As power-hungry data centers proliferate, states are searching for ways to protect utility customers from the steep costs of upgrading the electrical grid, trying instead to shift the cost to AI-driven tech companies. (Dana DiFilippo/New Jersey Monitor)
Midwest Environmental Advocates filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the Wisconsin Public Service Commission seeking to force the release of unredacted documents showing how much electricity will be used at Meta’s planned data center in Beaver Dam.
In a news release, MEA said it had sought electrical load projections for data center projects in Beaver Dam and Port Washington in an October open records request. The PSC initially provided the firm with versions that redacted the electrical load information. MEA sent a follow-up request seeking unredacted versions of the document.
The PSC sent the unredacted version of the Port Washington project but denied the request for the Beaver Dam project, claiming it contained trade secrets.
Wisconsin’s open records law allows government agencies to deny records requests if the information within the document is a trade secret, however MEA disputes that the amount of energy Meta plans to request for its data center counts.
“It appears the PSC is unlawfully withholding this information because either Meta or a public utility is claiming the electricity demand for the data center is a trade secret,” MEA legal fellow Michael Greif said in a statement. “We call on Alliant Energy, American Transmission Company and Meta to be forthright with the public about their plans. These companies are asking a lot of the public and the public deserves, at least the very least, basic information about the data center’s massive energy needs.”
Data center projects across the country are often shrouded in secrecy. A study in Virginia found that at least 80% of local governments involved with data center proposals had signed non-disclosure agreements with the data center companies — though it’s unclear how an NDA would be enforceable against Wisconsin’s public records laws.
Earlier this year, MEA filed a separate lawsuit to force the city of Racine to release records related to the projected water use at Microsoft’s planned data center in Mount Pleasant.
The roof of the Hotel Verdant in Downtown Racine is topped with a green roof planted with sedum and covered with solar panels. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)
A Wisconsin Senate Committee held a public hearing Tuesday on a bill that would allow private companies to construct small solar projects on underutilized farmland and commercial rooftops across the state.
The bill, which would encroach on the monopoly the state’s existing utility companies are allowed to maintain under state law, is being considered while people across the country worry about rising energy costs amid a boom in the construction of data centers and the increased use of electric vehicles and appliances.
Environmental groups in the state have also regularly complained that the utility companies aren’t constructing enough renewable energy projects or sunsetting existing coal and natural gas power plants quickly enough.
The bill, authored by Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point) and Rep. Scott Krug (R-Nekoosa), would allow people in Wisconsin to subscribe to get some of their power from a local “community solar” installation. The subscribers would receive credits they can put toward their utility bill. Because the power developed at the local solar installation will still need to travel through the utility company’s infrastructure, the bill includes a provision that all subscribers to the program would have to pay at least $20 per month on their electric bill.
In the hearing of the Senate Committee on Transportation and Local Government, the bill’s authors said allowing community solar projects would increase people’s energy choices while allowing the expansion of solar power in the state that avoids the objections from local residents that often come with large, utility-scale solar projects.
“This change will open a new market sector in a high energy industry, attract economic investments in Wisconsin, create local jobs, drive innovation and competition, and ultimately save consumers and small businesses money on their energy bills,” Testin said.
But the authors also acknowledged there is still a lot of disagreement over the details and the bill is not yet in its final form.
“We’re not exactly there yet. We’re not all agreeing on this being the best way forward just yet, but this public hearing is a really important step to vet that out a little bit more to get us closer to that answer,” Krug said. “So yes, there are still some kinks to work out between the utilities and individuals who want a more market-based approach to solar. I hope we can work through those issues here.”
Over the hearing’s three and a half hours, the testimony split among two groups — the utility companies who are opposed to the bill and a coalition of solar companies, economists, farmers and employers who are in favor.
The utility companies accused the bill of creating a “shell game” that would lower the costs for the subscribers of a given project while raising electric bills for everyone else. Zack Hill, testifying on behalf of Alliant Energy, said the utility estimated that community solar would result in an additional $8.75 billion in costs for ratepayers over the next 25 years.
“How does [the bill] pay for subscribers 10 to 20% energy savings? The short answer: It will shift costs to your other constituents,” Hill said. “Some have said this sounds like community solar voodoo economics, but all you have to remember is this, when a company promises you a discount, someone else has to pay for it.”
People in favor of the bill argued that the generation of more energy could only help lower energy costs while disputing the utility companies’ claims. Will Flanders, the research director at the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, also said the utilities’ estimates undervalue the benefits that community solar can add.
“This is a model that expands energy choice without large subsidies, without mandates, without turning more power over to monopoly utilities,” Flanders said. “In fact, it introduces competition at a time when Wisconsin needs it the most.”
“We argue that community solar can deliver net savings to the entire system,” he continued. “When we talk about a shell game, what we’re really saying is there’s no real additional resources being put into the system, but obviously there is additional resources being put in when we have these with these programs in place.”
Karl Rabago, a Denver-based energy consultant who testified with Flanders, said that the Alliant $8.75 billion estimate amounted to a threat that if the utilities don’t get to sell the energy, they’ll charge consumers for that loss.
“No one knows where this number comes from, but having seen how utilities make their case in other states, I am 99.9% confident they are basically saying, ‘If we don’t get to make the electricity and sell it, we could potentially lose $8.75 billion and and if we don’t make that money, we’re going to charge you for it anyway,’ and that’s how customer costs could go up,” Rabago said. “That’s the most likely explanation for a histrionic number. The utility position, to summarize, seems to sound a bit like ‘let us do it all and no one gets hurt.’ We’ve heard those kinds of exhortations. Monopolies do it particularly well.”
Toward the end of the hearing, a number of Wisconsin property owners testified, touting the benefits they’ll receive if they’re able to allow solar projects to be constructed on their land.
Duane Hinchley, a Cambridge dairy farmer, said community solar is an “innovative solution” that can give farmers a stable income to hedge against the risks in the agriculture business. Plus, he said, allowing farmers to participate will prevent land that has been farmed for generations from being developed into subdivisions.
“With the right policies in place, our state’s proud agricultural heritage can be a cornerstone of Wisconsin’s clean energy future,” Hinchley said.
But throughout the day, lawmakers from both parties appeared skeptical of the bill’s benefits.
Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine) said repeatedly he didn’t understand how the program would work for the utility companies.
“It sounds like a shell game to me,” he said. “I just, I’m really having a challenge with trying to figure out how that would work, because it would seem to me that the energy company, the regulated company, is the one that’s going to be footing the bill for this.”
Sen. Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit) questioned how the program wouldn’t eventually raise energy costs for non-participants, but said one selling point for the bill was that it would encourage the increased development of renewable energy.
“I heard you say this is going to force more solar to be built, whether or not you need it,” Spreitzer said to a utility company representative. “And I guess that, to me, is the one selling point of the bill. Is that I look at where we’ve been in the landscape lately, where we have, unfortunately, federal incentives for solar that are going away. We have increasing demand for power from data centers. We’re seeing new natural gas plants get built. We’re seeing coal plants not being retired, when we hoped they would. To me, there’s plenty of need for solar.”
If the utility companies won’t support a community solar proposal, Spreitzer wondered, what do they need from the Legislature to encourage more solar development?
“And so if we’re not going to go down this route, what are the incentives that you all need to make sure that we can continue to drive solar development without increasing rates for customers and without saying, ‘let’s go build a natural gas plant instead?” he asked.
Anti-rights of nature bill
Also on Tuesday, the committee heard testimony on a bill from Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) that would prohibit local governments in Wisconsin from enacting “rights of nature” ordinances, which grant natural elements legal rights that can be protected in court.
Nass said in his testimony that the idea is anti-American and is contrary to the values of the U.S. Constitution.
“This is a radical departure from our current law. Rights are something that human beings have,” Nass said. “This concept of granting nature rights is something that has been done primarily in foreign countries … and many of these countries lean dramatically towards socialism and communism, and their attitude is not compatible with private property rights in our country.”
But proponents of rights of nature resolutions frequently point to the fact that corporations are granted rights under U.S. law. Communities including Green Bay and Milwaukee have passed or begun drafting rights of nature ordinances and some Democratic lawmakers have introduced a bill that would grant Devil’s Lake State Park some rights that can be protected in court.
In a statement after the hearing, Rep. Vincent Miresse (D-Stevens Point), one of the co-authors of the Democratic proposal, wrote, “As we heard from advocates today, Rights of Nature is one of the strongest tools local governments have to protect clean air, clean water and healthy soil for future generations — so that our grandchildren, and their children after them, can drink our waters, eat food grown in our soils, and hunt in our forests.”
An oak savannah in southern Dane County that the Badgerland Foundation is working to conserve using Knowles-Nelson Stewardship funds (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)
The looming shutdown of Wisconsin’s decades old Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Grant program has put conservation projects across Wisconsin at risk as land trusts attempt to muddle on without the program that has protected more than 700,000 acres of land in the state.
Without the stewardship fund, projects to conserve 1,300 acres of Northwoods forest near the headwaters of the Wisconsin River in Vilas County, hundreds of acres of “ecologically significant” wetlands in Door County and dozens of acres of prairie and grassland in Dane County could go unfinished.
“It’s a bit bleak and it’s so disheartening to know that there’s so many beautiful, wonderful places kind of on the chopping block right now all across the state,” says Emily Wood, executive director of the Door County Land Trust. “It’s not just us. We hear from our partners that there are hundreds and thousands of acres that are just not going to be protected if [the program] goes away, and that’s going to have such an impact, domino effect, on future generations.”
The Knowles-Nelson Stewardship fund was created in 1989 to fund land conservation in Wisconsin. The program provides grants to local governments and non-profits to cover some of the costs for purchasing and conserving land that can be used for recreation, preserving animal habitats and supporting local industries such as forestry.
