After months of Democratic anxiety and planning by election officials in case the Trump administration interfered with voters casting their ballots or officials counting them, Tuesday’s election in Wisconsin went off without a hitch. 

The state’s prominent election deniers, including former state Rep. Janel Brandtjen, left Milwaukee’s central count facility on Tuesday long before the city was finished counting as it became clear that Democrats had swept into trifecta control of state government, even before Milwaukee made its final vote tally. The Wisconsin Elections Commission announced Wednesday that the election was held with only minor glitches at the more than 3,600 polling sites across the state. 

“This election is a testament to months of preparation and the professionalism of Wisconsin’s election officials,” Meagan Wolfe, the administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said in a statement. “Election officials stepped up to serve their communities and came together to run a fair, safe, and transparent election. Their hard work was evident every step of the way.”

A Trump administration official told CNN that Tuesday’s results were “too big to rig,” implying that a closer result could have led to 2020-style interference. Ahead of the election, the Trump administration had sued Wisconsin for access to the private information included in the state’s voter registration database. In other states over the past few years, federal agents had seized ballots and arrested people accused of registering to vote as non-citizens. 

Jeff Mandell, general counsel of the voting rights focused firm Law Forward, said that lawyers and advocates spent two years preparing and planning for the threat of election meddling by Trump. 

“I think that it shows how well and thoroughly the pro-democracy community had thought through all of the possibilities and prepared,” he told the Examiner. “You know, some of it might be that we thought of things, and just by thinking about them and talking about them and preparing, we foreclosed the administration doing those things. The other reality is that it looks like the will of the voters was so strong that those kinds of shenanigans were not going to move the needle, and it’s possible that the administration recognized that.” 

Trump has often questioned the results of elections and the fact that his administration did not undertake any “shenanigans” doesn’t mean that the risk of them doing so was zero. 

“The fact that it didn’t happen is something that we should all be celebrating as a democracy matter,” Mandell said. “This is good, but that doesn’t mean that there was no possibility it would happen, and it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be taking it seriously, and it doesn’t mean that it’s not to the benefit, long-term, for our democracy that we prepared.” 

Ann Jacobs, a Democrat on the elections commission, said that pro-democracy organizations did a good job communicating their plans and discussions and the possible risks while not discouraging turnout. 

“While people talked about the fears that they had about something like that happening, I think there was a lot of thoughtfulness about how to talk to people about it,” Jacobs told the Wisconsin Examiner. “So it didn’t depress turnout. It didn’t convince people not to go vote, and that was a conversation I was having with lots of people at the time, and I think is a good reminder of the importance of being level-headed and keeping in mind that while there are risks of bad things happening, the important part about it is planning and reassurance.” 

Proposed democracy and voting reforms 

With the election now in the rearview mirror and Democrats in Wisconsin preparing for the start of the legislative session in January, among the issues competing for priority attention are reforms to Wisconsin’s democracy and voting system after 15 years of GOP control in which campaign finance laws were eased, restrictions on voting were advanced and the maps were skewed to benefit Republicans. 

In a statement celebrating Democrats winning control of Wisconsin’s government, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said it’s important they use that power to undertake some structural reforms. 

“In the face of grave, ongoing threats to our democracy, now is not the time for Democrats to sit on the sidelines. Voters are demanding that their leaders take bold action to meet the moment, and now is the time to use the power entrusted to elected leaders to level the playing field and protect the voting power of the American people,” Holder said. 

Jacobs said she’s “so excited about the idea of being able to have those discussions with the Legislature,” and that she has a list of “straightforward” proposals for making voting easier. 

First on the list,  she said, is finally passing a bill that would allow election officials to begin processing absentee ballots on the Monday before an election. She also said that she understands a large majority of Democratic voters support some level of voter ID requirements, but that Wisconsin does not have to have the strictest ID law in the nation. To make voting less burdensome, she suggested helping college students get IDs for voting without so much “rigmarole.” Current law requires that student IDs used to vote have a signature, an expiration date and an issuance date, which many do not.

Also on Jacobs’ list are expanding the period for early in-person absentee voting again. Republicans limited it to just two weeks under former Gov. Scott Walker. She added that WEC should be able to provide grants to smaller communities without the manpower or money to pay to hold in-person early voting.

“There’s a lot of things we can do that would make voting better, that isn’t a huge lift, that we could do right away. I would love to see some of these things happen promptly,” she said. 

Mandell named some of the same priorities as Jacobs while also suggesting Democrats could take bolder action to make the state’s democracy stronger. 

