new units are affordable. Some housing advocates believe the zoning override has the potential to unlock roughly 30,000 parcels statewide.

Florida’s new law is part of a growing movement known as YIGBY — Yes in God’s Backyard. Touted by many faith leaders, lawmakers and developers, the movement imagines a connection between a religious mission to serve and the very real hurdles of building affordable housing.

If the U.S. is to meet the nation’s demand for new apartments, developers are going to need land, experts say, and parcels owned by faith-based organizations are starting to become a part of the solution for some states. At the same time, some skeptics question whether the movement could strip local communities of having a say in neighborhood development.

Places of worship are found in every corner of the United States. Land owned by faith-based organizations makes up 84 million square feet in New York City, for example, with enough land for 22,000 units on just the vacant lots and surface parking lots of those organizations, according to the Furman Center of New York University. Elsewhere, HousingForward Virginia says faith-based organizations own 74,000 acres in the state, nearly twice the size of Richmond.

California enacted what is considered the first statewide YIGBY law in 2023. It cleared the way for churches and other places of worship, as well as nonprofit universities, to create affordable housing on their land. It allows landowners to bypass public hearings, discretionary votes by city councils or planning boards, and certain environmental reviews so long as they meet affordability requirements, with at least 75% of the homes affordable for low-income households.

Several states — Arizona, Colorado, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York and Texas — have considered YIGBY legislation this year, though none has passed. And a bill filed last month in Congress would allow rental properties to be built on currently unused church land with federal assistance.

Opponents of the Colorado bill frame it as state overreach on local zoning decisions and worry about a potential pathway for religious landowners to bypass Fair Housing Act protections for housing applicants who may not share that faith, according to a position paper opposing Colorado’s YIGBY legislation.

Beverly Stables, a lobbyist for the Colorado Municipal League, told Stateline that local governments worry YIGBY bills could undermine constitutional home-rule authority and saddle towns with unfunded state mandates.

“Our members have worked successfully with schools and churches on housing projects already,” she said. “The question is, what problem are we really trying to solve?”

The Rev. Patrick Reidy, an associate professor of law at Notre Dame who has studied the relationship between housing and faith-based organizations, says states and cities are eager to partner with faith-based organizations to use their land.

It’s not an easy decision for faith leaders to switch the purpose of their land from a devoted congregation space to housing, he said.

“The decision to change the way church land has been used historically for decades or even centuries is not easy for a place of worship to make, so lawmakers should meet faith communities where they are,” said Reidy, who also is co-director of Notre Dame’s Church Properties Initiative.

“It’s more an understanding that the way places of worship approach housing is from a moral mission to serve, so things like financing, zoning and legal know-how to create housing requires some walk-through for faith-based organizations,” Reidy said.

“The real challenge is learning to speak each other’s language.”

‘Right in the middle’

Every afternoon at 3:22, members of St. John’s Lutheran Church in Madison, Wisconsin, pause what they are doing and pray. Whether they are working, at home, watching baseball’s Milwaukee Brewers or sitting in a temporary worship space, they pray at that exact time.

It isn’t random: “322” is the address where the German Lutheran church has stood downtown at East Washington Avenue and North Hancock Street — just a block from the state Capitol — for 170 years, the Rev. Peter Beeson said.

Congregation members no longer worship there because the site could be set for the biggest transformation in its history: trading in stained-glass windows and church pews for a 10-story high-rise that will combine a worship space with more than 100 affordable apartments.

Beeson told Stateline that the congregation moved out of the building in the fall of 2023 for a groundbreaking later that same year.

“Our current building was built in 1905, and was nearing the end of its useful life, with many additions and renovations over the years,” Beeson said. “And it made sense to sacrifice our existing building to build affordable housing plus worship and community space as a way of serving our mission — providing much needed affordable housing for 130 or so families, and providing a home for the congregation for the next 150 years.”

The congregation, founded in 1856 by German Lutherans, has evolved with the needs of its community.

The church hosted a men’s homeless shelter for more than 20 years, ran a drop-in center for people with mental illness and offered small-scale aid for residents seeking anything from bus tickets to steel-toed work boots to child care, Beeson said.

Before construction could get underway on the housing project, though, Beeson and the church ran into a familiar issue that constrained housing across the country in 2023 — rapidly increasing construction costs and skyrocketing interest rates.

Beeson said he isn’t deterred. Other projects have taken 10 to 15 years to break ground, he said. “So keeping that timeline in mind, we are right in the middle.”

He believes the project, which has received sizable donations from community members via GoFundMe, is a God-ordained mission to provide a service for its community.

“We are continuing to move forward with the project. There have been setbacks and challenges along the way,” Beeson said. “However, like God led the Israelites through the wilderness with a pillar of fire by day and a pillar of clouds by night, God continues to open doors and pave pathways to bring this project to completion.”

Ceding local control

The economic realities surrounding homebuilding are among many hurdles challenging congregations that want to develop new housing.

In states such as Colorado, local governments worried that a proposed statewide development measure that would give preferential treatment to faith-based organizations could undermine local control and even potentially open the door to religious discrimination.

“Not suggesting it from all entities,” said Stables, of the Colorado Municipal League, “but we were concerned about the potential for discrimination, and potential violations of Fair Housing Act requirements.”