The program enjoys massive bipartisan support, yet in recent years, some Republicans in the state Legislature — largely from communities in the northern part of the state — have grown hostile to it, claiming that the program has too often been used to fund the purchase of land up north, depleting local tax bases.
Republican legislators have also complained that they no longer have oversight over the Department of Natural Resource’s management of the program after a Wisconsin Supreme Court decision last year found that the Legislature had given itself an unconstitutional veto authority over the DNR’s grant decisions.
Several attempts have been made to save the program from expiring next summer. In his initial state budget proposal, Gov. Tony Evers asked to extend the program for ten years with $100 million in annual funding. Republicans stripped that provision from the budget immediately.
Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) and Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point) have authored a bill that would extend the program for four years at $28 million per year. The bill also includes a provision that would require the full Legislature to approve any land purchases that cost more than $1 million — a proposal that critics say would be far too slow for the speed at which real estate transactions need to move.
A separate proposal from Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin (D-Whitefish Bay) would re-authorize the program for six years at $72 million per year and create an independent board made up of members appointed by the Legislature to approve large land purchases through the program.
But there has been little progress made on advancing either proposal and now conservation groups are trying to plan for the next year without the support that Knowles-Nelson has traditionally provided.
Oak Bluff Natural Area in Door County, which was protected by the Door County Land Trust using Knowles-Nelson Stewardship funds in 2023. (Photo by Kay McKinley)
Wood says that her organization is trying to protect the landscape in one of the most ecologically significant parts of the state. The challenge for her group is that Door County’s natural beauty draws tourists and increased development, yet too much development would damage the natural beauty.
The Door County Land Trust has protected more than 5,000 acres of land in the county and Knowles-Nelson has covered half the cost in nearly every transaction, according to Wood. With the program shuttering next year, three projects totaling about $1 million — all of which scored highly on the DNR criteria — are at risk.
“The county as a whole receives a ton of money from the Knowles-Nelson stewardship fund, because we are so geared towards tourism and access to natural resources,” she says. The stewardship fund is critical for Door County to continue “to be the county that you know, everyone expects us to be when they get in the car and come up here.”
Near the southern border of Dane County, Filip Sanna and the BadgerLand Foundation are working with the Driftless Area Land Conservancy and The Prairie Enthusiasts to protect and restore vital oak savannah and prairie in southern Wisconsin.
Hundreds of years of agriculture have all but destroyed the native prairies in what was once one of the most ecologically diverse regions in the world.
The foundation has already conserved and gifted to the Driftless Area Land Conservancy hundreds of acres between Belleville and New Glarus that will soon be open to the public for hiking and hunting and used for sustainable practices such as regenerative agriculture. But future plans are threatened by the looming loss of stewardship funds.
Recently, a tract of about 30 acres became available on the market within an area environmental groups have targeted as important for protecting grassland bird habitat. The Prairie Enthusiasts wanted to conserve the land but funds through the stewardship program wouldn’t be available fast enough. So the BadgerLand Foundation and the Prairie Enthusiasts reached an agreement in which the foundation would purchase the land and then sell it to the Prairie Enthusiasts once the stewardship grant comes through.
Now those funds are uncertain and Sanna says it could sidetrack future plans.
One of the arguments Republican legislators have often made against the Knowles-Nelson program is that more populated areas in the southern part of the state should bear more of the land conservation burden.
But the program dying off could jeopardize land conservation in the population centers because land is more expensive there. Dane County’s recently enacted 2026 budget doubled the size of the county’s conservation fund from $5 million to $10 million. That, Sanna says, can be a Band-aid for now. But county and local governments are facing their own budget challenges and smaller counties won’t be able to step into the DNR’s conservation shoes. In many places, the local governments are also dependent on stewardship program funds to conserve and maintain public land.
“One of the responses we have to the uncertainty about Knowles-Nelson is to try to look to the county level and then some combination of county funding and private donations,” Sanna says. “That might work in Dane County, where we have a relatively strong tax base. But if you go to the neighboring counties around, Green and Iowa and Lafayette and all of those counties, that’s probably not an option.”
“if [Knowles-Nelson] dies, the next step is going to be, now you’re going to have nice parks around all the wealthy people, but all the rest of Wisconsin that is smaller population centers that’ll just be like towns, rural housing, farmland, private land,” he continues. “There won’t be public land.”
Way up in Vilas County, in the part of the state where the fight over land conservation has been most heated, a handful of administrative delays might end up killing a 1,300 acre conservation project because stewardship funds will no longer be available.
The Northwoods Alliance and Partners in Forestry are working together to use federal and Knowles-Nelson funds to preserve two tracts of land west of the town of Land O’ Lakes. Joe Hovel, director of Partners in Forestry, says the project would include trails as part of the extensive Wilderness Lakes bike path system.
Because the real estate deal on the project got delayed, and the slow speed at which the state and federal government have moved, it’s likely that the chance to use Knowles-Nelson dollars has already passed.
Hovel says the complaints about land conservation up north discount the economic value of protecting the land for recreational uses.
“It’s really short sighted in a sense that there isn’t enough respect for the recreational value of this land conservation stuff,” Hovel says. “The value of public access conservation land dwarfs, I mean it literally dwarfs, the value that timber revenue brings in.”
A report from the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable found that recreation on federal public lands generates $128.5 billion in economic activity every year. All the logging on federal land generates $200-300 million per year.
Forest Lake Road in Vilas County, where two conservation groups are trying to conserve 1,300 acres of land. (Photo Courtesy of Joe Hovel)
The Legislature has just over six months to extend the program. Wood says it would be a self-inflicted wound if elected officials allow a program that other states look to as a model to expire.
“It’s so disheartening to hear that the fund that has had so much success over the years, that other states look to how to fund conservation, they look to Wisconsin’s model on how to do it, and that we as a state, that same model is going to go down just because of partisan gridlock,” she says. “We really just need to keep it alive because funding it in a later year, or coming back and making changes to make it better are way more possible if it’s an existing program.”
“But coming up with another one from scratch, it just seems like it would be an impossibility. So right now, it does feel like we are just screaming to keep it, just keep it alive. Just don’t kill it.”
A woman is detained by federal agents after exiting a hearing in immigration court at the Jacob K. Javitz Federal Building on Sept. 3, 2025, in New York City. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to hear a lawsuit from the immigrant-rights group Voces de la Frontera against the authority of the state’s county sheriffs to hold people in county jails based on detainers from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The lawsuit from Voces will be immediately heard by the Supreme Court as an original action, meaning it won’t begin at the circuit court level and work its way up to the Supreme Court. The case comes as jurisdictions across the country wrestle with the effects of the Trump administration’s increased immigration enforcement and the level to which local law enforcement should participate.
Courts in New York, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Montana have previously ruled that state law bars local law enforcement officers from complying with federal immigration detainers. A state law in Illinois prohibits local cooperation with federal immigration agents.
Here in Wisconsin, more than a dozen county sheriffs offices have signed 287(g) agreements with ICE that grant sheriff’s deputies some immigration enforcement authority, including the ability to question people in custody about their immigration status and hold people in jail under federal detainers.
The Dodge County sheriff maintains an agreement with the federal government to hold many types of federal detainees in the department’s jail — including immigrants. That agreement includes sheriff’s deputies transporting detained migrants to and from a controversial ICE facility in Broadview, Ill.
Some departments in the state, including Madison and Milwaukee, have explicitly said they won’t cooperate with federal immigration efforts.
Voces’ lawsuit argues that state law does not give Wisconsin law enforcement officers the authority to conduct civil immigration enforcement.
In accepting the case, the Court said it would consider whether Wisconsin sheriffs have the authority to arrest people as part of a civil immigration enforcement action and how 287(g) agreements affect the application of state law.
Departing from usual practice in which state Supreme Court decisions to accept cases are unsigned, conservative Justices Annette Ziegler and Rebecca Bradley dissented from the decision to hear the case.
In a written opinion, conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn wrote Supreme Court rules state it takes four justices to agree to accept an original action and that normally these decisions are unsigned to prevent observers from inferring if the justices hold pre-established views on an issue. He added that just because some justices publicly dissented, that does not reveal how every justice voted in the decision to accept the case.
“The public may begin to infer that if a justice does not publicly dissent to an order granting review in a case, that justice has joined the order taking the case,” he wrote. “That assumption would be unwarranted. Even if some of my colleagues publicly record their dissent, as in this case, that does not necessarily reveal which justices voted for or against the petition in closed conference. A grant order simply means the requisite number of justices voted to grant a petition — in this case, four —nothing more.”
Under Wednesday’s order, Voces has 30 days to file a brief in the case.
Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler misquoted a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a recent dissent, stating that the country’s highest court said the opposite of what it ruled in a 2023 redistricting decision. Ziegler’s opinion pushed back against the state Supreme Court’s decision to appoint a pair of three-judge panels to decide challenges to Wisconsin’s congressional maps.
On Nov. 26, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled 5-2 that two lawsuits alleging the state’s congressional maps are unconstitutional should be heard by the panels because of a 2011 law requiring that action. The Court’s four liberal justices were partially joined in the decision by conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn, who wrote in a concurring opinion that he disagreed with the majority’s decision to appoint the six judges who will sit on the panels.
In a dissenting opinion written by Ziegler and joined by Justice Rebecca Bradley, the two conservatives argued the decision was made “in furtherance of delivering partisan, political advantage to the Democratic Party.”
But Ziegler wrote in her opinion the U.S. Supreme Court had recently affirmed that “the role of state courts in congressional redistricting is ‘exceedingly limited.’”
Ziegler cited the Court’s 2023 decision in Moore v. Harper — which was about the North Carolina Supreme Court’s authority to weigh in on congressional redistricting. The phrase “exceedingly limited” does not appear once in the decision. In that case, a 6-3 majority of the Supreme Court found the opposite of what Ziegler claimed.