“I think there’s a lot of room in this state and a lot of need in this state to strengthen our democracy and make it more robust, and some of that is about addressing limits and constraints that were improperly put on our democracy during the gerrymander period, and some of that is just updating and bringing new thinking and new ideas, and I think there’s room for both of those things,” he said. 

He said Democrats should advance a nonpartisan, independent system for drawing congressional and legislative maps — a proposal that is likely going to put elected Democrats squarely between their voters, who spent years fighting for fair maps against the Republican gerrymander, and the national Democratic party, which has been in a federal tit-for-tat with Republicans on a series of mid-decade redistricting efforts. 

Ahead of the election, Wisconsin Democrats’ potential trifecta control of both houses of the Legislature and the governor’s office was often brought up in national discussions of states where Democrats could draw new maps to eke out a few more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. 

Mandell noted that Law Forward’s lawsuit against the congressional maps is still pending at the state Supreme Court. He also suggested that the best way to enact a new map-drawing process is through a constitutional amendment, which would have to pass in two legislative sessions before going to voters. That means in order to be enacted by the time the current maps expire in 2030, that process needs to start now. 

“I do understand that there may well be pressure from D.C. and from others that maybe we should be careful to lock Wisconsin in on congressional maps,” Mandell said. “We’ve seen states around the country that have tried to walk away from some of their independent redistricting commitments in response to the White House’s unprecedented effort at mid-decade opportunistic redistricting in red states, and that’s something that’s at least worth considering.” 

 “But,” he added, “fundamentally gerrymandering is bad for voters, and that’s sort of the original sin of gerrymandering. It’s bad for voters. It undermines the value of the right to vote. So I’m not a political campaign consultant, and it’s harder for me to get into the details because I’m not as well steeped in them about the tit-for-tat of state here and state there. But you know we’re in this for voters, and gerrymandering is bad for voters. So I think we should stop gerrymandering.”

On Thursday, Sens. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) and Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit) expressed a commitment to a fair maps process. 

“​​Having fair maps that make sure that the party that gets the most votes gets control is of the utmost importance to me, and I think to Wisconsinites, because we never want to be in a situation again where right-wing politicians essentially silence the voters and insulate themselves from any political consequence,” Roys told the Examiner. “Because we have seen how devastating that is for Wisconsin: The real harm that has been caused to our public education system, the way it’s caused our property taxes to skyrocket, the harm to farmers and small businesses. You know, it has been really devastating to have a Legislature that felt like it could do whatever it wanted, no matter how extreme and how opposed the majority of Wisconsinites were to what they were doing.”

Spreitzer echoed Mandell’s call for the maps to be handled through the constitutional amendment process and added that he hoped Tuesday’s landslide win for Democrats would discourage more mid-decade redistricting.

“The only way to get ourselves fully out of the equation is to amend the constitution, and the only way to keep a future Legislature of either party from changing it when they happen to find themselves in power after the census is to put it in the constitution,” he told the Examiner. “And we are in a position now where if we initiate a constitutional amendment this session and then hold our majorities in 2028, we could actually get a constitutional amendment on the ballot ahead of the 2030 census, and so that is going to be my goal to figure out how to do that.”

Mandell also said campaign finance reform should be a priority, pointing to the massive amounts of money that flowed into this year’s race for governor and recent campaigns for the state Supreme Court.

“When we have a governor’s race that just shattered all records, it feels like ordinary Wisconsinites are left out of this process, or left out in the sense of influence, but then sort of bear the consequences under the deluge of negative ads and mail that we all experience every election cycle,” he said. “And so I think it would be a good thing for the Legislature to take a really careful look and think about what kinds of campaign finance do we want in this state.”

Spreitzer and Roys said that voting and structural reforms are important, but with campaign promises on affordability to answer to and a state budget that will need to be passed, the timeline is up in the air. 

“Obviously, our first priority as Democrats is to restore faith in democracy by delivering for people on affordability and the economy,” Roys said. “I think that voters delivered a clear rejection of the Trump agenda, both the high costs, but also the corruption and assaults on democracy and authoritarianism. So I feel confident that my colleagues and I are going to be able to deliver for people on affordability and make a tangible difference in people’s lives and pocketbooks, and that’s going to be our very first priority to tackle in January.”

“At the same time,” she added. “I think voters are really hungry for a government that is actually responsive — and, I would say, puts what people need rather than special interests and big corporations first. So pro-democracy reforms are absolutely on the agenda. Everything from getting rid of the Walker and Vos era voter suppression laws, tackling corruption with campaign finance reform and good government measures, things that enhance the ability of people to influence their government, like national popular vote and voting rights measures, and things like fair maps.” 

