Voters make selections at their voting booths inside an early voting site on Oct. 17, 2024 in Hendersonville, North Carolina. (Photo by Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — As an exceedingly bitter, tight and dark campaign for the presidency moves into its last moments, apprehensive election officials and experts warn Election Day is only the first step.

The closing of the polls and end of mail-in voting kick off a nearly three-month process before the next president of the United States is sworn in on Inauguration Day in January. New guardrails were enacted by Congress in 2022 to more fully protect the presidential transition, following the Jan. 6, 2021 mob attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters and a failed scheme to install fake electors.

But even before that shift to a new chief executive begins, a presidential victor is unlikely to be announced election night or even the following day.

It’s a result that will possibly take days to determine, given tight margins expected in seven swing states. Officials needed four days to count all the votes to determine President Joe Biden the victor of the 2020 presidential election.

In states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the law does not allow that process to begin for millions of mail-in ballots until Election Day. Other states allow pre-processing of ballots.

Trey Grayson, Kentucky’s former Republican secretary of state, said ballot authentication could be on different timelines across the country after voting ends on Election Day.

“We have 50 states, plus D.C., that pretty much all do it differently,” Grayson, who served as president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, told reporters Friday on a call of bipartisan former state election officials who are working to explain the process to the public.

It could mean “in a very close election that we don’t know on election night who the president is or who controls the House or the Senate, but we should feel confident over the next couple of days, as we work through that, that we’re going to get there,” he said.

Lawsuits and potential recounts 

Those delays, which former President Donald Trump seized on to spread the baseless lie that the election was stolen from him, are expected again in November, especially as all eyes will be on the battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Additionally, there already are hundreds of pre-election lawsuits, mainly filed by Republicans, ranging from election integrity challenges to accusations of noncitizens allowed to vote in federal elections — something that rarely happens and is already illegal. The legal challenges could further spark delays.

“We will not have a winner on election night most likely and so we need to be able to prepare the public for this,” said Virginia Kase Solomón, the president and CEO of the democracy watchdog group Common Cause, during a Tuesday briefing.

She added that her organization will focus on combating misinformation and disinformation on election night and beyond.

“There is the potential that somebody could claim the win before … all of the votes have been counted,” she said.

In the early morning hours after Election Day in 2020, before results from key states were determined, Trump falsely claimed he won in an address at the White House.  

On top of that, experts say this year could see election denial erupting in countless courtrooms and meeting rooms in localities and the states, as well as across social media, if doubts are sown about the results.

Recounts could also delay an official election result, and the laws vary from state to state.

For example, in Pennsylvania, if a candidate demands a recount, three voters from each of the over 9,000 precincts have to petition for a recount.

“We’ve never seen that happen actually in Pennsylvania,” Kathy Boockvar, the commonwealth’s former Democratic secretary of state, said on Friday’s call with reporters.

An automatic statewide recount is triggered in Pennsylvania if there’s a difference of a half percent of all votes cast for the winner and loser. The final recount results, by law, are due to the secretary of state by Nov. 26, and results would be announced on Nov. 27, Boockvar said.

The margin in Pennsylvania’s 2020 results for the presidential election was between 1.1% and 1.2%, not enough to trigger the automatic recount, Boockvar said.

Taking out the shrubs

State election officials have been preparing for the past year to train poll workers to not only run the voting booths but for possible violence — a precaution put in place after the 2020 election — and have beefed up security around polling locations.

On Friday, Trump posted on X that the election “will be under the closest professional scrutiny and, WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again.”

A reporter asked Grayson about the possibility of aggression from poll watchers. The Republican National Committee announced in April a “historic move to safeguard the integrity of the electoral process,” establishing party-led trainings for poll watchers.

Poll watchers are not a new concept, and Grayson said clear “safeguards” are in place.

“If you’re intimidating, you’re gone. There’s clear laws in every state on that,” he said.

Celestine Jeffreys, the city clerk in Green Bay, Wisconsin, said during a Wednesday roundtable with election workers that the city has an Election Day protocol in place that includes everything from blocking off streets to City Hall to getting rid of shrubbery.

“We have actually removed bushes in front of City Hall” to ensure no one can be concealed behind them, she said. In the second assassination attempt on Trump earlier this year, a gunman hid in bushes outside Trump’s private golf course.

New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver said during a Tuesday briefing she is focused on the physical safety of election officials.

During the event with the National Association of Secretaries of State, she said such safety is not only a priority during voting but when officials move to certify the state’s election results in December.

“We have all been spending a lot more time on physical security and making sure that our election officials at all levels are more physically secure this year,” Toulouse Oliver said. “And of course, you know when our electors meet in our states, you know, ensuring for the physical security of that process and those individuals as well.”

On Dec. 17, each state’s electors will meet to vote for the president and vice president. Congress will vote to certify the results on Jan. 6.

“We are thinking a lot more about this in 2024 than we did in 2020, but I think that each one of us… have a playbook in mind for how to handle any unanticipated eventualities in the certification process,” she said.

It’s a security precaution that the U.S. Secret Service is also taking.

For the first time, Congress’ certification of the Electoral College on Jan. 6 has been designated a National Special Security Event, something that is usually reserved for Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.

The 2020 experience

In 2020, The Associated Press did not call the presidential election for Biden until 11:26 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 7 — roughly three-and-a-half days after polls closed. The AP, as well as other media organizations, project election winners after local officials make initial tabulations public.

Those tallies are then canvassed, audited and certified, according to each state’s legal timeline. Recounts may also extend the timeline before final certification.

The vote totals reported in Pennsylvania — a state that carried 20 Electoral College votes in 2020 — put Biden over the top for the 270 needed to win the presidency.

Trump refused to concede the race, and instead promised to take his fight to court.

For the next two months, Trump and his surrogates filed just over 60 lawsuits challenging the results in numerous states. Ultimately none of the judges found evidence of widespread voter fraud.

The next step was for Congress to count each state’s certified slate of electors, which by law, it must do on the Jan. 6 following a presidential election.

However, in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6, Trump and his private lawyers worked to replace legitimate slates of electors with fake ones, according to hundreds of pages of records compiled by a special congressional investigation, and by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Trump pressured then-Vice President Mike Pence to block ratification of the Electoral College’s vote at the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress, because the vice president’s role in the certification of electoral votes was not exactly clear in the Electoral Count Act of 1887.

Pence ultimately refused.

Thousands of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 following a “Stop the Steal” rally at The Ellipse park, south of the White House, where Trump told the crowd “We will never concede.”

The mob assaulted police officers, broke windows to climb inside and hurled violent threats aimed at elected officials, including the desire to “hang” Pence. More than 1,500 defendants have been charged by the Department of Justice.

Congress stopped its process of reviewing the state electors in the 2 p.m. Eastern hour as police ushered the lawmakers to safety. The joint session resumed at roughly 11:30 p.m., and Pence called the majority of electoral votes for Biden at nearly 4 a.m. on Jan. 7.

New law on presidential transition

To deter another Jan. 6 insurrection, Congress passed the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transitional Improvement Act of 2022 as part of a massive appropriations bill.

The Electoral Count Reform Act codifies into law that the vice president, who also serves as the president of the U.S. Senate, only ceremoniously reads aloud a roll call of the votes.

Most notably, the provision raises the threshold for lawmakers to make an objection to electors. Previously, only one U.S. House representative and one U.S. senator would need to make an objection to an elector or slate of electors.

But under the new law, it would take one-fifth of members to lodge an objection and under very specific standards — 87 House members and 20 senators.

The Electoral Count Reform Act also identifies that each state’s governor is the official responsible for submitting the state’s official document that identifies the state’s appointed electors, and says that Congress cannot accept that document from any official besides the governor, unless otherwise specified by the state’s law.

Trump and his allies tried to replace legitimate slates of electors in several states with fake electors who would cast ballots for Trump.

The Presidential Transitional Improvement Act provides candidates with funding and resources for transitional planning, even if a candidate has not conceded after the election.

There are already issues with the transition of power. The top Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, sent a Wednesday letter to Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, urging them to sign documents to ensure a peaceful transition of power.

“With fewer than three weeks left until an election in which the American people will select a new President of the United States, I urge you to put the public’s interest in maintaining a properly functioning government above any personal financial or political interests you may perceive in boycotting the official transition law and process,” Raskin wrote.

Denial expected at all levels of government

Experts warn the effort to delay certification of the vote is largely being fought at the local and state levels, and that several groups are gearing up to sow doubt in the election outcome.

Devin Burghart, president of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, said on a press call Wednesday that since 2020, “election denial has shifted away from the capital to county election commission meetings, courtrooms, cyber symposiums and countless conspiracies in preparation for a repeat this November.”

“This time, the baseless claim that undocumented immigrants are somehow swamping the polls has fueled the ‘big lie’ machine,” Burghart said.

Kim Wyman, the former Washington state secretary of state, said the noncitizen topic is not new.