“State courts retain the authority to apply state constitutional restraints when legislatures act under the power conferred upon them by the Elections Clause,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion.
The day after the decision was published, the opinion was withdrawn from the state court’s website and replaced with a different version. The change wasn’t publicly acknowledged by the Court and only removes the quotation marks around the phrase “exceedingly limited.” The correction does not change Ziegler’s mischaracterization of the decision in Moore v. Harper.
Rob-n-Cin farms has expanded to become a concentrated animal feeding operation. Environmental groups and local residents have filed a petition against the DNR's decision to grant the farm a wastewater discharge permit. (Photo by Darren Hauck/Getty Images)
Two environmental groups filed a petition late last month challenging the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources’ decision to grant a permit allowing a West Bend dairy farm to operate as a concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO).
The dairy, Rob-n-Cin Farms, has been operating as a CAFO for several years without a permit. Under state law, CAFOs are required to obtain Wisconsin Pollution Discharge Elimination System (WPDES) permits, which regulate the pollution industrial activities such as factory farms are allowed to discharge into local waterways.
CAFOs are industrial farming facilities with more than 1,000 animal units — one animal unit is equivalent to a 1,000-pound cow. Rob-n-Cin plans to expand its herd from 1,300 cows to 2,000. After expanding, the herd will produce more than 18 million gallons of manure every year which the farm plans to spread on fields in Ozaukee and Washington counties.
In 2023, the DNR investigated the farm for operating as an unpermitted CAFO and issued a notice of noncompliance against the farm.
Since then, Rob-n-Cin has been going through the process to obtain a permit, drawing complaints from local residents and community groups. Those complaints include the farm’s failure to list two satellite locations where it plans to spread manure in its permit application, the lack of sanctions on the farm for operating unpermitted and the effect on local groundwater.
Residents are worried about the farm’s effects on the Milwaukee River watershed and the Cedarburg Bog, which is protected as a state natural area and national natural landmark.
On Nov. 26, the environmental-focused law firm Midwest Environmental Advocates filed a petition for a contested case review of the DNR’s permit approval on behalf of Milwaukee Riverkeeper and area residents. The residents include a nearby organic farm and neighbors of Rob-n-Cin.
The petition alleges that the DNR has not proven the expansion will comply with the state’s groundwater quality standards, particularly the limits for phosphorus and nitrates. The permit includes statements that the farm will follow statewide best practices for manure spreading but the petition argues that’s not enough and the DNR should have done more to prove the groundwater will be protected.
“DNR’s issuance of a permit relying solely on standard practices that are not intended to ensure compliance with groundwater quality standards is unreasonable,” the petition states. “This is particularly true in an area of high susceptibility where many members of the public raised credible concerns of groundwater contamination and examples of excessive nitrate levels. Rob-n-Cin needed to demonstrate, and DNR needed to find, that issuance of a permit would not lead to continued or widespread groundwater contamination in excess of established standards. Simply relying on default nutrient management practices without performing analysis or investigation was unreasonable.”
The petition also argues the DNR should require monitoring of the local groundwater after the expansion is complete, stating that state regulators can’t know if the farm is violating its standards if it isn’t tracking how the expansion affects the groundwater.
And the petition states that the DNR did not complete a sufficient environmental review before approving the permit.
“DNR conducted no substantive evaluation of environmental or socioeconomic impacts of the WPDES permit, including effects on groundwater, Cedar Creek, Mole Creek (a Class II trout stream), the Milwaukee River watershed, which is subject to an EPA-approved [Total Maximum Daily Load] for nutrients and sediment, or the Cedarburg Bog,” the petition states.
In a news release, MEA attorney Adam Voskuil said the DNR’s authority requires it to prove that the expansion won’t violate state water standards and it has failed to do so.
“State law is clear that the DNR is required to affirmatively determine — not merely assume — that Rob-n-Cin’s manure-spreading plan will not violate groundwater quality standards. Without off-site groundwater monitoring, there’s simply no way to obtain the data necessary to make that determination,” Voskuil said.
If the petition for a contested case hearing is granted, a hearing on the permit approval will be held by an administrative law judge. That decision would be appealable to the state circuit court system.
Sign for the Wisconsin Elections Comission. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)
The Wisconsin Elections Commission voted unanimously Monday to modify its order imposing a number of requirements on the Madison city clerk’s office due to the loss of nearly 200 absentee ballots in the 2024 election.
In August, the commission ordered the city to make a number of changes to its election practices in an effort to prevent the loss of future ballots.
The original order requires the city to develop an internal plan delineating which employee is responsible for statutorily required tasks, change the absentee ballot processing system so bags and envelopes aren’t lost, update instructional materials for poll workers and complete a full inspection of all materials before the scheduled board of canvassers meeting after an election.
In a special meeting on Monday, the commission voted 6-0 to approve a request from newly appointed clerk Clerk Lydia McComas to modify a section of the order about the timing of printing and preparing poll books.
Under the original order, Madison is required to print its poll books no earlier than the Tuesday before an election and must arrange to receive those books no later than the Friday before the election.
McComas told the commission in a memo that the city had found a vendor that could print the poll books on the Friday before an election and deliver them by the Sunday before the election. This would allow the final printed poll books to include as many absentee ballots as possible, limiting the number of absentee ballots that are returned after the poll books are printed.
In her memo, McComas wrote that the modification would allow the city to achieve its “shared goal” with the commission of reducing “the chance of human error.”
The shore of Lake Superior near Ashland. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
A rule to protect Wisconsin’s cleanest waterways from being harmed was finalized last week over the objections of Republican legislators and allied lobbying groups.
The rule highlights the ongoing dispute between the Legislature and the administration of Gov. Tony Evers over the level of oversight legislators are allowed to have over the administrative rulemaking process. Earlier this year, the state Supreme Court issued a ruling that curtailed the ability of the Legislature to kill administrative rules.
The new rule, which was published in the state’s administrative register Nov. 24 and is set to go into effect July 1, is the result of a decade of wrangling.
In 2015, the U.S. EPA updated the Clean Water Act’s antidegradation regulations — which guide how states are required to protect high quality lakes and rivers from pollution.
Dozens of creeks, rivers and lakes are classified as outstanding resource waters and exceptional resource waters under Wisconsin’s administrative code and will be protected as “high quality waters” under the new rule. Additionally, a body of water can be considered a high quality water if it has contaminant levels that are better than an established statewide standard.
“This means that a waterbody can be high quality for one or more parameters, even if it is impaired for a different parameter,” Laura Dietrich, manager of the Department of Natural Resources’ water evaluation section, said in an email. “For example, a waterbody may be impaired for phosphorus, but chloride levels are better than the chloride water quality criterion. The waterbody would be considered high quality for the purposes of considering new or increased discharges of chloride, but would not be high quality for phosphorus.”
Under the new rule, the DNR will be required to conduct a review before regulated entities are allowed to discharge new or increased levels of contaminants into the water body. Discharges may be allowed if found to be necessary through a “social or economic analysis.”
The rule’s finalization is the end of a process that began in 2023 and has included multiple public hearings and the input of several legislative committees.
Last month, the Assembly committee on the environment voted 4-2 to request modifications to the rule, but the DNR and the Evers administration moved forward with finalizing the rule anyway.
That action has angered Republicans who want more say in the process.
“Representative government has been taken away and we now have rule by king,” Rep. Joy Goeben (R-Hobart) said in a statement. “We don’t want a king and the current path forward is dangerous.”
Lobbying groups have also complained about the rule’s finalization.
Scott Manley, a lobbyist for Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the state’s largest business group, told Wisconsin Public Radio that the rule going into effect is “terrible from a representative government standpoint.”
Erik Kanter, government relations director with Clean Wisconsin, told the Wisconsin Examiner that he thinks the rule represents the DNR finding a solid compromise between environmental and business concerns and that WMC was involved in the entire process through an advisory committee.
“DNR engaged the stakeholder group regularly over the 30-month process it took to put the rule together at the DNR, and so WMC, along the way, had all the opportunity, and certainly took the opportunity, to make their thoughts [known] on how to put this rule together,” Kanter said. “It almost feels like it was never going to be enough for WMC.”
Kanter also said that because the rule aligns the state with the EPA regulations, the state doesn’t have a choice if it wants to retain regulatory authority over its own water.
“Wisconsin has to do this. We have to update our own rules to comply with federal changes to the Clean Water Act,” he said. “There’s no two ways about it if we want to maintain our delegation authority and have state regulators in charge of administering the Clean Water Act. It’s something we have to do.”
The alternative would be for the federal EPA to administer the act in Wisconsin, he said.
“I think a lot of folks in the business community wouldn’t want EPA and the federal government breathing down their neck,” Kanter said. “And so this delegated authority situation is, I think, better for everybody.”
Democrats and pro-democracy organizations held a rally Oct. 16 to call for the creation of an independent redistricting commission. On Tuesday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court issued an order for two judicial panels to hear arguments against Wisconsin's current U.S. House maps. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)
The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered a pair of three-judge panels to hear arguments in two lawsuits challenging the state’s congressional maps.
The challenges to the maps come as fights play out all over the country over the dividing lines of congressional districts ahead of next year’s midterm elections. After Texas legislators worked to draw Democratic seats out of existence at the behest of President Donald Trump and a number of other Republican-led states followed suit, California voters elected to temporarily undo their state’s independent redistricting commission and allow Democratic leaders to wipe out Republican-leaning seats.
Similar efforts have followed to varying degrees of success in states including Arkansas, Indiana and Virginia.
Wisconsin’s political maps have been at the center of its divided government for more than a decade, with the Supreme Court undoing the partisan gerrymander in the state Legislature two years ago.