Roys was the co-author of a 2023 bill that would add Wisconsin to the national popular vote interstate compact, an agreement among a number of states that have pledged to assign their Electoral College votes to the winner of the national popular vote. Since 2006, 19 states have signed on to the agreement, totaling 222 of the 270 Electoral College votes a candidate needs to win the presidency. 

On Tuesday, Democrats took trifecta control of state governments in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Nevada. If all five states vote to join, that pushes the agreement to 283 Electoral College votes. 

Roys said that on Wednesday she posted online asking constituents what they want her to start working on in the new session and “hundreds” of comments and direct messages were pushing for Wisconsin to join the agreement.  

Spreitzer, who has been one of the leading Democrats on voting issues during his time in both the Assembly and Senate, said that he thinks the Legislature can tackle “low-hanging fruit” such as the Monday processing bill early in the session and then return to the broader reforms next fall after the budget is signed.

“The two years goes very quick, and we’re going to have to do a lot,” Spreitzer said. “Obviously, that’s why we’ve been trying to prepare and get bills ready and have caucus conversations on a lot of these topics”

With so many new members, he added, it takes time to get everyone on the same page.  

“But I think if I had to guess,” he said, “some of the easier things that are already fully drafted, like Monday processing, we could probably do in the first 100 days …  and then some of the more complicated, more system change kinds of things probably get more attention in the fall, post budget.”

Alabama Republicans had hoped Rep. Shomari Figures would deliver a concession speech on Tuesday night after the state legislature redrew his district to be more GOP-friendly. 

Instead, the Democrat declared victory — winning nearly 54% of the vote.

“We know what happened with this district,” Figures told supporters as he invoked the Republican gerrymander. “But we had a job to do. And so we put our hands to the plow and we did not look backwards.”

The Republican project to gerrymander congressional districts across the country, initiated by President Donald Trump more than a year ago, failed to deliver significant wins for the party — and, in North Carolina at least, even worked against it. Amid a nationwide blue tsunami and voter backlash in Southern states that split apart districts where a majority of residents are Black, Democrats won seats that Republicans redrew to give themselves an advantage.

States typically draw new maps every 10 years after the census. But Trump’s redistricting push, which kicked off in Texas in the summer of 2025, triggered a nationwide rush as Republican and Democratic states battled to set the electoral landscape ahead of this week’s midterms.

A late April decision from the U.S. Supreme Court set off another round of gerrymanders. The court sharply curtailed federal protections against racial gerrymandering, clearing the way for Southern states to break apart majority-Black districts that often elect Democrats.

Republicans had once hoped mid-decade redistricting would create a buffer against the losses the president’s party traditionally suffers in midterm elections. Perhaps, the thinking among Republicans went in 2025, the party could even maintain a narrow majority with the help of the gerrymandered districts.

It didn’t turn out that way, as the GOP’s effort proved woefully insufficient against the strength of the Democratic vote. 

As of Thursday afternoon, Democrats had won 247 House seats, far above the 218 needed for a majority, while Republicans had won 153, according to The Associated Press. Thirty-five races had yet to be called.

“Let this be a lesson: never capitulate, never acquiesce to those who would use power for improper purposes,” Eric Holder, a former U.S. attorney general under President Barack Obama and the chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said in a statement.

Gains were expected

New Republican maps could have netted the party as many as 15 seats, according to estimates from the nonpartisan Cook Political Report with Amy Walter. GOP-controlled state legislatures advanced news maps in Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina and Tennessee, in addition to Alabama and Texas.

In response, Democrats successfully gerrymandered a single state, California, where the party picked up five seats it had targeted. Voters approved a Democratic gerrymander in Virginia, but the state Supreme Court struck down the measure. A state court also imposed a Democratic-leaning district in Utah.

In states where Republicans targeted Democratic seats for gerrymandering, the party made no net gains, according to a Wednesday memo from the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. 

“This is close to an extinction-level event for Republicans in many parts of the country,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, said at a news conference Wednesday as he broadly described his party’s losses.

GOP efforts fail

DeSantis signed a new Florida map aimed at securing four new GOP seats into law in May. Democrats now appear likely to retain all four.

The redistricting failure was starkest in North Carolina, where Republicans are on track to lose six seats. 

In the state’s 1st Congressional District, Democratic Rep. Don Davis won reelection Tuesday with just over 50% of the vote, overcoming a GOP gerrymander in what was the most expensive U.S. House race in history.

In Rocky Mount, a city of about 55,000 in North Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, Letrice Felton voted for the first time on Tuesday. The 50-year-old said she cast a ballot because of rising costs and poverty within the city. More than 60% of the city’s residents are Black and roughly 1 in 5 residents live in poverty, nearly double the national rate.