In two high-profile cases, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Republican-led efforts in Alabama and Virginia to purge voter rolls after alleging thousands of noncitizens were registered to vote. Both states were ordered to stop the programs and reinstate voters – though Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin promised Friday to appeal and even escalate to the Supreme Court.

In Georgia, the state’s Supreme Court delayed new rules until after this election that would have required three poll workers at every precinct to count ballots by hand once the polls closed — essentially delaying unofficial election results.

More than 165 electoral process lawsuits across 37 states have been filed by both parties since 2023 leading up to the 2024 presidential election, according to a survey by Bloomberg of pre-election cases. The journalists found that more than half the cases have been filed in swing states, and challenge almost every facet of the voting process, from absentee voting, to voter roll management, voter eligibility and vote certification.

Republican and conservative groups have filed roughly 55% of the lawsuits, mostly aimed at narrowing who can vote, and overall most of the cases were filed in August and September, according to the analysis.

Courts threw out dozens of lawsuits claiming voter fraud in 2020.

Mai Ratakonda, senior counsel at States United Democracy Center, said anti-democracy groups have used litigation “to legitimize their efforts to sow doubt in our election system.”

“We’ve unfortunately continued to see this trend of filing lawsuits to bolster and legitimize narratives that our elections are insecure and laying the groundwork to contest results later,” Ratakonda told reporters on a press call Wednesday hosted by the organization, whose stated mission is to protect nonpartisan election administration.

Timeline of key presidential election dates

• Nov. 5, 2024—Election Day
  The voters in each state choose electors to serve in the Electoral College.
• By Dec. 11, 2024—Electors appointed
  The executive of each state signs the Certificate of Ascertainment to appoint the electors chosen in the general election.
• Dec. 17, 2024—Electors vote
  The electors in each state meet to select the president and vice president of the United States.
• Jan. 6, 2025—Congress counts the vote
  Congress meets in joint session to count the electoral votes.
• Jan. 20, 2025—Inauguration Day
  The president-elect is sworn in as president of the United States.

Source: The National Archives and Records Administration

Correction: This report has been updated to reflect that former Washington state Secretary of State Kim Wyman made the comment that noncitizen voting has been illegal at the federal level since 1996.

Lisa Posthumus Lyons, the Republican clerk for Kent County, Mich., has to remind voters that elections are run by people and mistakes can occur; it doesn’t mean there’s a conspiracy. In the final days of the election, local election officials are busy dispelling rumors and misinformation. (Matt Vasilogambros/Stateline)

In the final days of the presidential election, lies about noncitizens voting, the vulnerability of mail-in ballots and the security of voting machines are spreading widely over social media.

Fanned by former President Donald Trump and notable allies such as tech tycoon Elon Musk, election disinformation is warping voters’ faith in the integrity of the democratic process, polls show, and setting the stage once again for potential public unrest if the Republican nominee fails to win the presidency. At the same time, federal officials are investigating ongoing Russian interference through social media and shadow disinformation campaigns.

The “firehose” of disinformation is working as intended, said Pamela Smith, president and CEO of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan group that advocates for responsible use of technology in elections.

“This issue is designed to sow general distrust,” she said. “Your best trusted source is not your friend’s cousin’s uncle that you saw on Twitter. It’s your local election official. Don’t repeat it. Check it instead.”

With early voting ongoing, local officials such as Travis Doss in Augusta, Georgia, say they are fighting a losing battle against fast-moving social media rumors.

Doss, the executive director of the Richmond County Board of Elections, said many voters in his county do not believe absentee ballots are counted properly. Many think election officials are choosing which ballots to count based on the neighborhood from where they’re sent, or that voting machines are easily hacked.

In recent weeks, Doss himself heard a rumor that a local preacher told his entire congregation to register to vote again because the preacher had heard — falsely — that everyone had been removed from the voter registration rolls.

“Somebody hears something and then they tell people, and it’s the worst game of telephone tag there ever is,” Doss said. “It’s so hard to correct all the misinformation because there’s so many things out there that we don’t even know about.”

As early voting began in mid-October in Georgia, Doss had to remind some voters that poll workers would observe the polling place and election equipment all day, ensuring no one tampered with the process. He noted that the tabulation machines are not connected to the internet, nor are they being hacked. He also had to emphasize that the ballot drop boxes were sealed and secure.

The amount of disinformation spreading throughout the country is immense.

College students in Wisconsin have been targeted with text messages meant to intimidate them into not voting, even when they’re eligible. The Michigan State Police had to correct rumors that people were unlawfully tampering with voting machines in one precinct, when it was actually two clerk’s office employees testing the ballot tabulating devices. Scammers posing as election officials have been calling Michigan voters claiming they must provide their credit card and Social Security numbers to vote early.

“In order to protect our democracy, we must address the mis- and disinformation that is spreading like wildfire,” said Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP.

Ongoing lies

Musk, the owner of the social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter), has gorged on a smorgasbord of common election conspiracy theories. At a recent Trump rally in Pennsylvania, he falsely insinuated that voting machines designed by Dominion Voting Systems could steal this election from Trump. Dominion successfully sued Fox News and others for promoting that lie after the 2020 election.

Last month, Musk posted that Democrats are expediting citizenship for immigrants living in the country illegally so the party could get a permanent electoral advantage. Journalists have thoroughly debunked his claim. Trying to stir up anti-immigrant sentiment to motivate voters to the polls, Trump and his allies have for months repeated the lie that noncitizens are voting in droves.

Musk shared a bogus claim about widespread voter fraud in a Wisconsin county in the 2020 election. The targeted jurisdiction, Henrico County, posted a thread on X correcting Musk’s assertions with data. Musk also amplified a claim that Michigan’s voter rolls were packed with inactive voters and ripe for fraud. Top state officials had to rebut those false claims too.

“The most dangerous and effective thing is that retweet button,” said Jay Young, senior director of voting and democracy at Common Cause, a national voting rights group that has a social media monitoring program tracking online disinformation.

Beyond Musk’s posts, disinformation has thrived on X.

The American Sunlight Project, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that fights misleading information and is run by the former head of a U.S. Department of Homeland Security disinformation team, released a report this month on the scope of the problem. The report found that nearly 1,200 likely automated accounts on X are spreading Russian propaganda and pro-Trump disinformation about the presidential election.

American spy agencies believe the Kremlin is actively pushing election disinformation this year.

And nearly half the Republican candidates running for top state offices or Congress have questioned the integrity of this year’s election, primarily through social media, according to an analysis by The Washington Post. Many of the candidates’ posts include falsehoods.

Sustained lies about election integrity have consequences: State and local election officials have been bombarded by threats and harassment this year, and confidence in elections has plummeted.

According to an October NPR/PBS News/Marist poll, more than 3 in 4 Americans remain confident or very confident that state and local agencies will carry out a fair and accurate election.

Still, 58% of Americans say they are concerned or very concerned that voter fraud will occur this year. Among Republicans polled, 86% are concerned about fraud, while 55% of independents and 33% of Democrats have a similar fear.

How officials respond

Over the past four years of going to town hall meetings and other community events throughout Oconto County, Wisconsin, on the western shore of Green Bay, County Clerk Kim Pytleski has repeatedly heard from voters who say that because their preferred candidate did not win in 2020, there must be something wrong with the electoral process.

Presented with conspiracy theories, Pytleski, a Republican, doesn’t just tell voters they’re wrong; she asks where the voter got that information, and then she walks them through the specific concern with step-by-step details about the voting process.

One concern that often comes up: the volume of absentee ballot applications voters receive in the mail. Many residents think the applications are actual ballots that can be marked and returned.

Voters will claim if there were that many ballots being sent, there must be election fraud, she said. Pytleski has had to explain that those were applications, and they were coming from political parties and other groups. Voters can only receive one ballot from her office, she will tell them.

“And when we’ve explained that, for the most part, people are like, ‘OK, that makes sense. I get that,’” she said during an interview in August.

Touching her right hand to her heart and raising her hand to the sky, Pytleski said she’s a dedicated member of the Republican Party, like most of the county’s voters. But it has been challenging for her to go to those meetings and feel voters’ suspicion. She’s even been called a liar to her face.

“I’m walking into a room that feels not so super-friendly, and I have to remind them that this is the girl that rode the bus route with your children, this is the girl who grew up in that house down the road,” she said. “My name means something to me, so I would never do anything to jeopardize that or the actual process.”

Misinformation can arise after local election offices err in some way, whether it was a misprint on a ballot, an electrical power outage at a polling place or something else.

Lisa Posthumus Lyons, the Republican clerk for Kent County, Michigan, regularly reminds voters that elections are run by humans and humans make mistakes, but that there are checks and balances in place to ensure elections remain secure and transparent, she said.

On her desk, a decorative sign reminds her to “Serve the Lord with Gladness.” She said she hopes voters will share her optimism and faith in the system.

“Their rights are going to be protected, their votes are going to be counted, the election is going to be accurate and fair, and we’re going to have a good day,” she said. “Anything that arises, we’ll be ready for it. It’s as simple as that.”