Since then, the focus has turned to Wisconsin’s congressional maps, where Republicans control six of the state’s eight districts. More than once, the Supreme Court has declined to hear cases that request the Court directly take up challenges to the congressional maps.
A lobbying effort in the state is also ongoing to establish an independent, nonpartisan process for creating the state’s legislative and congressional maps.
On Tuesday, the Court ruled that the challenges to the maps must follow a 2011 law, passed by the GOP-controlled Legislature and signed by Republican Gov. Scott Walker, which requires that challenges to the state’s congressional districts be heard by a panel of three circuit court judges.
Republicans had argued that law shouldn’t apply in this case. In a 5-2 decision, in which the court’s four liberal justices were joined by conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn, the Court ruled the law applies and the panels should be created.
In the majority decision, the Court’s liberals also appointed the panels — of which all the members were appointed by Gov. Tony Evers or endorsed liberal Justice Susan Crawford in this spring’s election.
Hagedorn dissented on the appointment of the panels, arguing the panel members should’ve been appointed randomly.
“Given the nature of this case and the statute’s implicit call for geographic diversity and neutrality, a randomly-selected panel and venue would be a better way to fulfill the statutory mandate,” Hagedorn wrote. “To be clear, I am not suggesting the judicial panel will fail to do its job with integrity and impartiality. But this approach is an odd choice in the face of a statute so clearly designed to deter litigants from selecting their preferred venue and judge.”
Justices Annette Ziegler and Rebecca Bradley dissented from the decision, arguing the majority chose the judges on the panel to further the goals of the Democratic party.
In several previous lawsuits over political maps, Bradley and Ziegler have issued rulings that benefited the Republican party or further entrenched the partisan gerrymander that has allowed the Republican party to retain control of the Legislature for 15 years.
“Hand picking circuit court judges to perform political maneuvering is unimaginable,” Ziegler wrote. “Yet, my colleagues persist and appear to do this, all in furtherance of delivering partisan, political advantage to the Democratic Party.”
On Tuesday, Crawford and Justice Janet Protasiewicz also issued orders denying requests from Republican members of Congress and GOP voters that they recuse themselves from the redistricting cases. Since the two justices’ elections in recent years, the state’s Republicans have regularly accused the pair of making statements on the campaign trail that show pre-judgment of cases involving the state’s political maps.
“The Congressmen’s recusal theories are overbroad, impracticable, and rife with unintended consequences,” Crawford wrote. “Individuals and organizations have the right to contribute to judicial campaigns and to express their beliefs about the effect judicial elections will have on issues of importance to them. Demanding that a justice recuse from a case because third parties who made campaign contributions have expressed their views on high-profile issues improperly implies that the judge had endorsed or adopted such views. This insinuation is inappropriate, particularly where the judge has expressly disclaimed such an endorsement, and undermines judicial impartiality. Further, it would chill protected speech and undermine this court’s central role of deciding cases of statewide importance.”
The return of the sandhill crane to Wisconsin is a conservation success, but now the state needs to manage the population and the crop damage the birds can cause. (Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources)
Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature are trying once again to establish a sandhill crane hunting season in the state and once again the issue has caused a heated debate.
At a public hearing on a bill to establish a crane hunt Wednesday morning, Democrats and conservation groups complained that the proposal was a solution in search of a problem while hunters repeatedly insisted the only way to manage the crane population is through a hunt.
The bill is the product of a Joint Legislative Council study committee convened last year — which spent months trying to find a compromise solution that would satisfy farmers concerned about the more than $1.5 million in crop damage the birds cause each year, hunting groups dead set on establishing a hunt and bird conservationists worried a hunt could damage a population that the state spent decades working to reestablish.
Sandhill cranes were once gone from the Wisconsin environment, but years of careful work have reestablished the birds. However, many of the wetland habitats that originally served as the bird’s nesting sites have been replaced with farmland and the birds like to eat the corn seeds out of those fields.
The compromise proposal barely eked through the study committee — which was divided along similar lines as Wednesday’s hearing.
In the version of the bill under consideration now, a number of proposals meant to help farmers with the crop damage problem have been stripped out, including a program that would subsidize part of the cost for pre-treating corn seeds with a chemical that makes them unappetizing to the birds.
Dave Considine, a retired state representative whose former district includes the Baraboo-based International Crane Foundation, said at the hearing it was a “travesty” that aid for farmers has been left out of the bill.
“I thought we had a really decent compromise [in the study committee]. Now I come here to testify and we have given farmers no help, nothing,” Considine said. “Matter of fact, most of the science in the committee meeting, spoke of the fact that if anything [a hunt] may increase damage.”
Plus, a number of anti-hunt advocates questioned how holding a hunt in the fall is meant to deter crop damage, which largely happens in the spring before the seeds have sprouted.
A number of pro-hunt speakers at the hearing pointed to Alabama, Kentucky and Tennessee, as well as the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec, which hold or are preparing to start sandhill crane hunting seasons.
The difference, conservationists argued, is that the sandhill cranes that migrate through the eastern flyway (the region of North America of which Wisconsin is a part), use Wisconsin as their annual nesting ground.
“Cranes are long-lived, and slow to breed one or two young annually,” said Ann Lacy, director of North American eastern flyway programs at the International Crane Foundation. “They do not have the same biology as ducks or geese; therefore, they cannot be managed similarly. They have unique biological considerations, especially in Wisconsin. What happens to these birds in Wisconsin has an effect on the Eastern Population as a whole.”
Despite all those concerns, hunting advocates refused to budge, even as several experts testified explaining the scientific reasons why a hunt won’t help the crop damage problem. For example, sandhill cranes mate for life and are extremely territorial but most of the damage in the state every year comes from single birds moving in larger flocks. If one or both members of a mated pair are killed in a hunt, that only opens up the pair’s territory to be taken over by an unruly group of unmated birds.
“[We’ve] heard several times that hunting is not a tool that will help us against agricultural damage,” Todd Schaller, a member of the Wisconsin Waterfowl Association board said in response to the expert testimony. “I’m going to say, in my pragmatic thinking, that’s false.”
In 2021, Republicans in the Legislature proposed a similar bill to start a crane hunt. When announcing that bill, conservative rock musician Ted Nugent appeared at a press conference in which he called the birds “ribeyes in the sky.” On Wednesday, Tim Andryk of Wisconsin Ducks Unlimited argued people would be less squeamish about having a crane hunt in Wisconsin if they tasted the meat.
“They’re just amazing when it comes to eating them,” Andryk said. “They’re a delicate, dark red meat … they’re such good eating that people that are opposed to hunting them, once they’ve eaten one, I don’t think they would be opposed to hunting.”
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel speaks with reporters after an event Feb. 26. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
Former state Attorney General and conservative state Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel has been appointed as the interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin.
Schimel, who was also previously a Waukesha County Circuit Court judge and the Waukesha County district attorney, will now be the highest ranking federal prosecutor in the district that covers the eastern part of the state, including Milwaukee.
Usually, U.S. attorneys are first recommended for the office by the two U.S. senators in a state and then nominated by the president before being confirmed by the Senate. In Wisconsin, Sens. Tammy Baldwin and Ron Johnson operate a joint commission responsible for finding candidates.
Schimel told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that the commission was unable to reach a consensus for the job — which has been empty since February when former U.S. attorney Gregory Haanstad, a Biden appointee, left the role as part of the normal transition when a new party enters the White House.
In a statement, Baldwin accused Trump of “blowing up Wisconsin’s bipartisan judicial nominating process” and “ignoring Wisconsinites of all stripes” by choosing Schimel, whom voters rejected twice, in his races for state attorney general and Supreme Court.
Once the commission failed to find a candidate, Schimel said he reached out to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, whom he knows from their time as state attorneys general.
Interim U.S. Attorneys are allowed to hold that role for 120 days, though the Trump administration has tried in other states to extend that period.
Schimel will now take over the office as it manages increased federal immigration enforcement happening in the state and heads into the highly political trial of Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan, who federal prosecutors have alleged obstructed the work of federal agents attempting to apprehend a migrant in the county courthouse. Dugan’s trial is set for Dec. 15, Schimel told the Journal-Sentinel the prosecution team on the case will remain the same.
Schimel ran for the state Supreme Court earlier this year in what became the most expensive judicial election in U.S. history — largely due to the involvement of Elon Musk, who was at the time a part of the Trump administration through his DOGE office.
Schimel lost by more than 10 percentage points to Justice Susan Crawford. In his campaign, he touted his prosecutorial experience but was unable to separate himself from criticism that he was too closely tied to Trump and Musk.
A Nov. 14 conference at UW-Madison debated the merits of bringing fusion voting back to Wisconsin (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
Dozens of political scientists, election experts and members of the public gathered in a UW-Madison conference room Friday to debate whether returning to a 19th century election process could empower voters and help turn back the United States’ slide toward authoritarianism.
The event centered around fusion voting, which is the practice of allowing more than one political party to nominate the same candidate on a ballot. Currently used in Connecticut and New York, the fusion voting system means the candidates on the left can appear on the ballot under both the Democratic Party and the smaller Working Families Party while candidates on the right appear for the Republican Party and the Conservative Party.
In theory this can give the minor parties enough influence to push for policy changes. A minor party that can swing 4% of a vote total can move the needle.
Throughout the 1800s, fusion voting was the norm across the country — the Republican Party itself was formed in Wisconsin as a fusion party by voters who felt that the major parties at the time, the Democrats and Whigs, weren’t doing enough to end slavery. Eventually, the two major parties worked together to get the practice banned in most of the country.
Often, minor fusion parties are further from the ideological center than the major parties, but a lawsuit is currently pending in Wisconsin from a group called United Wisconsin aiming to create a fusion party that connects moderate voters who don’t feel like they’re represented by the modern Democrats or Republicans. The effort is being helmed by former state Senate Majority Leader Dale Schultz and former Dane County Sheriff Dave Mahoney. The group is represented in the lawsuit by the voting rights focused firm Law Forward.