“To see people out in Rocky Mount, walking with beds of carts, with clothes and stuff,” Felton said. “It’s very sad. And they need help, and it’s like, there’s no resources here for it.”

Jislem Rodriguez, 18, voted for the first time Tuesday at Edgecombe Community College in Rocky Mount. Rodriguez said she is concerned about the economy.

“Money isn’t really lasting like it used to,” she said. 

In Texas, state lawmakers sought to secure five additional seats for Republicans. The party instead flipped only a single newly gerrymandered district and suffered a net loss of one seat.

When Republicans redrew most of the targeted districts, they assumed Latino voters would continue backing GOP candidates, Brandon Rottinghaus, a professor of political science at the University of Houston, said in an interview.

A significant share of Latino voters instead cast ballots for Democrats. Nineteen percent of Latino voters in Texas who said they voted for Trump in 2024 voted for Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic candidate for governor, in 2026, according to CNN voter polls (poll results weren’t available for specific House races).

“On paper, these districts are still Republican but the trend has been in general toward the Republicans and the Latino vote — which these are premised on — has shifted back to the Democrats,” Rottinghaus said.

Black voter backlash

The NAACP reported strong turnout among Black voters on Tuesday. Eighty-one percent of Black voters supported Democrats in the election, up from 70% in 2024 and 73% in 2022, according to exit poll data analyzed by NPR.

Janai Nelson, president and director-counsel of the Legal Defense Fund, a legal advocacy group focused on racial justice, said in a statement that Black turnout was especially pronounced in states that redrew maps following the Supreme Court’s decision on racial gerrymandering — Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Tennessee.

In the case, Louisiana v. Callais, the court’s conservative majority significantly limited the consideration of race when drawing legislative maps. Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act had previously limited states from using maps that diluted the voting power of minority citizens.

“Black and brown voters made a statement last night,” Nelson said. “Despite relentless attempts to silence their voices and stifle their power, voters of color turned out in extraordinary numbers.”

For example, Alabama voter turnout was nearly 44%, up from nearly 39% in 2022. In Montgomery County, part of Figures’ gerrymandered district, turnout among Democratic voters rose 39% over 2022.

“I’m at a loss for words, because we had the deck stacked against us,” Figures said during his victory speech.

Future maps?

The prospects of additional gerrymanders before the 2028 election are mixed.

Maryland voters approved a measure that would ease the way for the blue state to pass a Democratic gerrymander. Democratic Gov. Wes Moore said Wednesday that he wants new maps after the redistricting measure, called Question 3, passed with 60% of the vote.

“Donald Trump is not done. He has already been very clear about his intention to go after additional states,” Moore told reporters Wednesday.

The White House didn’t respond to questions about Trump’s support for future GOP redistricting efforts.

At least some Republicans have expressed reservations about pursuing new maps after such a sharp rebuke by voters. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, announced Wednesday that he wouldn’t call the state legislature into special session to pass new maps before the Democratic governor-elect, Keisha Lance Bottoms, takes office in January.

Kemp had previously called a special session earlier this year, but lawmakers opted not to advance redistricting legislation.

“The voters of our state have spoken,” Kemp said in a statement.

Gerrymandering critics have called for a national ban on the practice — or at the very least, a ban on the mid-decade redraws.

Common Cause, a nonpartisan watchdog that opposes gerrymandering, said the failure of Trump’s redistricting push sets the stage for federal reform.

“At the end of the day, the American people this time around, they rejected the attempts to rig the midterms through gerrymandering,” Common Cause president and CEO Virginia Kase Solomón told reporters on Wednesday.

In Missouri, voters rejected a gerrymander passed by the GOP-controlled state legislature — called the Missouri First map — that targeted a seat in Kansas City held by longtime Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver. 

The measure failed resoundingly, 62% to 38%. The map wasn’t in effect for the 2026 election because of a state Supreme Court decision, but voter approval would have implemented it for the 2028 election.

“In the future, I hope that the people of Missouri will be served by a Congressional map like the Missouri First map that better represents our state,” Rick Brattin, Cleaver’s Republican opponent, said in a statement that attacked the Missouri Supreme Court for issuing a decision “to benefit Democrats” by blocking the map.

Cleaver, who won reelection with 69% of the vote, said in his own statement that his campaign overcame major hurdles, including the gerrymandered map, which was in place for the primary election and part of the general election.

“As I’ve always said from the beginning,” Cleaver said, “the will of the people always prevails in the end.”

Stateline’s Elisha Brown contributed reporting.