Beyond listening to local election officials, voters can rely on election protection hotlines run by experts and pro-democracy advocates, said Damon Hewitt, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a national legal advocacy group.

The committee is one of many voting rights groups in a coalition that is leading the 866-OUR-VOTE hotline this election season. The groups run similar hotlines for people who speak Spanish, Arabic and around 10 Asian languages.

With all the hotlines, Hewitt said, voters can call with questions or concerns about their access or about election procedures.

“This is something that we attend to not just when there’s a problem, but it’s something that we try to get ahead of,” he said. “We’re there to help guide them every step of the way.”

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According to the candidates running for Wisconsin’s 30th Senate District, some of the top issues this year for northeastern Wisconsin voters are rising living costs and politicians’ inability to get along with their colleagues across the aisle.

Both Jim Rafter, a Republican and Allouez village president, and Jamie Wall, a business consultant and third-time Democratic candidate, are wearing bipartisanship as a badge of honor in their respective campaigns. It’s a strategic move for both parties amid the state’s increasingly polarized political landscape, reflecting the competitive nature of a Senate district that covers Green Bay and some of its suburbs.

From calls for tax cuts to redistributing Wisconsin’s surplus among municipalities, the two candidates share positions on many issues. But they do differ on some issues — Wall more openly sides with Democrats in calls for increased abortion access and taking federal funds to expand Badgercare, whereas Rafter has been a more vocal proponent for the closure of Green Bay Correctional Institution.

Redistricting has removed rural northern parts of Oconto and Marinette counties from the 30th Senate District in favor of more urban settings in Allouez and Ashwaubenon south of Green Bay. The district now reflects the more densely populated and politically varied region of metropolitan Green Bay instead. In response to redistricting, current Sen. Eric Wimberger, a Republican, announced in March that he would run in the more rural 2nd Senate District instead.

While Wimberger won by a margin of nearly 10 points in 2020, the open seat now ranks as the state’s closest Senate race this year, according to a Wisconsin Watch analysis. 

Bipartisanship

Rafter, who has served on the Allouez board for 10 years, including eight years as president, said political polarization is one of the biggest issues in the state.

“Nothing’s getting done because people won’t talk to each other,” Rafter said. “I like to talk to people and get things done.”

Wall, a business consultant who is returning to the political sphere after two unsuccessful campaigns for Congress in 2006 and 2012, seems to agree, saying that his experience in the private sector will help him bring politicians together.

According to Wall, polarization is a decades-long problem, and constituents are tired of it.  “They’ve seen all the dysfunction and all the partisan fighting,” Wall said. “We’ll get more done for the people of the state if we’re willing to work together across party lines and compromise.”

In terms of compromise, both hope to leverage bipartisan support to divert more of Wisconsin’s $3 billion surplus toward local funding and tax cuts.

Rafter said his decade in Allouez politics has demonstrated a need to appropriate more funding toward local governments.

“In Allouez, we’re a very small community, and we have absorbed tremendous increases in costs of operations such as building roads and just maintaining our infrastructure,” Rafter said. “There’s lots that local communities need to be able to do, and that money would go a long way in helping.”

“I don’t believe state government should be sitting on that money,” Rafter said. “If it doesn’t come back to the local communities, it should go back to the residents.”

Wall, similarly, hopes to see legislators compromise in order to allocate the surplus.

“It’s a sign that how things work in Madison is kind of broken,” Wall said in a September interview with WisconsinEye. 

Budgeting the surplus, he said, should have the goal of “reducing health care costs … working to bring down the cost of housing for regular people, and providing a little bit of targeted tax relief for the people who need it the most.”

Taxes

One of Wall’s central campaign promises is a tax cut, enabled by the state’s current surplus, that he says will be directed toward working families. 

Wall also has attacked Rafter’s tax policies, criticizing him for supporting an increase in Brown County’s sales tax during his tenure as Allouez village president. Rafter advocated for the continuation of a 0.5% county sales tax during an Allouez village board meeting in 2022.

Rafter, however, views his past in a more practical light. 

“I’ve seen and read how much money that half percent sales tax has saved the taxpayers of Brown County in terms of debt reduction, in terms of being able to do more roads and more buildings,” Rafter said.

Rafter, who also said that he would support a bill to cut taxes in order to address the rising cost of living, defended his record on taxes in Allouez. “Our existing tax rate has remained relatively flat over the last nine years I’ve been on the board,” Rafter said. 

When asked whether or not he would oppose any future sales tax increases, Wall said he is “not a big fan of the sales tax.”

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Abortion

On the issue of abortion, Wall is critical about past Republican attempts at restricting abortion access in the state. In a statement on his campaign website, he said he “supports preserving and expanding (reproductive health care) rights.”

Rafter said his position differs from anti-abortion Republicans like Wimberger. He said he hopes to reduce the amount of abortions through “education and guidance,” and that if elected, he would not enter with a steadfast position on the matter.

“As a community we need to come together and figure out what the right solution is. We need to protect the rights of women. We also have to make every effort to protect the rights of the unborn child,” Rafter said. “I hope that we can find a way to reduce the number of abortions in the state of Wisconsin.”

Green Bay Correctional Institution

Rafter takes a harder stance on the issue of Green Bay Correctional Institution, having become an outspoken advocate for its closure. The maximum-security prison, which has been plagued with dangerous living conditions in addition to problems relating to understaffing and overpopulation, is located in Allouez.

Wisconsin’s prison system as a whole, Rafter said, is riddled with problems. 

“Our criminal justice system just needs a lot of help … the system that has been built, from what I’m learning, is not working,” Rafter said. “There are an awful lot of people working in our Department of Corrections that deserve better. There are inmates who deserve better. There are families of the inmates who deserve better. And from a financial perspective, every taxpayer in the state of Wisconsin deserves better.”

Wall said that he agreed with other local politicians that GBCI needs to be closed, but he did not specify support for any specific proposals going forward.

When asked about GBCI, Wall said that he wanted to “have a bigger conversation about what the state prison system ought to look like.”

“I’d like to be a part of that conversation,” Wall said.

Health care

On the topic of health care, Wall backed taking federal funding to expand BadgerCare. He said it should be a no-brainer.

“We can start off by taking federal Medicaid expansion monies, which 40 other states have done,” Wall said. “We’re paying taxes for people’s health care in 40 other states and not benefiting as a result of that.”

Rafter was less certain on his position, saying that health care is an important issue but that he’s unsure as to what problems currently exist or what a good solution might be.

“Just accepting (federal) money isn’t the right answer,” Rafter said. “I don’t have an opinion except that we have to come together and figure it out.”

School funding

The two candidates have some disagreements on school funding. Schools across the state have turned to referendums to obtain funding, and Wisconsin is trailing nationally in percentage increases in school funding over the past decade.

Both candidates called for increased funding to K-12 schools. Rafter also voiced support for funding private voucher schools while Wall said that “public dollars ought to go to supporting public schools.”

Two moderates race to the middle for Green Bay state Senate seat is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Child care is a hot topic in this year’s presidential election. It was the subject of a question in the vice presidential debate earlier in the month.

It’s an issue that hits close to home, too.   

Child care in northeastern Wisconsin is expensive, it’s hard to find, and at the same time, child care workers receive low compensation.  

Local families can expect to pay between $9,000 and $15,000 a year for one infant to attend a child care center, median cost data from late 2023 shows. Waitlists are common, with staffing shortages making care even harder to secure.  

That’s not to mention program closures. Sally Van Rens, director of Green Bay’s Kidz in Motion Child Care Center, said that in her area, multiple local child cares close each month.   

Ultimately, child care affordability and access issues threaten to take parents out of the workforce, a report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum said.   

And it stands to get worse, child care providers warn. But, they say, Wisconsin legislators can help.  

We asked northeastern Wisconsin child care providers, as well as other early learning experts, what the Legislature can do to help with the state’s child care issues. The answers varied, but there were many throughlines.  

We also posed this question to candidates in contested legislative races across northeastern Wisconsin.  

The one thing most agreed on? It’s going to take more than one solution to clean up Wisconsin’s child care mess. 

Child care providers say public investment is needed to prevent industry collapse

The Child Care Counts program routinely distributes federal pandemic era funds directly to Wisconsin’s regulated child care providers. Some providers told USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin the funds kept their business open during the pandemic. It also helped many increase wages, hire more staff, weather inflation and make other program improvements without having to pass the full cost onto families. 

But Child Care Counts is set to end in June 2025 when the federal pandemic relief funds propping it up will run out. Many in the early learning industry are calling for Wisconsin to invest state dollars to continue the program, or a program like it.  

Without continued investment, the already fractured child care system stands to collapse, said Julie Stoffel, owner and administrator of Cradle to Crayons Learning Center in Kimberly.  

Programs would have to largely increase their prices just to maintain staffs’ current wages, which are notoriously low compared to other fields, she said. Without better pay, turnover will worsen, so more classrooms, if not entire programs, will close from staffing shortages. And if care gets so expensive that parents can’t pay, programs could also close from low enrollment, she warned.  