Lawsuits to reinstate fusion voting are also pending in New Jersey and Kansas.
Lilliana Mason, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University, said during the conference that the two party system and primary election process have polarized the country’s politics and made our’ “sense of winning or losing” more “existential.”
Looming over the discussions, but without being explicitly mentioned very often, was the Trump administration’s anti-democratic actions — including denying the outcome of the 2020 election, supporting the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and pardoning Wisconsin’s fake electors — and the threat of authoritarianism. The debate Friday was often an exchange over how fusion voting fits into broader systemic reforms and if it can be used in tandem with proposals including proportional representation, multi-member congressional districts, ranked choice voting, gerrymandering prohibitions, filibuster reform and others.
“It makes it possible for people who want to organize and who want to create and claim their own political power, to do so in an effective way,” Beau Tremitiere, an attorney from the non-profit Protect Democracy, said. They’re exactly right. “People are deeply dissatisfied with the system. There’s a lot of energy to do something better and fusion makes that easier.”
Fusion advocates said the system allows politics to be more dynamic. People’s political beliefs don’t always fit neatly in a party system that encourages big tents and the necessity of coalition management in those big tents means that parties aren’t encouraged to distance themselves from their most extreme members.
“Politics is a complex, dynamic system that is always changing,” said Lee Drutman, who studies political reform at the think tank New America. “And the key is, how do you keep it from spiraling out of control? How do you keep it from a self-reinforcing tumult? And if you have a party system problem, which we do, you need a party system solution.”
But several speakers at the conference also laid out the limits and downsides of fusion voting. It’s not a major structural reform. Fusion parties are usually further from the ideological center, so if the goal is a more moderate politics, it’s not clear fusion will deliver that. Members of the Green Party expressed concern that fusion enables a patronage system of political favor trading.
Overall though, the conference often returned to the idea that the country is in a democracy crisis and experimentation is a good thing in the effort to turn it around.
“I’m supportive of experimentation,” Derek Muller, a law professor at Notre Dame, said. “It seems to me, we should see more real world experiments.”
Schultz, who was in the Legislature from 1983 to 2015, said he’s trying to establish a fusion party in Wisconsin to get more “humanity” in the state’s politics.
“Why fusion voting? Why does it matter? Because of agency, the fact that suddenly people get a chance to sit at the table, to be a part of the discussions that matter to them,” he said. “Yes, fusion voting is not the be- and end-all political reform, but it is, in my opinion, an essential part of our future if we’re going to get back to having a healthy democracy.”
A sign acknowledging Stewardship program support at Firemen's Park in Verona. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
A Wisconsin Assembly committee deadlocked 6-6 Wednesday on a Republican-authored bill to prevent the broadly popular Knowles-Nelson Stewardship program from lapsing next year.
The program, which allows the state Department of Natural Resources to purchase, conserve and maintain public land enjoys bipartisan support among Wisconsin residents. However a subset of Republican legislators have soured on the program’s intentions, arguing too much land has been pulled off local property tax rolls in northern Wisconsin. Republicans have also complained that a state Supreme Court decision removed their authority to conduct oversight of the program.
Previously, members of the Joint Committee on Finance had the ability to anonymously hold up stewardship projects.
Republicans in the Legislature stripped money to re-authorize the program out of the state budget earlier this year and both parties have proposed competing pieces of legislation to keep it running beyond 2026.
On Wednesday, the Assembly Committee on Forestry, Parks and Outdoor Recreation took up the Republican bill, authored by Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc). Democrats and environmental groups have been unsupportive of the Kurtz bill since its initial release because it requires that any attempt by the DNR to acquire land at a cost of more than $1 million be approved by the full Legislature through standalone legislation.
Critics have argued the full legislative process is the opposite of what the Court intended when it took the anonymous hold power away from JFC, that the Legislature could never move quickly enough for the speed at which real estate transactions must sometimes take place and the public nature of legislation could scare off potential sellers.
Earlier this week, Kurtz released a proposed amendment to his bill that would lower the threshold requiring legislative approval from $1 million to $250,000.
A Democratic proposal, which was introduced as a separate bill this summer and offered as an amendment to the Republican bill this week, would create an independent board, nominated by members of both parties, to oversee the program outside of the legislative process.
On Wednesday, the committee voted 7-5 in favor of accepting Kurtz’s amendment to his bill. Rep. Paul Melotic (R-Grafton) voted with the committee’s four Democrats against the amendment.
But on the vote to advance the bill out of committee, Reps. Calvin Callahan (R-Tomahawk) and Rob Swearingen (R-Rhinelander) joined the Democrats to vote no, resulting in the 6-6 tie.
When an Assembly committee votes for a bill, it reports the bill to the full Assembly floor and recommends that it be passed. According to Assembly rules, when a committee ties on a vote, the chair of the committee has the discretion to report the bill to the full Assembly “without recommendation.”
The bill has already been reported to the full Assembly for a potential vote, according to the office of Rep. Jeff Mursau (R-Crivitz), the committee’s chair.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Rep. Vincent Miresse (D-Stevens Point), a co-author of the Democratic proposal, said “Wisconsin Democrats are united in their support and vision for Knowles-Nelson,” while “Republicans cannot seem to agree on a path forward.”
Charles Carlin, the director of strategic initiatives at the non-profit land trust organization Gathering Waters, told the Wisconsin Examiner that Wednesday’s vote shows the only way to save the program is with a bill that can get support from both parties.
“Today’s hearing was a missed opportunity for bipartisan cooperation on the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship program,” Carlin said. “There is ample room for compromise across the aisle. But today’s deadlocked committee vote demonstrates that no reauthorization is going to move forward without buy-in from both parties. The hearing should motivate legislators on both sides of the aisle to come together and work out a compromise that keeps Knowles-Nelson working for Wisconsin.”
Wind turbines rise up above farmland near Middleton on November 19, 2013. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Wisconsin Democrats have announced a bill that would cap residential energy bills at 2% of household income.
On Tuesday, Democrats said the proposal from Rep. Darrin Madison (D-Milwaukee) would protect Wisconsinites’ bank accounts while the state finds ways to expand clean energy production in the face of climate change and manage the increasing energy burden posed by data center developments across the state.
“Rising energy rates are becoming an unsustainable burden on regular people in Wisconsin,” Madison said at a Tuesday morning press conference. “Our energy system still has big problems to tackle, like dramatically moving towards carbon-free electricity, or the challenge of data centers, which are currently on course to double the amount of energy creation in Wisconsin. Regardless of your stance on data centers, artificial intelligence and the role these technologies can or should play in our communities, the people of Wisconsin must have their energy burden lifted. This bill is a common sense, necessary protection for people struggling to afford their basic needs before we take further action on any of these things as legislators to address those issues.”
At the press conference, residents who have struggled with energy bills spoke about how getting power disconnected can reverberate through people’s lives, causing health problems or forcing choices between other household costs.
“We’re doing everything we can, yet we still cannot keep up,” said Jill Sexton, a Wausau resident who is on disability assistance with a husband on Social Security. “I ended up taking a part time job specifically to cover the increase in our electric and heating bills. Nowadays, here’s our reality: Each month we choose between paying the electric bill and heat bill or filling our prescriptions. Some months I don’t buy the medication. Some months we stretch food until the very last day.”
Several lawmakers tied the bill to the national Democratic party’s growing focus on “affordability” and bipartisan skepticism of data centers.
“We have the money. It’s all about how we prioritize where we spend it,” Rep. Ryan Spaude (D-Ashwaubenon) said at the press conference. “Folks in my district and around the state are on a knife’s edge. Many of them are just barely getting by. This bill is going to do something. It’s going to keep more money in their pockets. It deserves a hearing and it deserves to be passed by this body.”
Legislators announced the bill just as communities are grappling with the construction of massive data centers across the state. While the centers can provide an easy source of property tax revenue for local governments, they also use a massive amount of water and energy — raising questions about the protection of local water supplies, adequacy of the state’s existing renewable energy sources and concerns that a data center-generated spike in energy use will be passed on to local ratepayers.
Last week, Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin (D-Whitefish Bay) and Rep. Angela Stroud (D-Ashland) introduced a bill that would require data centers to cover the cost of increased energy use, mandate the development of more clean energy and ensure data center construction pays local workers living wages.
“While our state energy system faces deep uncertainty, especially when it comes to the climate crisis, we’re responding to data centers that are going to have increasing energy demands and raise rates for many communities,” said Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison) who is running in the Democratic primary for governor. “It is vital that we cap all utility payments at 2% of income so that we can protect our ratepayers and our communities first. This bill is a clear and systemic practical response to rising energy rates, and it’s one of the key cornerstone priorities of the Assembly Democrats’ affordability agenda.”
Under the rate cap bill, the Public Service Commission would be responsible for administering an energy burden relief fund. The fund would cover the difference for any household with energy costs that are more than 2% of the monthly household income. The bill would give the PSC 12 months after enactment to start the fund and three years to automatically enroll every eligible household.
The bill would allow the PSC to prioritize households making less than 300% of the federal poverty level, only provide payments to cover energy costs for primary residences and provide a maximum energy use threshold to prevent people from receiving state aid for energy intensive home businesses such as mining cryptocurrency.
Also, the bill would prevent public utility companies from disconnecting the service of people making less than 300% of the federal poverty level and require the PSC to annually report the number of utility disconnections.
Former Dane County Judge James Troupis appears in court on Dec. 12. He faces felony forgery charges for his role in developing the 2020 false elector scheme to overturn the election results for Donald Trump. (Screenshot | WisEye)
President Donald Trump has pardoned a group of Wisconsin Republicans who participated in his scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election by casting false Electoral College votes.