Stables also thinks this year’s legislation was premature, just a year after Colorado lawmakers made sweeping changes to land use rules — including new laws removing parking minimums and encouraging transit-oriented developments and accessory dwelling units — that she said haven’t had time to take effect or be meaningfully implemented locally.

She also said the bill would have stripped local governments of zoning authority while offering no new resources. More than 200 municipalities opted into an affordable housing fund created through a 2022 ballot initiative, Stables said, but the legislature has been sweeping out some of that money for other budgetary needs, leaving cities under-resourced to deliver on those housing goals.

In the end, Colorado’s legislation passed the House but died in the Senate after supporters concluded it didn’t have the votes to pass.

YIGBY supporters elsewhere have had to balance the tension between state goals and local zoning authority. A 2019 Washington law requires cities and counties to offer density bonuses for affordable housing on religious land — an incentive, but not a legal override of zoning laws.

In Minnesota, state Sen. Susan Pha, a Democrat, told Stateline she modeled some aspects of her YIGBY proposal off the California law. She also tailored aspects of her bill — such as a focus on middle-housing options like small studios — to find solutions that work specifically for her state.

Pha said some of her big battles have been around the allowances of small lot sizes, such as 220-square-foot studio units, which she said the state “really needs” in order to make a dent in its housing shortage.

“The obstacle really is zoning,” Pha said. “If we can change some of those zoning requirements, we could produce more affordable housing and leverage the space and the dedicated work these faith-based organizations already do.”

Pha’s bill failed to reach a floor vote.

Other YIGBY-like policies have passed in localities including Atlanta; Montgomery County, Maryland; and Seattle. Atlanta’s program aims for the creation of at least 2,000 units of affordable housing over eight years.

When New York City passed its City of Yes housing initiative in December 2024, it permitted faith-based organizations to convert underused properties into housing by lifting zoning, height and setback requirements.

Unlocking land, a bit at a time

In an interview with Stateline, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens pointed out that some of the city’s historic churches sit on prime land with underused parking lots that at one time were filled by many of the churchgoers’ cars.

Unlike many developers who might flip properties after short-term affordability requirements expire, Dickens said, churches may offer stability, since their mission is to serve “the least, the less and the lost” — meaning they might be less likely to sell off the property due to market pressure.

Atlanta is working with financial partners such as Enterprise and Wells Fargo to guide faith-based institutions that need that help, he said.

“Churches are usually on great corners, and they’re hallmarks of the community with land that’s underutilized, and their mission aligns perfectly with affordable housing,” Dickens said. “We’ve got churches that say, ‘Teach us how to develop. We have no idea what we’re doing.’”

The potential is vast, experts say. California faith-based organizations and nonprofit colleges own about 170,000 acres of land, equivalent in size to the city of Oakland, and much of it could be developed under the state’s YIGBY law, according to a 2023 report by the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley.

In North Carolina, congregations have had small successes. A Presbyterian church in Charlotte turned an unused education wing into 21 units of permanent housing, and an Episcopal church in Chapel Hill built three tiny homes on its property for a trio of formerly homeless residents.

Eli Smith, the director of the nonprofit Faith-Based Housing Initiative, argues that state YIGBY laws should ease affordability requirements for small infill projects such as those in North Carolina and allow them to get built more quickly. Otherwise, he said, small churches’ projects “can’t get off the ground.”

“Think of it as a cottage neighborhood tucked behind a sanctuary — people know each other, it’s beautiful, it’s meaningful,” Smith said. “The future of this movement isn’t in [high-rise apartment] towers; it’s in small, intentional communities that fit their surroundings.”

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.

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• Incoming undergraduates to UW-Madison will have to fill out the CSS Profile to apply for institutional financial aid.  

• The form is available starting Oct. 1. 

• The CSS Profile will not replace the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), which means new freshmen and transfer students will have to fill out both forms. 

• Wisconsin Watch and the Cap Times spoke to UW officials about why they are adding the form, as well as nonprofit leaders who have concerns about the move.

Students applying to the University of Wisconsin-Madison will soon need to complete a second, longer financial aid application if they want a share of the millions of dollars in financial aid the university gives out each year.  

Starting this fall, UW-Madison will require applicants to fill out the CSS Profile, an online application used by around 270 colleges, universities and scholarship programs to award institutional aid, separate from a different form used to apply for federal financial aid. Students can start working on their CSS Profile Oct. 1. 

Many colleges that use the CSS Profile are private. Others are highly selective public universities, such as the University of Michigan and the University of Virginia. In Wisconsin, two private schools also use the application: Beloit College and Lawrence University.  

UW-Madison says requiring the application will help direct funds to students who are most in need, but some student advocates worry the extra step could hinder the very students the university aims to help.  

Wisconsin Watch and the Cap Times teamed up to find out what students and their families need to know about this new requirement.

Who needs to complete the CSS Profile?  

Only incoming undergraduate students at UW-Madison who are U.S. citizens or eligible noncitizens must complete the CSS Profile to be considered for institutional financial aid. This group includes both new freshmen and transfer students.  

Continuing students and new graduate students don’t need to complete the form. The university encourages them to complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, which guides eligibility for federal assistance.   

Does the CSS Profile replace the FAFSA? 