“People need to wake up and smell the coffee,” Stoffel said. “You talk about a pandemic, we’re going to see a pandemic with child care closures if we don’t invest.”  

Ultimately, closures mean children suffer, too, said Taylor Vande Vyver, a Kimberly mom whose two young children attend Cradle to Crayons. If the center closed, her husband would likely have to leave his job to care for the children. 

“I feel like my kids are better set up for success by being around other kids and learning from someone who knows the ins and outs of birth to 5,” Vande Vyver said. “At the end of the day, child care is for the kids — it’s so they have a quality upbringing, a quality education and a quality diet.”   

The state Capitol saw a flurry of child care proposals last session on both sides of the aisle. Ruth Schmidt, executive director of the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association, said that sometimes in the midst of these discussions, what’s best for children gets lost.  

She said this isn’t the case with public investment, as it allows child care businesses to continue providing quality care.  

“At a minimum, we need to stabilize care by having state investment into it as a public good,” said Wisconsin Early Childhood Association Executive Director Ruth Schmidt. “Once we do that, then you can move into talking about other models.”  

For a while, disagreements in the state’s Legislature positioned Child Care Counts to end in January, but Gov. Tony Evers prolonged its life with unused federal pandemic relief funds from other areas.  

There’s a seat at the table for employers to help with child care

It’s often said that addressing child care issues requires a three-legged stool: help from families, government and employers. 

The exact role employers should play, though, is up for discussion.  

Rep. David Armstrong, R-Rice Lake, and Sen. Dan Feyen, R-Fond du Lac, both running for reelection, spearheaded two bills last session to incentivize businesses to help their employees with child care struggles. Both drew support from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation.  

One of the bills was signed into law, establishing a new credit under the business development tax credit program for up to 15% of investments made in establishing a child care program for their employees beginning in the 2024 tax year.  

The other, which never made it to Evers’ desk, aimed to create state tax credits for employers who help their workers access and afford child care. 

Not all businesses may be in a position to take such leaps, though, so such initiatives don’t help all families, Stoffel said. She said one thing that may be more achievable is to allow flexible work schedules.  

While employers can help, they alone cannot save the day, Schmidt said, referencing figures from a recent report by the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It found that if the providers surveyed could operate at full capacity — many cannot because of staffing shortages — they could serve a total of 33,000 more children. To fill those slots, the state would need roughly 4,000 more early childhood educators, Schmidt said.  

And that doesn’t even consider all of the children in Wisconsin needing care.  

“The numbers are so big you can hardly conceive what the shortage is of teachers for child care is right now, and you’re not going to get that fixed by independent, individual businesses without state government being there to help out,” Schmidt said. 

Finding more ways to support the child care workforce

Because of their tight budgets, child care programs often find it difficult to offer their employees benefits. Candy Hall, executive director of Kimberly-based Child Care Resource and Referral, said that in order to incentivize potential workers, child care centers often give them free or reduced priced child care.  

But doing so diminishes their revenue.  

That’s why Van Rens and Hall suggest Wisconsin take a note from states like Kentucky, where child care workers are eligible for their state’s child care subsidy program, regardless of their household income.  

Such policy would help Wisconsin child care businesses to recruit and retain workers, therefore allowing them to serve more children. At the same time, it wouldn’t take as big of a dent out of child care businesses’ budgets, Hall said.  

Expanding child care options

Wisconsin has two main types of licensed family child care programs. Group child care is typically center-based. Licensed family child care programs are usually operated in a provider’s home and can care for fewer children than group centers, specifically between four and eight children depending on their ages.  

Rep. Joy Goeben, R-Hobart, and Sen. Joan Ballweg, R-Markesan — both are running for reelection — introduced a bill last session that would have created a licensed large family child care provider category, which would allow up to 12 children with two providers. The exact number of children these programs could serve would also depend on the ages of the children enrolled. 

The bill authors said this could boost the state’s child care capacity. 

Hall said that because neighboring states can do it (Minnesota has a similar “group family child care” designation), Wisconsin can find a way to make it work too.  

With some adjustments and more consideration, large family child cares could be especially valuable to rural areas, most of which are considered child care deserts and often rely on family providers, Schmidt said. That’s why, even though the bill didn’t make it to the governor’s desk, Schmidt said she’d support the new designation if more research shows it can be done safely.  

But Schmidt and Nicole Leitermann, who runs Impressions Family Child Care out of her Kimberly home, said that without bigger changes, the new designation won’t make a difference. If family child care providers cannot pay themselves a decent wage, Leitermann asks: How could they pay another person well? They also couldn’t offer benefits.  

“This does not solve our state’s problem in child care,” Leitermann said. “We need the state to invest in child care, just as they do for 4K and kindergarten through grade 12.”  

What candidates are saying

Here’s what candidates in contested legislative races across northeastern Wisconsin say the Legislature can do to help child care providers and families with the high price of care:  

SENATE DISTRICT 2

• Kelly Peterson, Democrat: Peterson said the Legislature can use funds from the state’s record surplus to help.  
•  Eric Wimberger, Republican: Wimberger declined to participate in this questionnaire.  

SENATE DISTRICT 18

• Kristin Alfheim, Democrat: Alfheim said the Legislature should focus on increasing access to affordable child care options to help families and small businesses that are struggling to find staff.  
• Anthony Phillips, Republican: Phillips said he does not support government spending that “just (throws) money at the problem” without tackling the root causes. Phillips said the child care industry needs an adequate workforce so it can expand, from which point he said market forces will decrease costs. He also said Wisconsin can consider enhanced tax credits, subsidies for low-income families or direct per-pupil payments to providers.  

SENATE DISTRICT 30

• Jim Rafter, Republican: Rafter said the Legislature can craft policy to address the field’s workforce challenges by incentivizing people to go into the child care profession. He said there’s opportunity to forge partnerships to have child care within Wisconsinites’ work environments, and for schools to provide child care programs.  
• Jamie Wall, Democrat: Wall’s website says he supports the Child Care Counts program. He stressed that child care helps the economy, as it makes it easier for people to gain and maintain paid employment.  

ASSEMBLY DISTRICT 1

• Joel Kitchens, Republican, incumbent: Kitchens supports a multifaceted approach to this issue that is keeping people out of the workforce. This includes incentivizing businesses to get involved in solutions and expanding tax credits, especially for low-income families, he said. He said there would be a lot of resistance to “direct payments.”  
• Renee Paplham, Democrat: Paplham said the state needs to use its historic surplus to fund the Child Care Counts program. She said last session’s expansion of the state’s Child and Dependent Care Expenses Tax Credit was a “good start,” but that the Legislature needs to work together to find more sustainable solutions.  

ASSEMBLY DISTRICT 2

• Alicia Saunders, Democrat: Saunders said, if elected, she will work with others in the Legislature to come up with a plan to address the high price of care, as well as provide child care workers with a sustainable and living wage.  
• Shae Sortwell, Republican, incumbent: Sortwell said it’s important to make it easier for in-home child care businesses to operate. He discussed changing some slot regulations, and allowing centers to count teen employees toward the number of staff who can supervise children. This, he said, could increase the number of slots available.  

ASSEMBLY DISTRICT 3

• Jason Schmitz, Democrat: Schmitz sees child care as a workforce issue. He said Wisconsin Shares, a subsidy that helps Wisconsin families pay for child care, currently does not offer enough assistance. He said there also needs to be more supports for families who do not qualify for Shares, and there needs to be a system to financially help child care facilities. 
• Ron Tusler, Republican, incumbent: Tusler hopes to re-visit an idea he was considering last session that he calls “the Antigo model.” Previously in the Langlade County community, businesses paid a certain amount per month for slots at a child care program, ensuring their employees priority access to care and a discount. This gave the child care program an additional revenue stream, allowing them to pay their employees more. He is wary of giving large government subsidies to child care providers, stating he does not want to create an industry that heavily relies on those subsidies.  

ASSEMBLY DISTRICT 4

• Jane Benson, Democrat: Benson considers child care as an economic issue. She said Wisconsin faces a “moral decision” when it comes to child care: As the federal funds that have propped it up the last couple of years wane, will Wisconsin direct state funds and support families?  
• David Steffen, Republican, incumbent: Last session, Steffen helped introduce a bill that sought to expand Wisconsin’s Child and Dependent Care Expenses Credit. It was eventually signed into law. He said he does not support Child Care Counts.  

ASSEMBLY DISTRICT 5

• Joy Goeben, Republican, incumbent: Goeben, a former child care provider, said Wisconsin needs to add more child care spaces and reduce costs. Last session, she introduced several bills related to child care, including one that supports having 4-year-old kindergarten programs within child care centers to increase their profits. If reelected, she plans to revise some of these bills, she said.  
• Greg Sampson, Democrat: Sampson said Wisconsin’s working families are diverse, and therefore child care solutions should be, too. If elected, Sampson said he would build off existing child care supports, and would consider state tax credits as a solution.