The pardons were issued to a large group of people instrumental to Trump’s 2020 effort, including Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. Included on the list, posted to X Sunday night by Trump’s pardon attorney Ed Martin, are some of the Wisconsin Republicans who cast the fake votes as well as two attorneys and a former aide who were instrumental in planning the effort.
The pardons are largely symbolic because the president’s authority only extends to federal, not state, crimes.
Wisconsinites Carol Brunner, Mary Buestrin, Darryl Carlson, Andrew Hitt, Kelly Ruh, Bob Spindell and Pam Travis received pardons. Attorneys Kenneth Chesebro and Jim Troupis, and former Trump aide Mike Roman were also on the list.
The 10 people who served as false Trump electors had previously settled a lawsuit against them, which included a formal statement that Joe Biden won the 2020 election and an agreement that they would not serve as electors in any election in which Trump was on the ballot.
Cheseboro, Troupis and Roman are all facing felony charges in Wisconsin for their role in planning the false elector plot.
Sen. Ron Johnson, whose office played a part in the scheme by trying to pass the fake Electoral College ballots to then-Vice President Mike Pence, celebrated the pardons.
“Thank you [Trump] and [Martin] for issuing these well-deserved pardons. It’s well past time for [Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul] to end his corrupt lawfare against a good and honorable man, Judge James Troupis,” Johnson wrote on X.
While the pardons won’t have any effect on the state prosecutions, critics said the real effect is Trump creating a permission structure for his allies to undermine U.S. election results. Jeff Mandell, general counsel of Law Forward, the progressive voting rights focused firm that filed the lawsuit against Wisconsin’s 10 false electors, called the pardons “offensive” and said they invite attacks on democracy.
“Many are dismissing these pardons as merely symbolic. That misses the point,” Mandell said in a statement. “While the pardon has little immediate effect, its purpose is emblematic: it sends an unmistakable message that this White House disdains democracy and will assist, in word and in deed, any effort, no matter how extreme and outrageous, to cling to power regardless of election results.”
The Wisconsin Legislature is considering a bill to legalize online sports gambling. (Getty Images)
A bipartisan bill to legalize online sports betting in Wisconsin is speeding through the state Legislature.
After being introduced in late October, the Assembly and Senate versions of the legislation received public hearings this week, and on Thursday the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Revenue voted 5-3 in favor of advancing the bill to the Senate floor.
Under the Wisconsin Constitution, any gambling must be managed by the state’s federally recognized Native American tribes. Sports betting was first allowed in the state in 2021, but all of those bets had to be made in person at tribal casinos. The proposed new legislation would allow online sports betting using a “hub and spoke” model in which the servers running the betting websites and apps are housed on tribal land.
The structure is similar to the state of Florida’s agreement with the Seminole tribe, which owns and operates the Hard Rock Casino brand.
Proponents of the bill, including a bipartisan mix of legislators, representatives of the tribes and the state’s professional sports teams, say that hundreds of millions of dollars in unregulated online sports bets are already being made in Wisconsin, so legalizing the practice will kill the black market while providing tax revenue and consumer protections.
But critics say the Legislature is rushing through a bill that could face legal hurdles and ignoring the ways in which online sports betting can be especially harmful for people with gambling addictions.
Wisconsin’s legalization move comes seven years after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized sports betting in 2018. So far, 39 states have legalized sports betting and 32 of them have allowed online or mobile sports bets.
Wisconsin would be the first state to legalize online sports gambling since North Carolina and Vermont did so in June 2023. Only now, Wisconsin’s legislators are doing so amid a national reassessment of the country’s relationship with sports gambling. Ads for apps such as FanDuel and DraftKings are ubiquitous. Both the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball are dealing with the fallout of player gambling scandals. Questions have arisen about the healthiness of frictionless sports gambling for the predominately young, male users of these apps.
“American culture, and American sporting culture is trying to adjust to this new widely legalized moment,” Dr. Jason Lopez, a professor at UW-Madison who studies sports media and gambling, told the Wisconsin Examiner.
If the bill is passed and signed into law, sports betting wouldn’t be immediately legalized. The state and tribes would need to renegotiate their existing gaming compacts and then those new agreements would need approval from the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.
But, Rep. Tyler August (R-Walworth), said at Tuesday’s Senate hearing, the state should get moving before the illegal betting market grows too large.
“I don’t gamble, but I think it’s the right thing to do, based on some of the data that we’ve seen,” said August, whose district is right on the Illinois border, which residents can easily cross to place online bets. “This is an activity that’s not declining, it’s increasing. And I think that it’s appropriate for us to deal with this now before it gets even bigger.”
Jim Crawford, attorney general of the Potawatomi tribe, said an estimated $1 billion in illegal online sports bets were made by Wisconsinites last year. At the hearing, tribal representatives highlighted the services tribal governments could improve with the increased sports betting revenue.
“While online gaming is currently the wild west in Wisconsin with no regulations or protections for consumers,” Crawford said. “It does not have to be. This bill is a first step in ensuring that consumers will be able to have a legal, regulated and protected way of participating in this extremely popular technology.”
Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green), one of the bill’s co-authors, said he doesn’t believe the bill will put gambling addicts at further risk. But Sens. Andre Jacque (R-New Franken), Rachael Cabral-Guevara (R-Appleton) and Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi) voted against moving the bill out of committee. Jacque said at the hearing he was worried about the recent gambling scandals in professional sports and the risk of gambling addiction.
“This would allow them to place bets by their device anywhere in the state, as opposed to going on site at a casino, at a reservation,” Jacque said. “I would say, from an opportunity standpoint, that potentially could feed more into addictive behavior.”
Noah Henderson, the director of the sport management program at Loyola University Chicago, said the frictionless nature of online sports betting is one of its challenges.
“Brick and mortar sports books provide a cooling-off period, when people are trying to chase losses, if they have to get in their car again and go to the sports book, they might realize halfway there that they’re acting impulsively,” Henderson said. “It’s easier for families to see the signs of gambling disorder or problem gambling when individuals have to leave the home, right? It’s a lot easier to hide problem gambling or a gambling disorder when it’s only on a mobile device, where there’s no absences, they’re not leaving the house more than they normally do.”
Henderson said there’s not much Wisconsin’s Legislature can do about the societal acceptance of legalized sports betting and a culture that has fully absorbed the promotion of gambling.
“It is incredibly common to see on the pre-game show, the halftime show, the best bets, the best live bets, the best parlay combinations. So I think that there’s only so much Wisconsin can do to stop that, to stop sports gambling from being the culture of young men — predominantly young men — watching sports,” he told the Examiner.
So, according to Henderson, the state is faced with a choice between legalizing and facing the broader cultural changes head-on while getting the tax revenue or hoping that prohibition disincentivizes sports betting.
“I think that there might be a bit of harm reduction in this public policy where, if we keep mobile sports wagering outlawed in this state, it’s not going to curtail the sweeping normalization of sports gambling that we’ve seen,” Henderson said. “That’s at a national level. So Wisconsin has two options, which is to not allow it, and hope that the lack of resources for legal sports gambling incentivizes young men and women not to partake in this. But at the end of the day, there’s still a market and a need … they would rather regulate and tax it for consumer protection and to grow a tax base off of it and not have sports gambling happening without being able to derive some tax benefit from it that can go towards gambling education, public schools, or whatever else Wisconsin’s government deems important.”
One organization that is against the bill is the Sports Betting Alliance, which represents the major online sportsbooks.
The bill uses the federal Indian Gaming Regulation Act as a mechanism to allow online bets in Wisconsin. That law allows tribes to license their gaming operations out to third parties so long as the tribe gets 60% of the net revenue.
Damon Stewart, an attorney for the alliance, said at the hearing that the revenue sharing requirement would make it too expensive for the most popular apps to partner with the tribes and provide their already existing apps and infrastructure. He also said he believes the law as currently written runs afoul of federal law.
“We support the goal of legal online sports betting in Wisconsin. We want to work with the tribes. We want to partner with them,” Stewart said. “But this bill will only result in limited choices for customers. There’s no national brands, no chance for all the tribes to actually participate in the market, no ability to make an effective dent in the illegal market that already exists and years of litigation that will hold up the implementation of the law.”
Stewart argued in his testimony that without the name recognition of the most popular apps, the legalization effort may not effectively kill the black market. Henderson said it’s possible for the tribes to develop their own infrastructure, but it’s easier to let the bigger companies manage the administration if the revenue sharing deal can be worked out.
“This is probably a losing endeavor for those big sports books to enter a mid-sized sports gambling market with already pretty challenging margins,” Henderson said. “Especially when sports books enter a new market for sports gambling, there’s a lot of upfront costs that come with advertising that usually these businesses and markets take several years to even become profitable with more favorable regulations in place.”
“Legislation can be amended. It doesn’t seem like this is the only formulation of it, but I think revenue sharing can definitely happen,” he continued. “I just don’t know if the 60-40 model makes sense for retailers to want to come in. Otherwise it would just be much like Florida, where tribal governments would have to build the infrastructure on their own or purchase white light label sports gambling software and pass it off as their own.”
In his testimony, Stewart called for the Legislature to slow down the process and get it right the first time.
“I want to be respectful. It’s just my perception that with a bill dropped last week, two hearings this week, it does seem to be, compared to a lot of legislation, a bit of a rush,” Stewart said. “And on the topic of this complexity, a topic of this importance that affects a lot of citizens of the state, I would hope it would be seen as reasonable as asking to let us have the chance to work with the tribes.”
The tribal representatives testifying said they were prepared to move forward without the big name apps.