No. The FAFSA is used to apply for financial aid awarded by the U.S. government, including Pell grants and federal student loans. That form was simplified in recent years to make it easier for families to fill out, despite hiccups during the rollout process. Students who want to apply for federal aid still need to complete the FAFSA each year.  

The CSS Profile is a supplement to the FAFSA, said Taylor Odle, an assistant professor who studies education policy at UW-Madison. The application is run by the College Board, the not-for-profit membership organization that makes the Advanced Placement exams and SAT college admissions test. 

The CSS Profile helps colleges decide how to allocate their own financial aid and scholarship funds by gathering a more detailed picture of a student’s finances than the FAFSA offers. For instance, the application asks about medical debt and about businesses an applicant’s family may have.  

“If you’re a low-income student, while completing the CSS Profile is an additional step for you, it is often potentially in your best interest because it paints the truest picture,” Odle said. 

How much does it cost to complete the CSS Profile? 

UW-Madison applicants will be required to pay a $25 fee to complete the form. But that fee is automatically waived for applicants with a household income below $100,000. 

What’s the deadline for UW-Madison applicants to submit the CSS Profile? 

UW-Madison recommends students applying for the 2026-27 school year submit the CSS Profile by Dec. 1, 2025. Students may submit the form after that date, but December is the deadline for priority consideration for funds. 

Why is UW-Madison now requiring the CSS Profile? 

UW-Madison previously used the FAFSA to allocate all types of financial aid, said Phil Asbury, executive director of the university’s student financial aid office. The CSS Profile will allow UW-Madison to more specifically target university resources toward certain students, especially after the FAFSA recently got shorter, he said. 

“We’re really fortunate in that we have more students coming from low-income families or lower-income families each year. Those are really good things, and we want that to continue,” Asbury said. “But we also want to help as many families as we can, and so this will help us to better focus those funds on the families that need it the most.” 

Asbury worked with the CSS Profile in his previous positions at Northwestern University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While he doesn’t expect the form will be a struggle for UW-Madison applicants, he recognizes it’s an additional step. 

“If families know they will only qualify for a federal loan, or maybe they know they’re Pell Grant eligible and that’s all they need to go to school, then they can continue to only do the FAFSA,” Asbury said. 

UW-Madison provided roughly $200 million in institutional support last school year to undergraduate students, Asbury said. About $150 million was need-based financial aid. 

Students received on average about $17,000 in aid from the university last school year, Asbury said. Nonresident students may receive a bit more since their tuition rates are higher, he said. 

UW-Madison is requiring more information from families amid efforts to game the country’s financial aid system. For example, a Forbes article in March advised parents to use investments or businesses to generate losses that would reduce their adjusted gross income and then qualify them for financial assistance. 

People trying to hide assets on financial aid applications is “an open secret,” said Carole Trone, executive director of Fair Opportunity Project, a Wisconsin-based nonprofit that offers online counseling to help students across the country apply to and pay for college. She worries abuse of the financial aid system is increasing barriers for students who otherwise couldn’t afford to attend college. 

Why are some concerned about the newly required form? 

A 2021 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education called the CSS Profile “The Most Onerous Form in College Admissions.” Since then, the application has been shortened and now uses “skip logic” to bypass parts based on students’ answers to previous questions.  

UW-Madison is using a “lighter version” of the CSS Profile, which has fewer questions than the full version, Asbury said. 

Wisconsin Watch and the Cap Times asked the College Board for the maximum number of questions on the form and for a copy of the application in advance of its Oct. 1 launch. The College Board declined these requests. 

Unlike the FAFSA, the CSS Profile won’t pull financial information directly from an applicant’s tax returns, Trone said.  

Trone remembers completing the CSS Profile years ago when her three kids applied to college. The form asked the value of her 401(k) retirement account and her home and the balance on her mortgage.  

She is worried about students whose parents are unable to help sort through these kinds of questions. That’s why, when UW-Madison announced the new requirement, her team at Fair Opportunity Project started preparing to help students with the CSS Profile, too. 

“I’ll admit, even when I was filling out, I was like, ‘I think that’s the right answer,’” Trone said.  

“There’s no way a student’s going to know that. … Whereas with the FAFSA now you really don’t actually have to have a lot of stuff with you to be able to complete it anymore, with the CSS Profile, it’s going to be a work session.” 

Another key difference: On the FAFSA, students whose parents are divorced or separated need to provide information about the parent who provided more financial support over the last year. The CSS Profile requires information from all living biological parents, step-parents and adoptive parents, with exceptions for a handful of special circumstances, including when a parent is incarcerated, abusive or unknown.  

There are also differences for families who speak other languages. The FAFSA is available in English and Spanish, and families can read guides or request an interpreter in 10 other languages, including Korean, Arabic and French Creole. The CSS Profile is available only in English, with help available by chat, phone and email in Spanish.  

Some who advocate for college access worry UW-Madison’s new requirement will be an additional barrier for students who already struggle to get on the college track. 

“FAFSA itself has been a hurdle for some students applying to college,” said Chris Gomez Schmidt, executive director of Galin Scholars, a Madison nonprofit that coaches a handful of high school seniors through college admissions each year. “I think adding an extra, complicated financial application could potentially disproportionately affect students with fewer resources for applying to college, so students from urban or rural areas across the state of Wisconsin.” 