ASSEMBLY DISTRICT 6

• Elijah Behnke, Republican: Behnke said the government should not be raising Wisconsin residents’ children. As a parent, he knows child care is expensive, and said incentivizing child care programs to open will improve competitiveness. He mentioned converting existing infrastructure, such as empty former school buildings, into child care centers.  
• Shirley Hinze, Democrat: Hinze supports providing funding to encourage people to open child care centers. More child care businesses could yield competitive prices, she said.  

ASSEMBLY DISTRICT 52

• Chad Cooke, Republican: Cooke said Wisconsin needs to encourage people to enter, and stay in, the child care industry, and the state’s surplus could fund this. This will increase child care slots, and opening more facilities would create competition and hopefully decrease the price families are charged for care, he said. He said this could be coupled with tax breaks or vouchers for parents, and that there’s no single solution.  
• Lee Snodgrass, Democrat: Snodgrass, who currently represents the 57th district, said child care providers should not have to choose between paying their staff competitive wages and keeping care affordable for parents. The only way to prevent that, she said, is state investment in the industry. She supports continuing Child Care Counts or a similar program and stressed child care is a workforce issue.  

ASSEMBLY DISTRICT 53

• Dean Kaufert, Republican: Kaufert described the state’s child care issues as complex and important. He supports tax incentives for child care facilities to help increase wages, increasing the Child and Dependent Care Expenses Credit for medium- and low-income families and reducing red tape that prevents child care facilities from safely increasing their capacity.  
• Dane Shukoski, Democrat: Shukoski said he will work tirelessly to fund Child Care Counts, stating the program helped providers afford to keep their doors open, therefore keeping workers in Wisconsin.  

ASSEMBLY DISTRICT 54

• Lori Palmeri, Democrat, incumbent: Palmeri said the Legislature could take multiple actions to help with child care issues, the most important being to pass a state budget that helps fund Child Care Counts.  
• Tim Paterson, Republican: Paterson said the cost of child care can be a barrier for people to work. He said he recommends giving families a tax credit for when they use child care, finding a way to subsidize child care businesses such as a grant or scholarship, and providing a tax credit for child care workers to incentivize working in the industry. 

ASSEMBLY DISTRICT 55

• Nate Gustafson, Republican, incumbent: Gustafson said there is a lot of red tape from the government when it comes to child care. Referencing proposed legislation from last session, he suggested revisiting child-to-staff ratios within group child care centers, adding a large family child care designation and adjusting the state’s requirements to be an assistant child care teacher. To help parents with costs, he wants to change taxes so they have more money for child care.  
• Kyle Kehoe, Democrat: Kehoe said there are multiple approaches to addressing the state’s child care issues, from revising training opportunities within child care facilities to expanding early education programming within schools. He also mentioned needing to address the wage issues within the field and said there’s not enough child care providers.  

ASSEMBLY DISTRICT 56

• Dave Murphy, Republican, incumbent: Murphy said the government has invented large programs in the past, and he does not “want child care to become a new entitlement program.” Instead, he supports giving people tax incentives so they can afford child care, and therefore can work.  
• Emily Tseffos, Democrat: Tseffos said child care is infrastructure. She said the state and employers need to be involved in coming up with child care solutions. She wants to see the state support the industry via Child Care Counts. 

ASSEMBLY DISTRICT 88

• Benjamin Franklin, Republican: Franklin said he feels part of the reason why child care is so expensive is because there’s a shortage of child care businesses compared to the number of children who need care. He said making child care positions more attractive can help drive costs down.  
• Christy Welch, Democrat: Welch said the state can provide tax incentives or breaks to families with children in child care. She said Wisconsin could also provide subsidies directly to child care programs so that they can pay their staff better wages, which will help them recruit the staff needed to operate at full capacity, she said. 

ASSEMBLY DISTRICT 89

• Patrick Buckley, Republican: Buckley said he believes companies can help come up with innovative child care solutions. He said the state needs to address child care benefit cliffs, describing this problem as being when a family works more, they lose access to their child care benefits. 
• Ryan Spaude, Democrat: Spaude supports a fully funded Child Care Counts program and making quality child care more affordable for families. He added this can help programs recruit and retain quality employees. He said the budget surplus can help do this.  

ASSEMBLY DISTRICT 90

• Jessica Henderson, Republican: Henderson did not respond to interview requests.  
• Amaad Rivera Wagner, Democrat: Rivera Wagner supports Child Care Counts. He said there needs to be policy tax incentives and more child care options. Referencing the latter, Rivera Wagner said he helped lead the effort for multicultural child care options in Green Bay. Helping providers get regulated helps build wealth in traditionally marginalized communities, he said.  

Reporters Duke Behnke, Kelli Arseneau, Jeff Bollier, Benita Mathew, Rashad Alexander, Jesse Lin and Nadia Scharf contributed to this report.

Election 2024 is a big one for child care in Wisconsin is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Reading Time: 5 minutes

The three most crucial legislative races in the Green Bay area for both parties follow a trail of money that ends in Madison.

The Press-Gazette compared 607 pages of September expense report data in contested legislative elections to an analysis from earlier in the year and found over $2 million poured into the races for Senate District 30 and Assembly Districts 88 and 89. Put another way, these three races received almost 2½ times more money in just over a month than all the local races got in the eight months before the Aug. 13 primary.

But the candidates don’t have millions of dollars to spend. It’s Wisconsin’s Democratic and Republican parties that are spending the very millions they injected into these three races they believe are the most important to keep an eye on in the state’s northeast and crucial to which party controls the state Legislature.

“Lower costs and better wages start with Republicans keeping control of the state Assembly and Senate,” Wisconsin GOP chair Brian Schimming told the Press-Gazette. He was confident Wisconsin residents would choose “common sense conservatives” in November to that end.

For the state’s Democratic Party, it’s “excited that voters have a real choice on the ballot this November” in the first election to use redrawn maps approved by Gov. Tony Evers that reshaped the boundaries of these three districts, which now make a tight perimeter around Green Bay and its suburbs. The state party’s communications director Joe Oslund told the Press-Gazette that the party is eager to support the Democrats running in these races.

Keeping the 14-year streak of Republican control in the Assembly and Senate versus the opportunity to take that control away translates into the multi-million-dollar game both parties are playing in Green Bay laid bare in financial statements — and yes, graphs — that paint a picture of it all.

Triple, quadruple, sextuple the money

Before the Aug. 13 primary, there was already an emphasis on the races between:

• Senate District 30: Republican Jim Rafter and Democrat Jamie Wall.
• Assembly District 88: Republican Benjamin Franklin and Democrat Christy Welch.
• Assembly District 89: Republican Patrick Buckley and Democrat Ryan Spaude.

Just over two-thirds of the $2.15 million going to local races went to the candidates in those three districts.

After the primary, the proportion skyrocketed to 93.3% of all September finances in greater Green Bay.

The focus on these races stems from the new Senate District 30 boundaries that no longer reach up to Oconto County or down to Denmark. Its limits are now tightly wound around Green Bay and its immediate neighbors and contain Assembly Districts 88 and 89.

A side-by-side comparison of the new borders with the 2020 presidential election results shows just how competitive these districts are. Assembly District 88 has precincts that voted for Donald Trump by 0.8% and Joe Biden by 0.7%. The margins are even closer in Assembly District 89 that has neighborhoods that voted for Joe Biden by six votes and those that voted for Trump by three. And Senate District 30 that holds both Assembly districts includes a precinct that tied, 367 to 367.

The down-ballot fight to tip these margins means these three highlighted districts saw nearly three, four and six times more money in just over a month than they got in rest of the year combined.

Party coffers flowed free

While individual donors gave the majority of the money raised before the primary, Democratic and Republican party political action committees are now the biggest source of candidates’ dollars through in-kind contributions — non-monetary gifts like T-shirts or TV ads paid for the candidate on behalf of another source — or transfers-in, which is money directly wired to a candidate from a PAC or other campaign.

From January until the primary, just over 59% of money in all local races came from individual donors. That ratio inverted after Aug. 13; these in-kind contributions and transfers-in from large PACs took off in September, making up 81.9% of all money flowing into local races since the primary.

Just six PACs contributed over $1.63 million in that timeframe. In other words, nearly all of the PAC money flowing in came from:

• “Republican Party of Wisconsin”
• “Democratic Party of Wisconsin”
• “Committee to Elect a Republican Senate”
• “State Senate Democratic Committee”
• “Rep Assembly Campaign Committee”
• “Assembly Democratic Campaign Committee”

The money from Democratic and Republican PACs came in waves with each party determined not to let the other out-do its performance. Republican donations peaked Sept. 8, followed by Democratic donations Sept. 12, followed by Republicans Sept. 16 and Democrats Sept. 20.

Madison controls spending for Assembly District 88, 89 candidates

As expected with 93.3% of all money going to these three local races, the same three contests accounted for 94.7% of all September spending.

Over $850,000 in expenses goes unaccounted for when only looking at what the local candidates themselves decided to spend on.

That’s because for Assembly District 88 and 89 candidates, their money was largely spent for them by the large PACs based in Madison. It went to the airwaves, mailers and online ads.