“We certainly appreciate the Sports Betting Alliance’s support of the goal of this legislation,” Crawford said. “But it’s also something that is a little bit concerning to us, that they are sort of implying that we don’t have the capability of operating statewide mobile sports, which, if you’ve ever been to our facility and to our retail sports betting, you know that we do a pretty good job, and the customers are happy. And so we look forward to doing that on a statewide basis, on a regulated basis, where the consumers are protected and they are generating revenues for the state of Wisconsin that stay in the state of Wisconsin.”
As power-hungry data centers proliferate, states are searching for ways to protect utility customers from the steep costs of upgrading the electrical grid, trying instead to shift the cost to AI-driven tech companies. (Dana DiFilippo/New Jersey Monitor)
A new proposal from a pair of legislative Democrats would institute a number of labor, energy and sustainability requirements on tech companies seeking to build data centers in Wisconsin.
The proposal from Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin (D-Whitefish Bay) and Rep. Angela Stroud (D-Ashland) comes as data centers have continued to pop up across the state — largely in southeast Wisconsin — sparking heated local debates about land use, local jobs and the centers’ heavy use of water and electricity.
There are now 47 data centers in Wisconsin, with more under consideration by local governments. The data centers house computer servers to store information for cloud-based software and, increasingly, to support the expansion of artificial intelligence.
For local governments, the construction of data centers offers an easy opportunity for property tax revenue from a business that won’t require many local government services. But the servers have high energy and water needs, are often sited on land that has long been used for farming and raise concerns associated with AI. Experts and advocates have been looking for the state government to weigh in more forcefully on how to regulate the centers, the Wisconsin Examiner reported last month.
So far, the only mentions of data centers in state law are a provision in the 2023-25 state budget which exempts data center construction costs from the sales tax and a law enacted earlier this year to study the growth of nuclear power in the state.
The proposal from Habush Sinykin and Stroud, announced Thursday, would establish rules beyond current incentives for data center growth.
“The new legislation being proposed today is about making sure that we have clear, statewide guardrails in place that provide people in communities across Wisconsin with the information and transparency they need to engage in the local decision-making process in an informed, effective manner from the start,” Habush Sinykin, whose district includes a controversial data center project in Port Washington, said in a statement.
Under the proposal, electric companies in the state will be required to submit quarterly reports to the Public Service Commission on the amount of energy being used by data centers in the state. Those reports will be required to include information on the source of the energy and be made public. Water utilities in the state will also be required to publicly report when a single customer will account for more than 25% of the total water usage in the district.
The data center companies would be required to pay an annual fee to the Department of Administration, which will put that money towards renewable energy programs. Data center buildings would also be required to obtain sustainability certifications.
The bill would also give data centers an incentive to encourage utility companies to expand clean energy and it would also require the PSC to establish a class of “very large customers” and ensure that normal ratepayers aren’t bearing the increased energy costs caused by the data centers’ growing energy demands.
“It’s mind-blowing that the only regulations we have on the books are to just incentivize data centers with no expectations for them being good environmental partners with the communities they’re going to be located in,” says Jen Giegerich, the government affairs director at Wisconsin Conservation Voters, which was involved in helping draft the proposal.
“It’s really important that what this bill does is actually make sure that the data centers are paying their own way,” Giegerich continues. “We’ve just seen energy costs rising, and the fact that we would continue to put costs for energy development for tech giants who are making unheard-of profits, and then expecting Wisconsin ratepayers to pay for that is really a problem. So this bill rectifies that, and I think it’s sorely needed.”
The proposal also includes labor requirements for data center construction. Under the bill, any workers at construction sites for data centers must be paid the local prevailing wage rate or, if the worker is a member of a union, the wage rate in that worker’s collective bargaining agreement. The data center company will have to pay whichever wage is higher.
To qualify for the sales tax exemptions already available for data centers under current state law, the companies would be required to meet the labor requirements in the bill and source at least 70% of their energy from renewable sources.
Steve Kwaterski, a spokesperson for the Wisconsin Laborers’ District Council, says data center projects have already been a source of consistent, good paying construction jobs for his members and the bill will go towards ensuring that these jobs support families in the state.
“We want to make sure that any project that’s as complex as a data center is being done with the most skilled and trained workforce that’s out there,” he says. “That ensures that it’s being done right on time, on budget, and done safely as well.”
Afternoon light shines on the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service Processing Center in El Centro, California, on May 27, 2022. (Getty photos)
An immigrant advocacy organization and the ACLU of Wisconsin are criticizing the Marathon County Sheriff’s decision to partner with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in an agreement that gives county jail staff some immigration enforcement authority.
ICE records show the county signed an agreement on Tuesday to participate in the ICE 287(g) jail enforcement program. Under the jail enforcement model, county jail staff can question people in the jail about their immigration status and the county can hold non-citizens in jail for up to 48 hours to be picked up by federal agents.
Since President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, ICE has been working to significantly expand the program across the country. Marathon is the fifth sheriff’s department in Wisconsin to sign an agreement with ICE this year, increasing the total from nine to 14. The Palmyra police department has also signed an agreement with the agency.
“By applying to participate in the 287(g) program, the Marathon County Sheriff is offering to have his department be turned into an arm of ICE’s deportation machine,” the ACLU of Wisconsin said in a statement. “The 287(g) program is notorious for leading to racial profiling, unconstitutional policing, and wrongful detention of US citizens — and it makes communities less safe. People are less likely to seek help and report crime when their local law enforcement is seen as a partner with ICE, and going to the authorities could mean that they, a family member or a friend could be deported.”
Aside from 287(g), the Dodge County sheriff’s office has a contract with the federal government to hold federal detainees at the county jail. That agreement includes holding migrants on behalf of ICE and sometimes transporting them to and from out-of-state facilities such as the controversial ICE processing center in Broadview, Ill.
Voces de la Frontera, an immigrant advocacy group, said the sheriff, Chad Billeb, should have engaged with the community before deciding to sign the agreement.
“Sheriff Chad Billeb, as an elected official, should not have signed this agreement without engaging the community and local leaders in a transparent, democratic process that ensures accountability and information sharing. There is still time to do so and reverse course,” said Christine Neumann-Ortiz, the organization’s executive director.
State Rep. Lee Snodgrass (D-Appleton) listens as Rep. Lindee Rae Brill (R-Sheboygan Falls) testifies about her bill to ban the use of absentee ballot drop boxes. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
At a public hearing of the Wisconsin Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections Tuesday, legislators engaged in an occasionally tense debate over proposed changes to the state election system.
In attendance at the hearing were some of Wisconsin’s most prominent election deniers, including former state Rep. Janel Brandtjen and Peter Bernegger, a self-styled elections investigator who has been convicted of mail fraud Bernegger stood in the back of the hearing room with a group of companions, muttering and complaining about assertions by the election clerks and legislators who testified.
The committee heard testimony on bills that would prohibit the use of absentee ballot drop boxes, change the system for how “indefinitely confined voters” cast ballots, add a provision to state law that makes it a felony if election workers don’t allow election observers to exercise their rights and change the system for how state agencies manage voter registration data.
The most heated part of the hearing came during the discussion of AB 560, authored by Rep. Lindee Rae Brill (R-Sheboygan Falls) and Sen. Andre Jacque (R-New Franken), which outlaws drop boxes. The use of drop boxes has been a politically charged issue since 2020, when right-wing groups started to allege they’re susceptible to fraud and “ballot harvesting” by outfits known as “ballot mills” that allegedly collect illegal ballots and stuff them into drop boxes in order to sway election results. There is no evidence such harvesting happens, though in Wisconsin it is now illegal for anyone other than a voter to return that voter’s absentee ballot.
Since 2020, the drop box issue has been litigated in the court system more than once. In 2022, the then-conservative-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court banned drop boxes. In 2024 the new liberal majority on the Court reversed that decision and drop boxes were allowed in last year’s presidential election. Municipal clerks are able to decide whether or not to use the boxes and the Wisconsin Elections Commission has issued guidance for best practices in securing them, but there are no laws on the books guiding how drop boxes should be managed.
Brill cited incidents in Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Canada in which absentee ballot drop boxes were set on fire, saying those events show the need for the boxes to have security that the state of Wisconsin and its municipalities can’t afford to provide.
Democrats on the committee asked why isolated anecdotes on the west coast have anything to do with the administration of drop boxes in Wisconsin and argued that the reason many Wisconsinites still have doubts about the security of the state’s elections is because Republicans keep pushing the belief that something is amiss.
“I would argue that the No. 1 reason that people may have a lack of confidence in the security of our elections is the discourse that conservative members of the Republican Party continue to put out there about fact versus fiction when it comes to actual election security and fraud,” Rep. Lee Snodgrass (D-Appleton) said.
“I think it’s no secret that the people who are talking about elections being stolen or somehow insecure are people who are grabbing on to conspiracy theories that are not based in fact about actual incidences of election fraud in this country,” Snodgrass continued, citing a 2022 Associated Press survey of election officials about the security of drop boxes.
“I don’t know that I consider that a valid source, Associated Press,” Brill replied. “I don’t always see everything from the Associated Press being absolutely valid, but that might be where you and I find truth in different spots. This might be where we’re finding facts in different locations.”
The criticism of Brill’s bill didn’t just come from the committee’s Democrats. Rep. Scott Krug (R-Nekoosa), who has often worked to broker compromise on election issues, questioned Brill’s choice to put forward the bill despite the near certainty that it will be vetoed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers.
Krug said if Republicans move forward with the bill and it passes both chambers only to be vetoed in early 2026 and then the state is left in the same position — drop boxes are allowed at the discretion of local election clerks without any rules or regulations guiding their use, security or procedures.
“[This bill is] not going to change the Supreme Court’s opinion on drop boxes. It’s not going to change the governor’s opinion on drop boxes,” Krug said. “We still have a problem in our communities, and that’s what I’m trying to get to is, politically, where we are dealing with realities. We know that if this bill leaves this committee, goes to the floor, gets voted on, goes to the Senate, gets through committee, gets voted on in the Senate, goes to the governor’s desk, he vetoes it — then where are we with drop boxes?”