Galin Scholars plans to teach its participants about the CSS Profile during an October financial aid workshop but many students won’t be so lucky, Gomez Schmidt said.  

Trone at the Fair Opportunity Project isn’t convinced the new requirement will pay off for the university. She noted the vast majority of U.S. colleges don’t use the CSS Profile. 

“I’m curious to see how long UW does this,” Trone said. “Maybe they’ll do it for a couple years and realize they’re not actually getting that much better results.” 

What help will be available? 

As students work through the CSS Profile, they can click on help bubbles for more information. The College Board’s website offers additional guidance, too.  

As with other steps in applying for college, students can also seek help from their high school counselors. UW-Madison informed counselors across the state about the new application at a series of workshops in September, and its financial aid office is available to help applicants. 

“We do workshops on a monthly basis, and traditionally we’ve called those FAFSA Frenzies,” Asbury said. “We might have to rethink that name now, but we tend to do those throughout the year.” 

Applicants seeking more help can find a variety of videos and articles online about filling out the CSS Profile, made by government agencies, nonprofits and entrepreneurs across the country.  

Fair Opportunity Project will offer help with the CSS Profile at its one-on-one virtual counseling sessions, which are free to low-income and first-generation college students. Other students may access these sessions for a fee.   

The organization is hoping to make help even more accessible by launching a free chatbot that answers questions about the CSS Profile, but that task has proven more complicated than anticipated.  

The nonprofit built its existing FAFSA chatbot by training it with the hefty guides and updates the federal government releases each year. The CSS Profile is created by a private entity that isn’t required to make its documentation public. 

“We will need to spend more time converting available webinars and presentations into AI training materials. We need to raise more funds to get this extra work done,” Trone said. She hopes the chatbot will be available to the public by November.  

Meanwhile, she’s also looking into the “potential risks” of creating a chatbot specific to a privately owned application. 

“They are very proprietary about their products, like SAT and AP, so this is a real concern that we need to look further into,” Trone said. 

Why do other Wisconsin schools use CSS Profile? 

Beloit College is a private liberal arts school near the Illinois border that enrolls about 1,000 undergraduate students. The school started using the CSS Profile about six years ago, but only for international students, said Betsy Henkel, the college’s director of financial aid. 

“We also have an internal application,” Henkel said. “But as you can imagine, if students are applying to 10 schools for admission, the thought of doing one application and sending it to 10 schools is much more appealing than doing multiple financial aid applications with each of them.” 

When access to the federal government’s simplified FAFSA was delayed in recent school years, Beloit College temporarily used the CSS Profile to give domestic students a financial aid estimate while they waited, Henkel said. 

Lawrence University — a private liberal arts school in Appleton with roughly 1,500 students — has used the CSS Profile for over a decade, Ryan Gebler, the university’s financial aid director, said in an email.  

Similar to UW-Madison, Lawrence University uses a “lighter version” of the CSS Profile, with fewer questions, Gebler said. Overall, the application process has gone smoothly at Lawrence, he said. 

“Simply put: Compared to the FAFSA, the CSS Profile provides a more accurate calculation of what a student and their family can pay for college,” Gebler said.   

Natalie Yahr reports on pathways to success statewide for Wisconsin Watch, working in partnership with Open Campus. Email her at nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org.

Becky Jacobs is an education reporter for the Cap Times. Becky writes about universities and colleges in the Madison region. Email story ideas and tips to Becky at bjacobs@captimes.com or call (608) 620-4064.

UW-Madison is changing its financial aid process. Here’s what to know. is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

Some of the 193 Madison voters whose ballots mistakenly didn’t get counted in the 2024 presidential election filed a lawsuit on Thursday seeking class-action status, arguing that the city unconstitutionally deprived them of their right to vote.

The lawsuit stands out because it seeks monetary damages for alleged violations of voting rights — a remedy that has become increasingly rare. According to election experts, that type of claim is unlikely to succeed.

“These voters deserved better,” Scott Thompson, an attorney for the plaintiffs with the firm Law Forward, said in a statement. ”In Wisconsin, we value the right to vote, and there will be consequences when that right is denied.”

What’s the dispute?

During the November 2024 election, Madison election officials made a series of errors that kept 193 absentee ballots from being counted on Election Day. Officials waited so long to report the ballots to the county and state that they couldn’t be added before the election results got certified.

The incident led to the city clerk’s suspension and resignation, city and state investigations, and specific orders imposed by the Wisconsin Elections Commission that require the city to establish new procedures.

Who are the plaintiffs and what are they seeking?

The named plaintiffs are some of the 193 voters whose ballots didn’t get counted in the 2024 election: Precious Ayodabo, Cary Bloodworth, Benjamin Jones, Sara Browne, Jenna Innab, Amira Pierotti, Miriam Sham, and Johannes Wolter. They’re represented by attorneys at Law Forward, a liberal election law group, and Holwell Shuster & Goldberg LLP.

They’re suing the city of Madison, the city’s clerk office, former Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl, and current Deputy Clerk Jim Verbick, seeking monetary damages for the city’s failure to count the voters’ ballots. The complaint doesn’t specify the amount, but in a claim filed in March, the group representing the plaintiffs requested $34 million, or $175,000 for each disenfranchised voter.