Wall and Rafter of Senate District 30, however, got much more money that they could spend as they pleased from the Democratic and Republican parties, respectively; they still spent it on ads that have inundated the online feeds, TV channels and mailboxes of locals.

Franklin, of Assembly District 88, received $229,317.81 in September; nearly all of it was in the form of online advertising and mailers by the Republican Party on Franklin’s behalf that never touched the candidate’s bank account. The other three Assembly district candidates also got a deluge of high monetary value “in-kind” media and ads that need to be accounted for in campaign finance reports but never entered their bank accounts.

Franklin’s opponent, Welch, received $12,350 in direct monetary transfers that she could spend on what she wished; the Democratic Party spent nearly $140,000 on TV and online ads and mailers on her behalf.

Spaude, Welch’s counterpart in Assembly District 89, received $9,750 in “transfers-in” compared with the $107,158.67 spent on TV ads, mailers, and wages to campaign staff by Democratic Party-affiliated PACs. His opponent, Buckley, got $16,350 in direct monies to his account from large PACs versus the $211,198 spent exclusively on mailers and online ads.

Almost all of Wall’s expenses in September — $581,350 worth of spending — went to Great American Media for television ads, far outpacing the $137,155 the Democratic Party spent on mailers, as well as consulting fees and wages for his staff. Rafter countered with $200,080 in his own ads paid for in part by the $352,000 directly wired from Republican-affiliated PACs.

Attention on these three districts by the state parties converted into getting the public’s attention is only expected to intensify with every spending attack and counterattack in the home stretch to Election Day.

More than $2 million injected into 3 Green Bay legislative races is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Reading Time: 5 minutes

In early September, Green Bay City Clerk Celestine Jeffreys sat in a conference room for a dry run of what a “man-made” threat to public safety on Election Day might look like.

The training brought together officials from the City Attorney’s Office to the Green Bay Metro Fire Department, not to mention representatives from the Wisconsin Elections Commission. The exercise was led by a facilitator from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Jeffreys couldn’t provide details of the scenario officials ran through. But she said it evolved from the city receiving a “concerning” piece of information into something that would pose a real risk to election workers and voters.

“Worst case scenario is something that you plan for and not necessarily something that you communicate to the public because you don’t want to scare people,” she said. “But people would be concerned if some of the things that we discussed happened.”

The exercise was meant to help the city identify where it may have vulnerabilities and to think through what officials’ priorities would be if there was a real threat to public safety on Election Day. 

It was a much larger version of a similar training the city conducted ahead of the 2022 midterms, Jeffreys said. That year’s training was a first for the city of Green Bay.

After 2020, Jeffreys said the frequency and intensity of verbal assaults and threatening interactions with the public forced the city to develop a “very robust security protocol and profile around elections.”

In many ways, Green Bay has been a microcosm of backlash officials faced across the country in the wake of the 2020 election. 

President Joe Biden’s roughly 20,000-vote victory in the state four years ago made local officials the target for baseless claims of election fraud, spearheaded nationally by former President Donald Trump.

In Green Bay, where Biden won by around 4,000 votes, those false claims led to harassment and threats toward local officials and an ongoing level of animosity that has continued in the years since the election.

Through court filings, the city has gone public with at least three incidents of members of the public “verbally assaulting” either city staff or a local newspaper reporter in recent years.

“Those years following the 2020 election were some of the most fearful, stressful and unconventional life experiences I’ve ever had,” said Amaad Rivera-Wagner, who has worked in the Green Bay mayor’s office since 2020 and now is a Democratic state Assembly candidate.

Some are worried this election, with Trump back at the top of the Republican ticket, could result in additional threats.

The Green Bay experience

Almost immediately after the 2020 election was called, Rivera-Wagner said city officials and staff had their emails and phones flooded with threats from people all over the country, sending a “wave of fear” through City Hall. Rivera-Wagner said he personally became a target of harassment.

“It ended up setting me up to be doxed, harassed, stalked,” he said. “I had death threats. They stopped my husband at his job because they didn’t believe that he was real.”

The same day rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol to overturn the results of the 2020 election, protesters gathered outside Green Bay City Hall for a “Stop the Steal” rally. The protest was organized by now-Ald. Melinda Eck, who was elected to the city council in 2022.

Eck did not return repeated requests for an interview, but at the protest, she told WTAQ-FM that Trump supporters wouldn’t back down, saying, “There’s a bunch of patriots out there and they are going to fight for their freedom.”

Green Bay has been a central focus for others who’ve echoed Trump’s claims, including former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who was hired by the Wisconsin Assembly to investigate the 2020 election. As part of his investigation, Gableman called for Mayor Eric Genrich’s arrest. 

The mayor declined to comment for this story, but described the fallout of Gableman’s probe in a 2023 interview about a threat he received during his reelection campaign.

“We received a lot of emails and communications suggesting treason and all kinds of things because of the election conspiracy theories that have been circulated for a very long time,” Genrich said last year.

Earlier this year, Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher stepped down before his term ended and told The Washington Post that threats to his family led to the decision. Gallagher had famously called out Trump supporters during the Jan. 6 insurrection, calling the events of that day “Banana Republic crap” in a video recorded from his Capitol office.

Former U.S. Rep. Reid Ribble, a Republican and outspoken Trump critic who represented Green Bay from 2011 to 2017, has a theory on why the city has been such a focus for some of the former president’s most ardent supporters. In short, they view Green Bay as winnable.

“In Milwaukee and Dane County, they believe the Democrats are going to ‘steal’ it no matter what,” Ribble said. “The bigger issue is this whole idea that the elections themselves aren’t safe, when, in fact, they are.”

A statewide issue

While some local officials have faced intense pressure in Green Bay, it’s hardly the only place where it felt like running elections changed after 2020. In fact, a 2023 Brennan Center survey of local elections officials around the country showed 45 percent were concerned for the safety of other election officials and workers in future elections.

In Dane County, Madison’s clerk received multiple death threats, and Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe was granted a security detail due to concerns for her safety.

Election Day safety training exercises, like the one in Green Bay, have become more common across Wisconsin, especially after the Jan. 6 insurrection, said Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell. 

McDonell said he’s participated in several of them with municipalities in his county in recent years and has a few more set for this election cycle. He said they can range from preparing for cyber attacks to bomb threats.

“It really does feel a bit like we’ve turned into more of an emergency management department than an election department,” he said.

Sam Liebert, Wisconsin state director for the voting rights group All Voting is Local, said local clerks across Wisconsin have increased their coordination with local law enforcement in preparation of the 2024 election and possible safety concerns.

“They have done more training around things like mass casualty or active shooter-type events,” he said. “A lot of clerks are or have installed silent alarms in their offices if something were to happen that goes directly to law enforcement.”

Liebert said his organization held town halls with clerks around the state this year, and “a large number of clerks” plan to put their families up in hotels or have them stay in another city the night before the election and on Election Day in case “things go sideways.”

“It’s a very real threat,” Liebert said. “It’s a very real concern.”

Bracing for 2024

The Republican Party of Brown County has promoted poll watching and has held election observer training sessions ahead of the November election.

Party Chair Doug Reich declined to be interviewed, but provided a statement via email.

“There was a number of issues regarding that (2020) election which caused people to question election integrity,” he said. “As a result, nationwide there has been advocacy to improve election integrity.”

For clerks, Jeffreys said there’s a balancing act between preserving the right of the public to observe elections and preserving the right of voters to cast private ballots.

In April 2022, according to court documents, an election observer in Green Bay “verbally assaulted” staff in the city clerk’s office after a voter delivered an absentee ballot, which resulted in the voter crying and being escorted to her vehicle.

Jeffreys said the incident was part of an effort by some election observers to “police elections.” She said she welcomes poll watchers but said they should not try to insert themselves into election processes.

“Unfortunately, that continues to this day,” she said. “I’m confident that in November, we’ll have even more of that.”

Following the 2020 election, Jeffreys said her office has worked closely with the Green Bay Police Department to develop a security protocol for elections, both at City Hall and at polling locations. It’s unclear if Green Bay officials will face harassment and threats in November, but she said the city is prepared for “every eventuality.”

Jeffreys said Green Bay will ensure that eligible voters are registered and that their votes are counted. Beyond doing that work to the letter of the law, she said everything else is out of her hands.

“We are going to do everything that we are required to do to ensure that people’s votes are counted,” she said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but we are ready.”

This story was originally published by WPR.

Green Bay spent years rehashing the 2020 election. Now the city is bracing for November. is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Talking about politics can be stressful, even in the best circumstances — and moderating a class full of teenagers, all with different backgrounds, news sources and levels of political knowledge, in a historic election year is generally not ideal circumstances.  

Teachers across the country are facing decisions on how to talk about elections in an increasingly polarized world. In Wisconsin, there are a lot of factors that may influence that decision, from district policies to heightened division to teachers’ individual comfort with the subject.

