When the clerk of Rock County, Wisconsin, gets a public records request for images of election ballots, much of it is easy to fulfill. For most municipalities in the county, it’s just a matter of uploading a photo of the ballot that’s already captured when it gets tabulated.

But for two of the county’s largest cities — Janesville and Beloit — it’s a lot more complicated, and time-consuming, because of a state law governing places that use a central counting facility for their absentee ballots.

For those ballots, Clerk Lisa Tollefson must redact the unique identifying numbers that the law requires poll workers to write on each one. Otherwise, the number could be used to connect the ballots to the voters who cast them. And because the numbers don’t appear in the same place on each ballot, Tollefson must click through the ballot images one at a time to locate and blot out the number before releasing the images.

To respond to records requests for this year’s April election, she had to redact the numbers from 10,000 ballot images. In November, it was over 23,000.

Given her other job duties, Tollefson says, fulfilling these requests can take months. Without that step, she says, she could fulfill public records requests in “no time at all.”

And it’s all due to a law that she and other clerks in the state say is not only outdated, but also a potential threat to the constitutional right in Wisconsin to ballot secrecy.

Tollefson and other county clerks said they support an ongoing legislative effort to repeal the law requiring election officials to write down those numbers. The proposal has come up in past legislative sessions but hasn’t gone far. It will be revived again this year, said Rep. Scott Krug, a Republican legislative leader and vice chair of the Assembly elections committee.

Number is obsolete and creates security risk, clerks say

The law might have been useful in the past, Tollefson said, when voters who changed their minds or made errors on absentee ballots that had been cast but not yet counted could void their ballot and cast a new one. The ID number allowed election officials at central count facilities to locate the ballot and cancel it before issuing a new one. 

But courts have since blocked voters from spoiling their absentee ballots, rendering the numbers obsolete. Now, if a voter tries to cast an in-person ballot after already voting absentee, the voter would be flagged in the poll books as having voted and would be turned away, Tollefson said.

Moreover, the labeling of ballots could pose a privacy risk at central count locations, where observers and poll workers might be able to match up numbers to deduce how someone voted, Tollefson said. The number written on each ballot corresponds with the voter’s number on the poll list, a public register that election officials use to enter information about voters.

There are rules in place to prevent an observer from connecting a ballot to the voter who cast it, Tollefson said, but she added, “We have laws that people shouldn’t steal, but they still do.”

Marathon County Clerk Kim Trueblood, a Republican, said the increased presence of election observers in recent years exacerbates that risk.

So far, there’s no indication that any observers or poll workers have intentionally used the numbers to link voters to their absentee ballots at central count. But election officials told Votebeat that the law creates an unnecessary risk, to go along with the significant added workload.

After the 2020 presidential election, Milwaukee County was asked to release images of its ballots as part of Donald Trump’s request for a recount in the county. The county had over 265,000 absentee ballots, all marked with identifying numbers that had to be redacted individually, Elections Director Michelle Hawley recalled. 

Given time pressures, the county hired its election vendor, Election Systems & Software, to do the redactions. It cost $27,000, which the Trump campaign covered as part of its recount request.

The county has since looked for ways to streamline the redactions and avoid outsourcing it, Hawley said. But the state law remains “extremely time-consuming,” she said. In addition to complicating records requests, she said, the law slows down absentee ballot processing as election officials at central count must write a number on every ballot.

Repealing little-known practice has had little momentum

Trueblood said the biggest obstacle to repealing the law may be simply that too few people know it exists. She said she has “talked to every” legislator from Marathon County and some were “horrified to learn” about what the law entails. 

“Hopefully the Legislature will do something about it,” she said.

Last session, the proposal to repeal the law had bipartisan support. The Assembly elections committee unanimously approved it after its Republican author, former Rep. Donna Rozar,  encouraged committee members not to discount the bill just because she wrote it with a Democrat. 

But the proposal was never introduced in the Senate and never got a floor vote in the Assembly.

Trueblood hopes the Legislature will act before 2026, when there will be an April Supreme Court election and legislative primaries and a general election later in the year.

If they just “cross off that little line in the state statute,” said Tollefson, “we would be good to go.”

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

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

Clerks say an obsolete Wisconsin law creates needless work — and a threat to ballot secrecy 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.

Voters in Wisconsin could be seeing double on Election Day if the practice of fusion voting — which allows the same candidate to appear on the ballot under multiple party lines — makes a comeback in the battleground state.