Madison’s interim City Clerk and City Attorney Mike Haas declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Why does it matter?

This lawsuit aims to emphasize the importance of properly counting all ballots and set a monetary penalty for denying a person their vote. Election law experts note that claims for such remedies were common in voting rights battles of the late 1800s and 1900s — particularly when officials deliberately worked to disenfranchise Black voters — but are now rarely pursued and unlikely to succeed.

Although election officials around the state have repeatedly emphasized the severity of Madison’s errors, some told Votebeat that seeking monetary compensation for election mistakes would add unnecessary pressure on them.

Thompson, the Law Forward attorney, told Votebeat that he understands how clerks feel but wants there to be a clear penalty for disenfranchising voters, especially as some conservative groups in the past have sought to prohibit clerks from counting certain ballots.

What happens now?

The lawsuit will likely play out for months or longer. Madison has already hired a new clerk, Lydia McComas, who is set to start in late September.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

Disenfranchised voters sue Madison for monetary damages over 2024 ballot error is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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The Wisconsin Elections Commission ordered Madison election officials to follow several specific election procedures to ensure that ballots don’t go missing again in the capital city, rejecting arguments by the interim clerk that the orders may exceed the agency’s legal authority. 

The commission’s 5-1 vote Friday came a month after it withheld a first set of proposed orders amid pushback from Madison and Dane County officials and asked the city to propose its own remedies. Madison interim Clerk Mike Haas said the specificity of the commission’s original proposed orders “would set a troubling precedent.”

The city did submit its proposals, but the commission rejected them as overly broad and finalized orders that were largely similar to the ones it proposed in July, with some minor revisions, including citations of the legal basis for each order.  

The orders require Madison officials to create an internal plan detailing which election task is assigned to which employee; print pollbooks no earlier than the Tuesday before each election; develop a detailed record to track absentee ballots; and search through election materials for missing ballots before the city’s election canvassing board meets to finalize results.

The WEC action responds to lapses by the Madison clerk’s office, then headed by Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl, after the November 2024 presidential election, when staffers lost track of 193 ballots and did not report finding them until well past the state deadline for counting. The commission launched its investigation into the matter in January.

Clerk’s cookie baking factored into commissioners’ discussion

During discussions ahead of the vote, Commissioner Don Millis, a Republican, cited Votebeat’s reporting that Witzel-Behl spent a long post-election vacation at home — not on an out-of-state trip, as he had believed — baking thousands of cookies when some lost ballots were discovered. That, he said, factored into his vote for stricter orders.

“She couldn’t be bothered to turn off the oven, to come to the office to figure out if the Ward 65 ballots could be counted,” he said. “The failure to mention that the clerk was readily available to address this issue, along with the fact that none of the city officials we depose felt it was their job to get the ballots counted, makes me even more determined that the Commission must impose the directions in our order.”

Similarly, commission Chair Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, said it was “peculiar” that clerk’s office staff never told commissioners during their monthslong investigation that they rented cars on city time to deliver cookies after the ballot discovery. 

Those deposed “were all part of the cookie crew,” she said ahead of her vote. “Why didn’t they tell us about that? Why didn’t the city of Madison ever mention this? Why did nobody bring this up?” 

In a memo circulated ahead of the meeting, commission staff said the scope of the error “warrants a detailed order from the Commission correcting (Witzel-Behl’s) office’s policies and procedures, and ensuring those issues are actually fixed before the next statewide election.”

Haas, who was formerly the commission administrator, disagreed with the original proposed orders. He said the commission’s authority “does not extend to requiring the future implementation of specific procedures in excess of those required in the statutes.”

But commission staff pushed back, calling it “unreasonable and absurd” to read state law as barring the commission from ordering specific remedies.

In some cases, the commissioners made the requirements more stringent than what Madison proposed, but more lenient than the commission’s originally proposed orders.

For example, one order the commission initially proposed would have required Madison to print pollbooks no sooner than the Thursday before Election Day, despite state law calling on officials only to have the “most current official registration list.” Haas requested an order more in line with what state law outlines, printing the ballots as close to Election Day as possible.

The final order sets the deadline for printing pollbooks on the Tuesday before Election Day — two days earlier than first proposed — and requires that they be delivered no later than the Friday before the election.

Witzel-Behl’s office printed pollbooks for the two wards that lost ballots on Oct. 23, nearly two weeks before Election Day. The commission said printing that early made it harder for officials to track absentee ballots returned before Election Day and harder for poll workers to see how many ballots went uncounted.

Interim clerk’s objections to the commission’s order

Haas, who took over as interim clerk after Witzel-Behl was suspended in March, told Votebeat on the Tuesday ahead of the meeting that it was “way too early” to think about whether Madison would appeal the commission’s orders in court. In a statement after Friday’s vote, he said he was grateful that the commission altered some orders after the city’s feedback.

“The question is which level of government is best suited and authorized to determine specific procedures that work for the municipality in going above and beyond what the statutes require,” he told Votebeat. “We look forward to working with the Commission to ensure compliance with state law.”

Mark Thomsen, a Democratic commissioner, said he wasn’t comfortable with the agency beating up on Madison over mistakes made under a former clerk when a new permanent clerk hasn’t yet been hired.