Wisconsin standards require teachers to discuss voting. Starting in third grade, standards state students should learn about citizens’ role in government and elections. By sixth grade, they’re starting to learn about political parties and interest groups, and by ninth grade, students are putting together the pieces of partisanship, societal interests and voting. 

But with politics becoming increasingly contentious, the question remains: How should teachers address this year’s election in the classroom? 

In the Howard-Suamico School District, teachers don’t shy away from the debate. Having civil discourse in classrooms is a way for students to learn to think critically and engage with their community, said Howard-Suamico curriculum and development coordinator Krista Greene.  

“Our staff is always looking for ways to make sure that, regardless of what’s going on in American society, we’re equipped in our classes to deal with those things that may be perceived as contentious out there,” Greene said. “We make them not contentious. We boil it down to the facts.” 

Students learn to articulate their ideas in different types of discussion methods, such as Socratic seminars and fishbowl discussions. Some teachers provide sentence starters, which can make it easier for students to express complex viewpoints. 

The district wants to develop civically minded students, Greene said. While teachers contact parents before bringing potentially contentious issues into the classroom, they also explain why that discussion is important. 

“Students learn best when they know that the skills and knowledge that they’re learning are going to be applicable in their lives. And what could be more applicable than learning how to be a citizen?” Greene said. “There’s never a ‘why do I need to know this’ factor about government.” 

Jennifer Morgan, a 31-year teacher in West Salem in western Wisconsin, generally uses elections to teach about media literacy. But she avoids getting too in the weeds about politics: It’s not worth it, particularly now that people are so divided on historical facts, she said.  

The important thing to her is that students learn to support their opinions with facts. She talks to her students about using diverse sources and walks them through how propaganda and biased information have been used throughout American history. 

“You can say that candidate X is the best candidate, but they can’t say ‘because my mom and dad said so,’” Morgan said. “Don’t just tell me, ‘this is what Vice President Harris says.’ Say, ‘OK, where did you get that, and why is it important to your argument?’”

Morgan is president of the National Council for Social Studies. This year, she said, she and many council members may avoid discussing the election at all. For Morgan, it’s too early in the school year for her students to feel like her classroom is the safe space she’d need it to be for a topic like this, she said.  

Morgan’s school doesn’t have policies preventing her from talking about the election. But for other teachers, lesson plans may not be allowed to go beyond the basics, as some districts do restrict how teachers can discuss controversial issues like the election in the classroom. 

Do school policies restrict how teachers talk about elections?

The Madison Metropolitan School District allows teachers to discuss controversial issues as long as they do what they can to keep bias and prejudice out of the classroom. In the Kenosha Unified School District, teachers can discuss these issues if parents are notified. Milwaukee Public Schools has no controversial issues policy in place.  

Policies differ in the Green Bay area. In the Green Bay School District, teachers are strictly limited to the curriculum; while they can discuss elections, they’re not teaching about the 2024 election. The De Pere School District and Ashwaubenon School District both allow teachers to discuss controversial issues in the classroom, as long as they’re related to the subject being studied and appropriate for students. 

Wisconsin students aren’t required at the state level to take a government class. Some districts may have their own requirements, or government classes may be offered as an elective, but that lack of a state requirement can prevent students from learning about government itself, much less discussing and understanding current political events, said Jeremy Stoddard, a professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a researcher in the Wisconsin Center for Education Research.

How Wisconsin schools handle the election is often based on the local community, Stoddard said. In these partisan local communities, teachers are more likely to focus on political theory or related issues like Morgan’s media literacy lessons than issues that may lean partisan. 

“They’re sort of avoiding some of the national political rhetoric, focusing it on, what are the issues that you know that folks stand on? Because in some cases, they’re not actually that far apart,” Stoddard said.

Helping teachers to address controversial subjects

Stoddard recently hosted a conference for teachers focusing on how to discuss election-related issues in the classroom, and where they can access outside resources to help.

One way that districts might skirt criticism while still discussing politics is by using university or PBS materials. One example of those materials is Stoddard and his team’s own PurpleState, a free curriculum where students simulate working in a communications firm for a state political campaign. It’s meant to help them understand politics and political communication at the state level, where students may be able to have more of an impact in their real lives. 

Engagement is what’s important, Stoddard said, and focusing on election partisanship can make people tune out. The challenge teachers face is to find their way around that — and to do so while balancing district policies, concerned parents and political misinformation. 

“(The goal is) to find ways to engage people meaningfully in something like an election, which should be an event that we revere as a democratic institution and peaceful transfer of power,” Stoddard said. “I think it shouldn’t be this challenging to do it, but that’s the current sort of partisanship that we’re in.”

Contact Green Bay education reporter Nadia Scharf at nscharf@gannett.com or on X at @nadiaascharf.

This story is part of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab’s series covering issues important to voters in the region.

Elections can be polarizing. How are Wisconsin teachers bringing them into the classroom? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Reading Time: 2 minutes

An inmate found dead at a maximum-security prison in northeastern Wisconsin was strangled, investigators said Thursday.

Brown County Sheriff’s Office deputies and medical personnel were called to the Green Bay Correctional Institution on Tuesday evening for a report of a pulseless inmate who wasn’t breathing. They found 19-year-old Micah Laureano dead at the scene. It’s unclear exactly where in the prison Laureano was found.

The sheriff’s office said that an initial investigation determined that Laureano had been killed in his cell and his 24-year-old cellmate was a suspect.

The sheriff’s office said in an updated news release Thursday that an autopsy revealed Laureano had been strangled.

Laureano and the suspect had been together in the cell for only hours before his death, the sheriff’s office added. The release did not say specifically how long they had been together.

The investigation is ongoing, and charges are expected to be filed late next week, the sheriff’s office said.

Online court records indicate that Laureano was sentenced to two years in the state prison system in January for being a party to substantial battery in Waukesha County, with the first year to be served behind bars and the second on extended supervision. His attorney in that case, public defender Maura McMahon, described Laureano as a “funny, thoughtful young man and a talented artist” in an email to The Associated Press.

Laureano’s cellmate was sentenced to 40 years in the prison system in January 2018 for attempted homicide in Manitowoc County, with 20 years to be served behind bars and 20 years on extended supervision. The cellmate was 18 years old when he was sentenced.

Asked for comment on the incident, state Department of Corrections spokesperson Beth Williams Hardtke responded with an email acknowledging that Laureano died Tuesday after an “incident in his cell.” She said no staff members were hurt, and law enforcement was investigating. The prison was operating normally with all scheduled activities continuing as usual, she said.

Laureano’s death is another blow for the Department of Corrections as it struggles to protect inmates and prison workers in the face of aging facilities and chronic staffing shortages.

Five inmates at the maximum-security Waupun Correctional Institution have died since June 2023. Two killed themselves, one died of a fentanyl overdose, one died of a stroke, and one died of malnutrition and dehydration. Prosecutors charged the prison’s former warden, Randall Hepp, and eight other Waupun staff members this past June with misconduct in connection with the stroke and malnutrition deaths.

Men held at Waupun have filed a class action lawsuit alleging mistreatment, including not having access to health care. And the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating a possible smuggling ring at the prison.

Just weeks after the charges came down against Hepp and his staffers at Waupun, Corey Proulx, a counselor at the state’s youth prison outside Irma, died after a 16-year-old inmate punched him in the face. His death sparked calls from the facility’s staff and Republican legislators to lift a court-imposed ban on pepper spray. The federal judge who imposed the prohibition in 2018 has so far refused to consider their requests.

Waupun opened in 1854. Green Bay Correctional Institution opened in 1898. Republicans have been calling for years to close both prisons, saying they’ve outlived their usefulness. But concerns over job losses in the communities and the cost of building a new prison, estimated at as much as $1 billion, have proven to be stumbling blocks. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has tried to address the prison system’s problems by giving guards raises.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.

Autopsy determines man killed at Green Bay Correctional Institution was strangled is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

A primary battle in the rural Green Bay 4th Assembly District seeks to test whether redistricting can uproot an entrenched incumbent, pitting a five-term lawmaker campaigning on his decade-long record against a local party leader and self-described “Christian conservative.”

Rep. David Steffen, R-Howard, currently represents the 4th Assembly District, covering a mostly urban region of Green Bay to the city’s south and west. Following redistricting, Steffen will still reside in the 4th Assembly District, but the region’s borders now include much of rural Oconto County in the north.

The new district more closely resembles pre-2024 borders for the 89th Assembly District, where Rep. Elijah Behnke, R-Oconto, currently serves. Elijah Behnke was drawn into the 4th Assembly District, but he decided to run against incumbent Rep. Peter Schmidt, R-Bonduel, in the 6th Assembly District instead of remaining to run against Steffen. Elijah Behnke has said that Schmidt being an “easier target” had “something to do” with his move.

Darwin Behnke, Elijah’s father, is now challenging Steffen instead. While Elijah and his brother Micah have run campaigns for public office in the past, this marks the elder Behnke’s first attempt at an elected position.

Behnke introduced his campaign to a group of supporters in May at the Log Jam Saloon in Oconto, standing in front of a wall of Trump flags.