A lawsuit filed Tuesday seeks to legalize the practice, saying it would empower independent voters and lesser-known political parties at a time of increasingly bitter partisanship between Republicans and Democrats. The lawsuit comes just four weeks after the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, which broke records for spending and saw massive involvement from the two parties and partisan interests.

Common in the 1800s, fusion voting means a candidate could appear on the ballot as nominated by Republican or Democratic parties and one or more lesser-known political parties. Critics argue it complicates the ballot, perhaps confusing the voter, while also giving minor parties disproportionate power because major-party candidates must woo them to get their endorsements.

Currently, full fusion voting is only happening in Connecticut and New York. There are efforts to revive the practice in other states, including Michigan, Kansas and New Jersey.

The lawsuit by the newly formed group United Wisconsin seeks a ruling affirming that minor parties can nominate whoever they like — even if that person was nominated by the Republican or Democratic parties. Under fusion voting, “John Doe, Democrat” could appear on the same ballot with “John Doe, Green Party.” All of the votes that candidate receives are combined, or fused, for the candidate’s total.

United Wisconsin wants to become a fusion political party that will cross-nominate a major party candidate, said Dale Schultz, co-chair of the group and a former Republican Senate majority leader.

But first, he said, “we’d like to see the state courts affirm that we have a constitutional right to associate with whomever we want.” Schultz is one of the lawsuit’s five named plaintiffs, which include a former Democratic county sheriff and a retired judge who was also a Republican state lawmaker.

The lawsuit was filed against the Wisconsin Elections Commission in Dane County Circuit Court, and it argues that the state’s nearly 130-year-old prohibition on candidates appearing on the ballot more than once for the same office is unconstitutional.

Wisconsin Elections Commission spokesperson Joel DeSpain declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Attorney Jeff Mandell, president of Law Forward, which is representing United Wisconsin in the lawsuit, said voters want more choices and called the current two-party system “calcified and deeply unstable.”

But Wisconsin Republican Party spokesperson Anika Rickard came out strongly against the concept, saying voters could be “manipulated into voting for a major party candidate masquerading as an independent.”

“Fusion voting will be used to confuse voters, will be an election integrity nightmare, and is simply dishonest,” she said in a statement.

Haley McCoy, a spokesperson for the Wisconsin Democratic Party, declined to comment.

Last year, the Wisconsin Democratic Party unsuccessfully tried to remove both Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and independent Cornel West from the ballot. Democrats feared that third party candidates would draw votes away from then-Vice President Kamala Harris. President Donald Trump won Wisconsin by more than 29,000 votes. Stein and West combined got about 15,000 votes.

Fusion voting was commonplace in the United States in the 1800s, a time when political parties nominated their preferred candidates without restriction. The practice helped lead to the creation of the Republican Party in 1854, when antislavery Whigs and Democrats, along with smaller parties, joined forces at a meeting in Wisconsin to create the GOP.

Less than 50 years later, in 1897, that same Republican Party enacted a prohibition on fusion voting in Wisconsin to weaken the Democratic Party and restrain development of additional political parties, the lawsuit contends. That’s in violation of the state constitution’s equal protection guarantee, United Wisconsin argues.

Similar anti-fusion laws began to take hold nationwide early in the early 1900s as the major political parties moved to reduce the influence and competition from minor parties.

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

Same candidate, two parties: Wisconsin lawsuit aims to bring back fusion voting 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.

Denise Jess walked into a Madison polling place on Saturday to vote early in person and encountered a familiar barrier: an absentee ballot envelope with a blank space for writing in her name, birthdate and address.

Jess, who is blind, chuckled along with her wife, who accompanied her to the polls. Who was going to do all that writing?

A poll worker quickly offered help, reminding Jess that she had the right to assistance. Jess, who is executive director of the Wisconsin Council of the Blind & Visually Impaired, knew she had those rights. But the moment still bothered her.

“It’s just a bummer,” she said, comparing voting with other tasks she performs independently, like identifying birds by ear, paying bills online, posting on social media, and grocery shopping. Voting is a constitutional right in Wisconsin and yet, she said, it remains far less accessible. 

Other industries have prioritized accessibility because it benefits their bottom line, she said, but voting systems were not originally designed with accessibility in mind.

“We’re making strides,” she said, “but it’s still always, always about retrofitting and trying to catch up.”

Jess’s experience illustrates a persistent tension in election policy: how to ensure both ballot security and accessibility for all voters. Electronic absentee voting is particularly nettlesome. Disability rights advocates have pushed for this option as a way for people with vision or other disabilities to vote independently, and in private, from home. But cybersecurity experts warn that current technology cannot guarantee that ballots returned electronically will be safe from hacking or manipulation.