At the meeting, Thomsen said he was uncomfortable imposing burdens on a new clerk that “no one else has to follow.”

“This order seems spiteful, and I don’t want to go there,” he said, before casting the lone dissent. Republicans Millis, Bob Spindell and Marge Bostelmann joined Democrats Carrie Riepl and Jacobs in approving the orders.

State law allows the commission to “require any election official to conform his or her conduct to the law, restrain an official from taking any action inconsistent with the law or require an official to correct any action or decision inconsistent with the law.”

Many of the orders, such as assigning specific staff to each election task, are not explicitly mentioned in statute.

Addressing claims that the orders were too detailed, commission staff attorney Angela O’Brien Sharpe said, “If the Legislature intended for the commission to only be able to issue general orders, they would have written a law to say just that.”

In a statement following the vote, Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said the city is reorganizing the office to improve efficiency and accountability.

“We appreciate the Wisconsin Elections Commission considering our input and amending its orders to reflect that feedback,” she said. “I hope the WEC’s investigation can help inform best practices for election clerks around the state.” 

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Wisconsin Elections Commission finalizes specific orders for Madison to follow to avoid ballot errors is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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• Rent Smart, a free, six-module course developed by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension, educates people about the essentials of renting. It aims to serve people from high school students and incarcerated individuals to people in homeless shelters.
  
• Completion of the course earns renters a certificate that could make their applications more desirable to landlords.
  
• The interactive classes are accessible online, and they include “Train the Trainer” opportunities for professionals who want to educate renters in their own communities. Educators in Brown County are offering additional in-person training.

In an increasingly tough housing market, a University of Wisconsin program seeks to give renters a leg up in their search for safe, affordable housing by educating them about the process and improving their standing with landlords. 

Rent Smart, a free, six-module course developed by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension, covers the essentials of renting — everything from what’s affordable, what to look for during an apartment inspection and what to ask a landlord while applying. 

“How do we create a really good business relationship between tenants and landlords? I think Rent Smart can help with that,” said Todd Wenzel, a UW-Madison Extension human development and relationships educator in Winnebago County and one of two state co-chairs of the program.

The program aims to serve a variety of people, from high school students and incarcerated individuals to people in homeless shelters. The interactive classes are accessible online, and they include “Train the Trainer” opportunities for professionals who want to educate renters in their own communities.

Successful participants receive a certificate outlining the modules they’ve completed. It can help renters stand out in cases when landlords receive dozens of applications for a single unit, Wenzel said.

Out of 462 people who completed the program and took a survey, 98% said they believed it “will or might help them obtain appropriate housing.” Meanwhile, 84% of those who moved after completing the course said their new housing was safe, more affordable and/or better quality.

For many participants — particularly those facing access issues, Rent Smart is their introduction to how the rental system works.

“Rent Smart (is) helping create potentially a better applicant pool of individuals,” Wenzel said. “Doesn’t matter if you’re 18 or you’re 80, or you’ve had an eviction, or you’ve been incarcerated — you have that knowledge that not only is going to help you as a tenant, but it is actually going to help the landlord.”

Patrick Leifker, executive director of the Brown County Housing Authority, said the hope is that landlords who see an applicant’s Rent Smart completion certificate will recognize the effort they’ve put in, whether that means overlooking past evictions or other challenges that might otherwise disadvantage the renter.

Rent Smart offers classes on Zoom 10 months out of the year. The remaining two months are dedicated to teaching people to administer the program locally, expanding the program’s reach. 

That’s what’s happening in Brown County, where Rent Smart trainers are working on making the curriculum more accessible. Previously, most Brown County trainers offered training only within their own organizations, Leifker said. Now, trainers are offering the classes to the broader public.

Rent Smart: just part of the housing solution 

Leifker believes programs like Rent Smart can promote housing stability for Brown County residents who most need it. 

Brown County, like many Wisconsin communities, is seeing housing prices and homelessness rise. 

Wisconsin’s Fair Market Rent for a two-bedroom apartment reached $1,204 this year, an increase of nearly 7% from 2024, according to a National Low Income Housing Coalition report released in July. Fair Market Rents estimate a typical amount a household moving today would pay for a “modest, decent-quality rental home,” according to the report.

Brown County residents must earn $22.06 per hour to afford Fair Market Rent, the report found. It’s the ninth highest wage among counties in Wisconsin, up from 12th highest in 2024.

Meanwhile, Brown County’s annual summer point-in-time count of people experiencing homelessness on a single night on July 23 identified 123 unsheltered people on the streets, a preliminary figure that does not include people in homeless shelters. That was up from 31 people counted in July 2019, according to the nonprofit Wisconsin Balance of State Continuum of Care. The figures are widely viewed as an undercount of the true homeless population.

Worsening housing challenges have prompted several Brown County organizations to step in, with some turning to renter education and landlord engagement.

Efforts to educate landlords, too 

The outreach includes making sure landlords understand what to expect when renting to housing assistance recipients.

Much of this work traces back to the formation of a landlord engagement work group as part of a broader plan to tackle homelessness in the region. The workgroup is now part of the Brown County Homeless and Housing Coalition. It allows landlords to share real-time feedback on what’s working and what isn’t. 