“I’m just another old man who’s grumpy and irritated about what’s going on in Wisconsin,” Behnke told the crowd.

Behnke told Wisconsin Watch he was motivated to run for Assembly because he’s frustrated with how state government is run, viewing the decision as a necessity.

“I’m stepping up because I feel somebody should do it. I wish it wasn’t me,” Behnke said. “I don’t want Steffen, or any RINO, to run unopposed.”

Asked why he considers Steffen as a RINO, which stands for “Republican in name only,” Behnke said Steffen “calls himself a conservative, a Christian, but fiscally and morally I don’t see him taking a hard stance.”

Steffen, who has represented the district since 2015, received a 90% lifetime rating for “Conservative Excellency” from the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2023. 

Steffen has historically aligned himself with conservative factions among Republicans on several occasions, notably leading efforts to decertify 2020 election results in Wisconsin. Steffen is also a coauthor of Assembly Resolution 18, which called for the impeachment of Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe.

Steffen declined multiple interview requests.

Behnke said if elected he wants to decrease state budget allocations and “go back five or six years” to previous state budget amounts. He also suggested cutting state spending as a whole to address the possibility that “someday we’re not going to get the tax dollars that we get from the federal government.”

In statements on his campaign website, Steffen criticized “raising taxes to further grow government programs” and said that he would “continue fighting for a middle-class tax cut and tax-free retirement for our seniors.” 

Behnke also said that he thinks schools in the state are “trying to change children,” and he suggested that schools should produce better results considering “the amount of money we’re spending.”

A July 2022 report found that while school spending per pupil in Wisconsin, unadjusted for inflation, has increased since 2002, education spending nationwide has increased at a much higher rate. Only two states, Idaho and Indiana, had lower increases in school spending during the two-decade period.

Steffen said on his campaign website that he would support parents’ “right to know what’s happening in their child’s classroom,” mentioning his introduction of AB 510, a proposed bill of educational changes previously vetoed by Gov. Evers. The bill has been identified as anti-trans legislation by independent research organization Trans Legislation Tracker. 

The controversial bill proposed 15 “parental rights,” such as allowing parents to determine their children’s religion, to opt their children out of classes or educational material and to determine their children’s name and pronoun usage in school settings. It also proposed requiring schools to notify parents of any instance when a “controversial subject” would be taught or discussed, specifying that such subjects would include “instruction about gender identity, sexual orientation, racial identity, structural, systemic, or institutional racism, or content that is not age-appropriate.”

On his campaign website, Steffen also proposed to “dramatically increase local funding” for law enforcement and frontline workers.

The candidates contrast more in their home turf. Behnke resides in Oconto County and is currently vice chair of the Oconto County Republican Party, and Steffen is more prominent in Brown County.

Ken Sikora, chair of the Oconto County Republican Party, said that while the party doesn’t make an official endorsement, he remains skeptical of Steffen because of his long tenure as a representative and his lack of rural experience. 

“He’s not familiar with this district, and that’s a big disadvantage,” Sikora said. “People don’t know him.”

However, after a campaign ad mailer attacked Behnke for having “trouble with money,” the Oconto County Republican Party promoted Behnke’s campaign on social media and criticized Steffen for the advertisement.

Steffen responded on social media, saying that the mailers “were funded and sent by an Eau Claire-based PAC” that he did not know about.

“Personally… I want somebody new,” Sikora said. “Anybody that’s been in politics and in Madison for more than 10 years is part of the problem.”

When asked if he had any qualms with Steffen’s performance as a representative, Sikora said that while he did not know of any, he still wanted a change.

“I think a lot of people right now want someone outside,” Sikora said. “We want the next Donald Trump.”

Whoever wins the Republican primary will face one of two Democratic challengers, though the district is a safe GOP seat leaning 62-36 based on past election results. According to Dixon Wolf, member at large of the Brown County Republican Party, the party plans on supporting whichever Republican candidate wins the Aug. 13 primary.

“We will support any candidate post-primary that is conservative,” Wolf said.

Longtime GOP incumbent faces rural challenger in new Green Bay area district is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

A returning candidate and local community organizer squares off against a political newcomer and environmentalist for the unlikely chance to flip a safe Republican seat in the rural Green Bay 4th Assembly District Democratic primary on Aug. 13.

Two years ago, Jane Benson challenged state Rep. Elijah Behnke, R-Oconto, for his seat in what was the largely rural and heavily Republican-leaning 89th Assembly District. Benson lost that election by more than 8,000 votes, but she credits her campaign for boosting Democratic voter turnout to help Gov. Tony Evers win reelection.

Now, after being redrawn into the 4th Assembly District, the Suamico resident and League of Women Voters organizer is running for office once again. This time, she faces political newcomer Alexia Unertl, a working parent and environmentalist who also resides in Suamico. 

For both candidates, the challenge of running as a Democrat in a largely conservative district is obvious. Past voting patterns suggest the district skews Republican 62% to 36%. But the recent redistricting has given Democrats across the state more hope that they can compete in legislative races in November.

“The new 4th District is still very Republican, I know that,” Benson said in an interview with Wisconsin Watch. “But I also know there is a lot of repressed desire among Democrats to step up and participate. There is a new energy unleashed from the voting maps having been redrawn, and we can use that energy to bring people out to vote.”

The 4th Assembly District covers a largely rural region that lies northwest of Green Bay, encompassing Suamico and spreading north toward Oconto. Incumbent David Steffen, R-Howard, has represented the district for nearly a decade and now seeks reelection, facing a primary challenge from Darwin Behnke, the father of Elijah Behnke. The newly drawn borders have made the district more rural compared to its previous region of southwestern Green Bay and Ashwaubenon.

Steffen, Benson said, is out of his element. “He’s lost the more urban area of Ashwaubenon, and now he’s more in the rural area of Oconto County… that will be unfamiliar to him,” Benson said.

Key to both Benson and Unertl’s campaigns is a set of policy positions that they say will be extremely important for rural voters. Both Democrats align on these issues, including shared concerns about pollution in the district’s many waterways, a commitment to accepting federal Medicaid funding to expand BadgerCare and plans to expand broadband internet access throughout the state. 

“Just those few things would make a huge difference in the lives of Wisconsinites,” Unertl said in an interview with Wisconsin Watch. “I don’t see why we couldn’t make that happen.”

Unertl, who currently serves as vice chair for Brown County’s Conservation Congress, also cited concerns surrounding PFAS contamination in private wells and homes. 

“This contamination can happen without us really knowing, and there isn’t a lot of testing that happens to private wells,” Unertl said. “The Department of Natural Resources should be able to address that directly. One of my goals would be to establish an emergency response for (water contamination).”

Benson, who is a board member at the Clean Water Action Council of Northeast Wisconsin, said she is frustrated with Republican proposals for PFAS contamination cleanup. 

“Businesses are not being held accountable for contamination, and no one has to declare the results of the testing that’s done,” Benson said in reference to SB312, a Republican-led bill vetoed by Evers during the 2023-24 legislative session. SB312 included provisions to shield polluters from accountability for PFAS cleanup as well as a clause to prohibit the DNR from disclosing PFAS testing results without notifying landowners at least 72 hours beforehand.

Benson also echoed frustrations with recent efforts to restrict abortion access in the state, citing Republican-led efforts to enforce an 1849 abortion law as a total ban on abortion and to prosecute health care providers involved in the process of an abortion. 

“When I think of how Republicans treat pregnant people in Wisconsin, the word abandonment comes to mind,” Benson said. “It’s unhinged, and it needs to stop.”

“The state has no business getting between a woman and her doctor,” Unertl said. “If a woman needs an abortion, she should be able to receive it from a qualified professional.”

Both candidates said that they would support taking federal Medicaid funding to expand access in Wisconsin. Unertl also argued in favor of increasing state funding for rural hospitals and health care providers. 

“Right now, there’s such a risk of these facilities not getting the funding that they need and not being able to provide care to their communities,” Unertl said.

While Benson and Unertl share many policy positions and goals, they differ in their backgrounds. 

“I have been deeply involved in issues like clean water and fair voting maps, and I have a lot to offer,” Benson said. Benson brands herself as an activist, and she emphasizes her past political experience as a candidate and as an organizer. 

“There is a woman running against me, and she is a newcomer,” Benson said about Unertl. “She seems to be running kind of unaffiliated and doing her own thing. She doesn’t have experience with elected office.”

Unertl, who filed her candidacy and is running as a Democrat, does not shy away from being called a newcomer. Her experience working in supply chain and being a parent, she said, has prepared and led to her decision to run for public office.

“This is my first time running for anything … I don’t have that kind of party mentality,” Unertl said. “(I can) talk to everyone and understand where they are coming from without having these allegiances.”

Overall, Unertl is glad to have more options on the ballot and to have a primary election for Democrats.

“Having more options for people to choose from is always a good thing.” Unertl said. “It’s up to the people to decide who they think would represent them better.”

In rural Green Bay, two Democrats seek chance to challenge Republican seat is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.