Over a dozen other states provide fully electronic absentee voting for people with disabilities. In those states, voters with disabilities can receive a ballot electronically, mark it using a screen reader and return it electronically — similar to signing and returning a document electronically. Wisconsin isn’t one of them. Here, voters with disabilities must cast their votes on a paper ballot, or on an accessible voting machine at a polling place that prints out a paper ballot. 

That means that voters who are visually impaired or unable to write must often rely on others to complete their ballots — undermining ballot secrecy, which is also constitutionally protected. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when many disabled voters were reluctant to visit the polls in person, Wisconsin’s rules presented an even bigger barrier. 

Last year, four voters with disabilities, along with Disability Rights Wisconsin and the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, filed a lawsuit seeking access to electronic absentee voting. A lower court initially granted some voters that option, but an appeals court paused and eventually reversed that order. The case is now before the Dane County Circuit Court. 

Beyond the roughly dozen states that offer fully electronic voting, a few others, including Vermont, Michigan, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, allow voters with disabilities to fill out ballots electronically, but they have to print out the ballots and return them by mail, drop box, or in person. Verified Voting, a nonpartisan election technology group, promotes this option as a step forward for states wary of fully electronic voting.

That wouldn’t solve the issue for everyone, though. Jess pointed out that many blind voters don’t own printers, meaning they’d still face accessibility hurdles.

Security concerns haven’t been resolved

At a time of heightened concern over election security and integrity, some technology experts say fully electronic voting is still not ready to be used widely.

Between August 2021 and September 2022, the University of California, Berkeley, hosted a working group of election, technology and cybersecurity experts to discuss the feasibility of creating standards to enable safe and secure electronic marking and return technologies. The group found that widespread adoption of electronic return would require technologies that don’t currently exist or haven’t been tested. 

A 2024 report by several federal agencies, including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Election Assistance Commission, found that sending digital copies of ballots to voters is safe and that filling them out electronically is somewhat safe, but that returning them electronically adds significant security risks.

“Sheer force of will doesn’t suffice to solve this problem,” said Mark Lindeman, the policy and strategy director at Verified Voting. “There needs to be extensive technical innovations that we can’t just dial up.”

Lindeman said threats from electronic ballot return include the possibility that somebody hacks into the system and changes votes. One potential safeguard — having voters verify that their selections were received and counted correctly — remains unproven at scale, the UC-Berkeley working group said. 

“That’s the fundamental technical tragedy at this stage of the game,” Lindeman said. “Paper ballots are obviously inconvenient for many voters. They pose real obstacles to voting, but we haven’t found a technical alternative to paper ballots that solves all the problems.”

Denise Jess chooses ‘path of least pain’

In Wisconsin, Jess chooses among three imperfect voting options.

She can vote on Election Day in her polling place, whose layout she has memorized, though it can get too busy for her comfort. She can vote using an accessible machine but still has to hand-sign the poll book, something she typically does with the assistance of a poll worker and a signature guide, a small plastic card with a rectangular cutout that frames the area where she has to sign. 

Alternatively, she can vote absentee in person during the early voting period, but then she has to receive help with paperwork and navigating an unfamiliar polling place. 

Or she can fill out an application online and vote by mail, which she avoids because she can’t fill out a paper ballot without assistance.

“It’s kind of like, what’s the path of least pain?” she said.

For this Wisconsin Supreme Court election, given the potential for bad weather, she opted for early in-person voting at the Hawthorne Public Library, which isn’t her regular polling place. 

“There’s enough consistency here at Hawthorne, but still there are surprises,” she said, sitting at a table at the library on Madison’s east side. “Even the simple navigation of going to the table to get the envelope, getting in line. They’re queuing people to wait behind the blue tape, which, of course, I can’t see.”

She could opt for more hands-on help from poll workers to speed up the process, but she said she sees her voting trips as a chance to learn more about the potential barriers for people with disabilities.

Some voters who are newer to vision loss or have more severe barriers can quickly become demoralized by the extra energy they need to put into casting a ballot, especially if poll workers aren’t trained or ready to help, she said. 

“We’ve had voters say, ‘I’m not going back. I’m just not doing that again, doing that to myself,’ she said. “So then we lose a voter.”

If electronic voting were available, Jess said, she would do it a lot more often than voting in person because she wouldn’t have to depend on transportation or the weather. 

“It would just be absolutely liberating,” she said. “I might still vote in-person at my polling place periodically, because I like my poll workers, and I always like to visit with them and give them kudos. But it would surely ease some stress.”

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

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

How one voter navigates Wisconsin’s hurdles for people with disabilities 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.