“For a long time … we knew that we needed each other,” Leifker said. “They needed us to help their tenants ensure that the rent was being paid on time. We knew we needed them for places for our renters to live, but it was really kind of almost on two parallel lines and we never intersected.”

Bill Paape, city of Green Bay inspection supervisor, brings his guidance to the work group, helping answer questions about inspection processes and procedures. 

The city, in partnership with the police department, hosts regular landlord training sessions that bring together speakers from various departments to support both new and experienced landlords. These sessions aim to address issues created by what he described as evolving housing needs and economic shifts.

“Housing is very tough to come by in certain areas, depending on the housing types and the affordability part of it,” Paape said. “So it’s trying to brainstorm what we can do together to make it easier on everybody.”

Still, more is needed to help renters and landlords stay afloat, starting with addressing the root causes of the housing crisis, said Rick Van Der Leest, president of the Apartment Association of Northeast Wisconsin and Fox Valley Apartment Association. Programs are needed that help tenants pay their rent, rather than just delay eviction. 

“Owners cannot be successful without our residents also being successful,” Van Der Leest said.

How to access Rent Smart

Brown County is offering in-person Rent Smart sessions on Thursdays throughout August, with details about September sessions to be later made available. Those interested in registering can find more information on the Brown County UW Extension website or call 920-391-4610. 

People across Wisconsin can find more information about online Rent Smart courses by visiting the UW Extension website.

Rent Smart training helps tenants navigate Wisconsin’s housing crunch is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Members of the Wisconsin Elections Commission expressed alarm Thursday at how much time former Madison Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl spent on vacation while a crisis was erupting in her office: the discovery of 193 missing ballots from the November 2024 election that never got counted.

In its 400-page investigative report, finalized at a meeting by a 5-1 vote, the commission said that Witzel-Behl began her vacation in mid-November, days after the election, “and then had little to do with the supervision of her office until almost a month later.” No staffers took responsibility during the extended absence, the commission chair, Democrat Ann Jacobs, complained before the vote. The missing ballots were not reported to the commission until mid-December. 

Records obtained by Votebeat provide some clarity into what Witzel-Behl was doing around the time: baking thousands of cookies and calling on her staff to help deliver them.

Most of that activity began after Dec. 2, when the second batch of uncounted ballots was found.

These records have not been publicly reported and were not included in the investigative report finalized Thursday.

“This is remarkable,” Republican Commissioner Don Millis said when Votebeat showed him some of the findings. “None of the witnesses we deposed disclosed her cookie staycation.”

After approving the report, the commission voted 4-2 to delay action on proposed corrective orders after city and county officials argued that the requirements were overly specific and exceeded state law. The city now has until Aug. 7 to provide a more complete response to the recommendations, and a follow-up meeting has been scheduled for Aug. 15.

Witzel-Behl didn’t respond to a request for comment. 

‘Cookie extravaganza’ featuring ‘100 different types’

Emails show that Witzel-Behl took time off for all or part of 17 days between Nov. 11 and Dec. 6 and said, according to an event invite, that part of it was for “devoting a staycation to baking.” 

Beginning in November, she invited city staff and election officials in Madison to what some staff called a “cookie extravaganza” held on Dec. 7, a Saturday, to help decorate cookies and take some home for their families. She baked “100 different types” of cookies, the invite said.

According to the commission, Witzel-Behl knew about the first batch of ballots on Nov. 12. That was well before the cookie event.

The second batch of uncounted ballots was discovered on Dec. 2 by office staff. Witzel-Behl was out of the office that day and for the rest of that week. She told the commission she learned of the second batch of ballots on Dec. 10. “While on vacation, she did not inquire of her staff whether there were absentee ballots in the bag,” the report reads. 

On Dec. 10, she sent an email to three staffers, including Deputy Clerk Jim Verbick, saying she’d reserved three cars for cookie deliveries. “Maybe each of you can make at least one cookie delivery to a library,” she wrote. 

She also arranged additional deliveries and rented more cars for later the following week, an email sent Dec. 13 shows. “We still have several packages of cookies, so feel free to pick a few agencies for another delivery,” she suggested to 16 staffers across her office and other city departments the same day.

“I had assumed — obviously erroneously — the clerk was vacationing in some faraway place,” Millis told Votebeat, denouncing Witzel-Behl for not personally managing the discovery of the uncounted ballots.

The clerk’s staff didn’t tell the commission about the missing ballots until Dec. 18. By that point, the state had already certified the election and the missing ballots couldn’t have counted.

‘She worked her ass off’ — on the cookies

Jacobs said before the vote that she was surprised by Witzel-Behl’s “complete lack of action” during the relevant time period. Marge Bostelmann, a Republican appointee on the commission and the former longtime Green Lake County clerk, said that even if she had been on vacation in such a situation as a county clerk, she would have remained accessible if urgent questions arose.

Commissioner Bob Spindell, a Republican, was the lone dissenter on the vote to approve the report, saying he didn’t want Witzel-Behl to be “crucified.”

One person close to the Madison Clerk’s Office, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, told Votebeat that the task of making thousands of cookies and arranging deliveries “became all-consuming” for Witzel-Behl. “You could see how she was not focused on getting through reconciliation or whatever.”