Brill said more than once that she doesn’t think Republicans in the Legislature should be trying to write election-related bills that can be signed into law by Evers.
“I don’t believe that doing election integrity that the governor is going to sign is what Republicans should be doing,” she said. “I think election integrity is something that is a very divided issue, and I think we’re on the right side of this issue. So if the governor was going to say he was going to sign, I mean, I am a believer in God and follower of Jesus Christ, so do I believe that there’s a chance that he would change his mind and sign this into law? Sure, but I’m taking this head-on, because our Republican president believes this is the direction we should be heading.”
A number of election clerks also testified on the bill, questioning the assertion that drop boxes are less secure than U.S. Postal Service mailboxes and insisting that allegations of ballot harvesting are false.
Indefinitely confined voters
Since the 1970s, Wisconsin law has allowed voters to identify themselves as indefinitely confined, meaning they’re unable to leave the house to vote so their local election clerk automatically sends them an absentee ballot for each election.
When the state instituted its voter ID law in 2011, indefinitely confined voters were exempted from its requirements. In 2020, the use of indefinitely confined status increased due to the COVID-19 pandemic, raising concerns among Republicans that the program is susceptible to fraud.
AB 599 would end the indefinitely confined program by Jan. 1, 2029 and replace it with a program that allows voters with disabilities or illnesses to request that absentee ballots be automatically sent to them and provide proof of identification. That request would be valid until the ID’s expiration, at which time the voter will need to start the process again with their new ID.
The bill’s Republican authors, Krug and Rep. Cindy Duchow (R-Town of Delafield), said the proposal was “not a rollback” but a “recalibration” of the system. But Democrats and advocates for people with disabilities argued the state has barriers that can make it difficult for people with disabilities to obtain a state-issued ID, mostly due to challenges with DMV hours and transportation access.
Election clerks testified that the bill pushes a major burden of added work onto the local clerks.
Election observers
AB 426, authored by Rep. Paul Tittl, would penalize any election official who infringes on an election observer’s rights to be within three and eight feet of all aspects of the voting process with up to 90 days imprisonment in county jail and a fine of up to $1,000.
Snodgrass pointed to a recently enacted administrative rule that guides the conduct of election observers and gives election officials authority to manage observer conduct. She said the state should wait to see how the rules work before further tweaking the law.
Voter data
The committee also heard testimony on AB 595, authored by Krug, which would change how the state elections commission works with other agencies to share data such as a voter’s name and state ID number. Republicans have spent years complaining that the state voter registration list is full of errors. Democrats and election administration experts have said aggressive attempts to delete data from the statewide system would result in the disenfranchisement of Wisconsin voters.
The bill would require the Department of Transportation and WEC to enter into a data-sharing agreement to match information in the possession of both agencies.
Under current law, whenever a voter is no longer eligible to vote, for any reason, their file is changed to ineligible on the voter registration list but not removed. This prevents people from being removed in error and allows people to retain their voter registration file if they’re convicted of a felony and then can vote again after serving their sentence.
Krug’s bill would remove people from the list once they’re declared ineligible. If someone is then eligible to vote again, they’d have to re-register.
The bill would also require the Legislative Audit Bureau to conduct an audit every other year of the official voter list to search for registered voters who aren’t U.S. citizens. While Republicans have of fraud by non-citizen who illegally cast ballots, there is little proof it happens at a significant rate.
Krug said that a lot of election skeptics’ complaints have simmered for years without the ability to provide definitive answers about their validity because the data can’t be compiled, so his bill is trying to solve that.
“Is it a widespread problem? No. Does it happen? Yes,” Krug said. “So that’s what I’m trying to figure out, is, what is that in between? What does it look like? … This is not a gotcha. I just want to be able to say, ‘OK, agency gave me data, I can show you that this isn’t a major problem,’ and then I can come up with solutions.”
Chief Inspector Megan Williamson processes absentee ballots at the Hawthorne Library on Madison's East Side. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, a right-wing law firm, complained in a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice last week that the Wisconsin Elections Commission is improperly allowing erroneous data entries to remain in the state voter registration database.
The Elections Commission says WILL is overstating its claims, misunderstanding how the voter database is used and wrong about the requirements of federal law. Meanwhile election administration experts say that WILL is stoking the fears of Wisconsin election conspiracy theorists, which is dangerous because of the Trump administration’s history of election meddling, increasing willingness to prosecute perceived enemies and growing warnings that it will interfere in next year’s midterms.
In its letter to the DOJ, WILL complains that the state voter database includes “thousands of active, registered voters in Wisconsin whose voter registration information does not match the information in their DOT records. And WEC appears to be doing nothing about it.” The letter states that this problem has only worsened in recent years.
State law requires that whenever someone registers to vote, either online or in person with their local municipal clerk, the information they provide is double checked against data kept by the state Department of Transportation — the person’s name, date of birth, address, driver’s license number or Social Security number.
When someone registers online, this double check happens automatically. When someone registers on paper, the data is entered manually by the clerk and checked against the DOT information.
The problem is that human error can creep into data entries, so there are entries in which someone with the full name “Robert” registers to vote under “Bob,” or the characters in a 14-digit driver’s license number are transposed or the clerk makes a typo.
When these mistakes are made, clerks can rectify them on their own, or reache back out to the voter to clarify. The double-checking process is required under a federal law, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA).
“Approximately 5% of the people who registered to vote between January 1 and November 3, 2020, were at least initially non-matches with either DMV or Social Security databases,” a FAQ page on the elections commission website states. “That does not mean these voters are not real Wisconsin citizens. When there is a non-match, a registered voter is never ‘removed’ from the statewide voter database. Neither Wisconsin nor federal law require a match, and Wisconsin law does not permit clerks or the WEC to remove a voter from the list for not matching.”
WEC notes that the HAVA check requirements on the state were litigated in 2008 and that the law does not require Wisconsin’s election authorities to declare people as ineligible voters. But WILL states the agency has been ignoring the problem.
“Critically, WEC has not taken sufficient steps to remedy this situation. In fact, the issue has gotten worse,” the letter states. “WILL understands that this data does not indicate the cause of the discrepancy. And while some of these errors might be minor, the large and growing number of mismatches in the system underscores the need for a comprehensive audit of Wisconsin’s voter registration list, which WEC refuses to perform in violation of its obligations under HAVA. Accordingly, we respectfully request that the U.S. Department of Justice takes this information into account as it investigates this issue and takes all necessary steps to remedy this significant problem.”
Emilee Miklas, a spokesperson for WEC, disputes the WILL analysis.
“The primary objective of the HAVA check process is to identify errors and rectify discrepancies,” she said in an email. “The presence of non-matches discovered in a previous analysis does not necessarily indicate a persistence of errors in the system a year later.”
In a statement, WILL Deputy Counsel Lucas Vebber said the commission FAQ is “not a sufficient explanation” for the data errors.
“Given the thousands of mismatches that are in the current voter registration list, it appears that whatever WEC does, if anything, is woefully insufficient,” Vebber said. “But to determine if WEC is complying with HAVA it is necessary for WEC to describe the complete process in its response.”
Jeff Mandell, general counsel at the progressive voting rights focused firm Law Forward, says the letter is the latest example of WILL repeatedly casting doubt on the voter rolls. He pointed to a 2018 lawsuit in which WILL sued to force WEC to kick thousands of people off the voter registration list. WILL ultimately lost that lawsuit at the state Supreme Court, which was controlled by a conservative majority at the time.
“This is just more fearmongering. WILL has been trying to purge the voter rolls for years,” Mandell says, adding that it’s part of the Republican party’s recent efforts to stir up unfounded concern about non-citizens casting ballots. “They have been upset about the voter rolls and insisting without evidence the voter rolls are wrong. Now they’re jumping onto the latest piece of this and skepticism about proof of citizenship. There is still no evidence, no one has been able to show any incidence of non-citizen voting. If the rolls were as error-filled as WILL’s latest suggestions insist, that wouldn’t be true.”
After the rise of election conspiracy theories in the wake of the 2020 election, WILL distanced itself from the most fevered Republican theories. The firm released a report on the 2020 presidential election, affirming that it was won by Joe Biden while pointing to a number of adjustments and rule changes that could be made to improve Wisconsin’s election administration.
“WILL seems to want it both ways, claiming to not be conspiracy mongers and that they can prove that by saying Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and yet still play footsie with conspiracy mongers,” Mandell says. “They do that by filing nonsense lawsuits over and over and over … and this is another example.”
Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin, says that the only effect of going to DOJ with these complaints is raising the likelihood that the results of the 2026 midterms will be questioned — by Trump or his supporters.
“All they’re doing is providing a little ammo to the Trumpers and the people that are going to question the outcome of the 2026 election,” Heck says. “And so they’re just planting more seeds of doubt in people’s minds, at least the people that would be doubting it anyway.”
Heck also points out that an easy solution to WILL’s complaint would be the establishment of automatic voter registration in Wisconsin, which would automatically register someone to vote when they obtain a driver’s license or state ID from the DOT and cut out WEC’s role as the middleman. But, he says, WILL and Republicans do not support that.
Despite the DOJ’s potential threat to interfere in election administration, Vebber said in his statement the firm went to the DOJ because it is the agency responsible for enforcing HAVA.
“The U.S. Department of Justice has the express authority to enforce each state’s compliance with HAVA,” Vebber said. “WILL is concerned that WEC is violating HAVA. As a result, the correct agency to complain to is USDOJ. As stated above, in our letter to the U.S Department of Justice we suggested [eight] specific follow-up questions on this issue. WEC does not need to wait for the USDOJ to answer these questions. In the interests of transparency, we would ask WEC to voluntarily answer them.”
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