Absentee voting didn’t used to be popular in Addison, a rural town of 3,300 in southeast Wisconsin. A few days before the last Supreme Court election in 2023, only about 60 residents had cast absentee ballots in person.

This year, at the same point in the election cycle, that number was over 300.

The sharp increase is due partly to Republicans’ recent embrace of absentee voting, especially in the nearly two-week period before Election Day when voters can cast absentee ballots in person. Washington County, where Addison is located, is one of the state’s most Republican counties and one of many Republican-dominated areas across Wisconsin where early voting rates have surged. 

But perhaps a bigger reason is a recent Washington County initiative aimed at making early voting more accessible for voters and more feasible for municipalities. The program compensates municipalities for the costs of extending their hours during the state’s early in-person voting period. It makes up for the gaps in municipal budgets that previously limited early voting opportunities.

“It really comes down to a matter of priorities,” Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann, a former municipal clerk, told Votebeat. “And there’s nothing more fundamental to county government and to government in general, in Wisconsin and America, than the opportunity for people to vote.” 

County absorbs the added costs for municipalities

The county first rolled out the initiative during the November 2024 election as part of a broader funding package approved by the county board. The package included over $150,000 for extended in-person absentee voting hours, voluntary audits and cameras for ballot drop boxes across the county. 

Public funding for such activities is more critical now after voters last year approved a Republican-written constitutional amendment banning private funding for election support, responding to a Republican outcry over private grants to fund election administration, especially in Democratic strongholds.

County Board Chair Jeff Schleif said he was eager to support the proposal because it would ensure that Republicans, who were just coming around to voting early, had the time and opportunity to do it, just as Democrats did in places like Milwaukee. 

“Our board is as conservative as it’s ever been,” he said, adding that extending early voting hours is helpful to everybody.

Moreover, Schleif said, the proposal would authorize and fund election audits that could debunk allegations from people like MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell that some voting machines were being hacked to change votes.

After the November election, about $71,000 of the funds remained unspent. This year, the county signed off on using that money to continue the program into this high-stakes April election.

For this election, the county is compensating municipalities at 150% of the added cost for extending their early voting hours beyond what they were in the April 2023 election. About 90% of the municipalities in the county are participating, Washington County Clerk Ashley Reichert, a Republican, said. The county also mailed voters a schedule of their town’s early voting hours.

Reichert said the initiative aims to provide local residents with voting opportunities comparable to urban areas, including weekend and night voting options. The additional hours benefit many residents who commute to Milwaukee for work and can’t vote during typical business hours, she said.

“We have quite a few very rural communities where the clerks are very part-time, and their budgets are small, and so for them, offering additional time was just not a feasible option,” she said. “Being able to take the funding off the table as a concern really helped quite a few of our municipalities.”

More hours for voting, and more voters showing up

Addison Town Clerk Wendy Fairbanks said early voting hours have expanded significantly due to the county’s support. In 2023, Addison’s early voting was generally open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday. Now it’s open as early as 7 a.m. and as late as 6 p.m., including Fridays.

“I’m able to bring in election workers to help me with this so I’m not doing it all on my own,” Fairbanks said. “Otherwise, I’d get no other work done.”

The county’s help, she continued, “takes the burden off the town, so that we’re not using money from our tax levy that could go towards road repair or something in the town.”

Another Washington County municipality, the village of Richfield, now offers Saturday hours for early voting thanks to county funding. About 90 residents participated on a recent Saturday, contributing to a total of 1,674 early ballots cast as of Thursday morning  — about double the amount from this time two years ago.

Village Administrator Jim Healy said the initiative was crucial for voters who couldn’t vote during regular hours. “We really felt strongly for these types of elections that have either state or national implications that we ought to try to go the extra mile,” Healy said, expressing hope that other Wisconsin counties might follow Washington County’s example.

In all, as of Thursday morning, Washington County had over 13,400 voters cast absentee ballots in person, nearly triple the number of votes at this point in the 2023 cycle and the fourth most in the state, despite it being only the 10th largest county by voting age population. 

While increased absentee voting means additional ballots to process, local clerks aren’t concerned about significantly longer counting times.

“This is absolutely adding one more thing,” Schoemann said, “but I also know that their biggest pain point is their budgets. They’re really, really tight. So we want to try to hit their biggest pain point where we can help them and get what voters want, and that is more opportunity.”

Other clerks look at the Washington County model

Reichert, the Washington County clerk, said she has heard from a number of county and municipal clerks, along with legislators, interested in replicating this initiative across the state. Right now, though, she said Washington County appears to be the only county offering municipal clerks that compensation. 