“For some people, baking is calming,” that person continued. “It seemed like she needed a break. But then she worked her ass off (on the cookies). It was a huge operation.” 

Between early and mid-December, city employees from a variety of departments thanked Witzel-Behl for her cookies. It’s not clear how many cookies she ultimately made.

On Dec. 16, one person in the city’s transportation department sent a clerk’s office staffer an email asking, “Are these cookies for the entire first floor? The entire building? The entire universe?”

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Madison clerk was on a cookie-baking staycation as missing-ballot mess unfolded is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Former Madison Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl violated multiple state laws when her office failed to count nearly 200 absentee ballots in the 2024 presidential election, according to a draft report released Wednesday by the Wisconsin Elections Commission. 

The commission cited a lack of leadership in the clerk’s office, referring both to Witzel-Behl and the deputy clerk who assumed control during her vacation shortly after the election.

Witzel-Behl, who was put on leave by the city after the error and then resigned, broke state law by failing to supervise absentee ballot handling, neglecting post-election processes, and by not training poll workers to check the bags used to transport ballots, the commission concluded.

“There is no evidence that the City Clerk took any steps to investigate the uncounted ballots once they were brought to her attention,” the commission wrote. “The evidence demonstrates that the City Clerk began her vacation on November 13 and then had little to do with the supervision of her office until almost a month later.”

The draft report follows a months-long investigation into the 193 ballots that went missing on Election Day. The ballots were found over the next several weeks — some of them before final certification of results — but were never counted. Commission Chair Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, jointly led the investigation alongside Republican commissioner and former Chair Don Millis.

For months, Madison election officials have been saying that the ballots that went uncounted were delivered to two polling sites but weren’t unopened. But the commission found no evidence the ballot bags were ever delivered. A chief inspector at one site testified he was confident there was no unopened bag in the supply cart sent to his ward.

The errors have already prompted significant changes in Madison’s election processes. Officials have overhauled ballot tracking procedures, which Madison and Dane County leaders say should prevent a repeat of the 2024 mistake.

Still, the commission emphasized “it is essential that the public understands what has occurred, so that municipalities throughout the state can review their own processes and make certain that they too do not find themselves in this very unfortunate situation.”

The commission’s sharp criticism extended beyond Witzel-Behl, noting that “the staff of the City Clerk’s office failed to take any action regarding those ballots.”

Deputy Clerk Jim Verbick said that his post-election involvement was “minimal” and that he didn’t think it was his job to do anything about the missing ballots, the commission’s findings state.

“However, he did not attempt to speak to the City Clerk about the matter,” the review continues. “There was nobody who took responsibility for these ballots. It was always someone else’s job.”

Madison Interim Clerk Mike Haas said in a statement that the city is reviewing WEC’s report and that he hopes that it can provide lessons that prevent similar errors in the future. He did not respond to a request for further comment.

Former clerk violated laws, gave contradictory statements

The report focused on lapses in training by the clerk’s office. For example, it said, Witzel-Behl stored absentee ballots in green courier bags, but didn’t mention that in poll worker training, and the bags weren’t labeled as carrying absentee ballots. She also failed to train poll workers that absentee ballots could also be stored in red security carts, which the commission said contributed to the ballots going uncounted. That lack of training broke state law, the commission stated.

The commission also found that Witzel-Behl violated a law requiring her to supervise absentee ballot handling. In her deposition, she “could not answer basic questions about absentee ballot handling procedures in her office.”

The commission’s report highlights contradictions between Witzel-Behl’s actions in office and deposition testimony. Although she claimed not to know about the uncounted ballots until December, the commission said she messaged an election worker in late November with instructions on how to handle the first batch of uncounted ballots.

Upon learning of the missing ballots in November, the commission said, Witzel-Behl should have alerted the city attorney, the County Board of Canvassers and the commission and immediately investigated her office’s procedures — but she didn’t.

The commission also alleged she violated laws by printing pollbooks too early, failing to oversee poll workers and inadequately preparing for the city’s review of election results.

Draft findings include several orders for Madison compliance

The report lists draft recommendations that the commissioners will vote on at their July 17 meeting. These include requiring the Madison Clerk’s Office to create a plan detailing which employee oversees which task; printing pollbooks no earlier than the Thursday before each election; clearly labeling and tracking the bags carrying absentee ballots; checking all ballot bags and drop boxes before the city finalizes election results; and explaining how it’s going to comply with each of the orders.

Witzel-Behl’s office printed pollbooks for the two affected wards on Oct. 23 — nearly two weeks before Election Day — despite state guidance to print them as close to the election as possible.

Had they been printed later, absentee voters whose ballots had already been returned would have been marked automatically, alerting poll workers that those ballots were in hand but not yet counted. 

But printing pollbooks no earlier than the Thursday before an election could be challenging, said Claire Woodall, who was formerly Milwaukee’s top election official. Cities like Madison and Milwaukee must print tens of thousands of pollbook pages, often using private printers, and distribute them to chief inspectors.

“It seems like you’re rushing a process” with the Thursday requirement, Woodall said. “The last thing you want is for voters to show up at 7 a.m. and discover you don’t have the correct pollbook.”

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Wisconsin Elections Commission alleges former Madison clerk broke laws is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.