That may change soon: At a recent event, Rep. Scott Krug, a legislative leader who formerly chaired the Assembly Elections Committee, said one of his top upcoming legislative priorities was funding early voting so every municipality offers the same availability. He wasn’t available to comment further on Thursday.

Meanwhile, in most counties, early voting hours are uneven from town to town. In neighboring Ozaukee County, municipal clerks are staggering their hours to try to make time for residents seeking to vote early in person, said County Clerk Kellie Kretlow, a Republican. Some municipal election offices are open every day for early voting, while others are only open a few days across the nearly two-week voting period.

Sheboygan County Clerk Jon Dolson, a Republican, told Votebeat he was interested in the proposal but couldn’t see how his fiscally conservative board would approve a $15,000 funding increase, much less a $150,000 package like the one passed in neighboring Washington County. The county board recently cut the number of positions in his office, he said. 

So how did such a large spending proposal for election offices get through the fiscally conservative Washington County Board of Supervisors, which represents one of the most staunchly Republican constituencies in the state?

Schoemann, the county executive, said the board prioritized this initiative after years of disciplined budgeting and surplus management.

He said it was important for officials at the county level to take the lead, rather than expecting local clerks to each ask for help.

The proposals together were billed as an “election integrity package” that would enhance election security — a concern that Republicans have repeatedly raised.

Reichert, the county clerk, said it likely helped that the support for extended early voting hours was rolled into a broader package addressing security concerns around drop boxes and audits. Extending early voting hours itself addressed a security concern, she said, since some supervisors questioned whether mailed ballots would arrive too late or get lost in the mail.

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

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

How Wisconsin’s Washington County helped its municipalities expand early voting hours 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.

Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims.

No.

City of Milwaukee election officials process absentee ballots at one location on Election Day, which sometimes means ballots are still being fed into tabulators late that night or early the next morning. Results are reported once processing finishes.

Conservative Brad Schimel, who faces liberal Susan Crawford in the April 1 Wisconsin Supreme Court election, suggested the late counting was malfeasance, a long-debunked claim.

Schimel on March 18 urged supporters to vote early “so we don’t have to worry that at 11:30 in Milwaukee, they’re going to find bags of ballots that they forgot to put into the machines, like they did in 2018, or in 2024.”

Schimel lost his attorney general re-election bid in 2018. Republican Eric Hovde lost to U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., in the Nov. 5, 2024, election.

State law prohibits municipalities from preparing absentee ballots before Election Day. A bill that would allow an earlier start has stalled.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

• Wisconsin Watch: Did a late night ‘ballot dump’ in Milwaukee cost Eric Hovde the US Senate election?
• Reuters: Fact Check: Late-night Wisconsin election update for senator is not proof of fraud
• Votebeat: https://wisconsinwatch.org/2025/01/wisconsin-election-vote-ballot-absentee-clerks-milwaukee-republican-democrat/
• Associated Press: Schimel resurfaces debunked concerns about ballot counting in Milwaukee
• PolitiFact: No, an early morning influx of Milwaukee votes doesn't prove the Wisconsin Senate race was stolen
• WISN radio: Jay Weber Show – 3-18-25 Brad Schimel joins Jay and Past comments from Demo
• Milwaukee County Clerk: Milwaukee County 2024 General Election – Unofficial Results
• Wisconsin Watch: Does Wisconsin state law prohibit counting absentee ballots before Election Day?

Did Milwaukee election officials at the end of ballot counting ‘find bags of ballots that they forgot’? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

The Republican-backed candidate in Wisconsin’s closely watched state Supreme Court race has resurfaced long-debunked concerns about voting fraud because of the late reporting of ballots in Milwaukee just two weeks before the April 1 election.

Brad Schimel, a former Republican attorney general, spoke of the possibility of “bags of ballots” and fraud in Milwaukee during an interview Tuesday on conservative talk radio. Schimel faces Democratic-backed Susan Crawford in the April 1 election with majority control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court at stake.

Schimel, in an interview on WISN-AM, said his supporters need to “get our votes banked, make this too big to rig so we don’t have to worry that at 11:30 in Milwaukee, they’re going to find bags of ballots that they forgot to put into the machines.”

Schimel said that happened in 2018 and in November “when (U.S. Senate candidate) Eric Hovde was ahead all night, and then all of a sudden, Milwaukee County changed that.”

Republicans and Democrats alike, along with state and Milwaukee election leaders, warned in the run-up to the November election that Milwaukee absentee ballots would be reported late and cause a huge influx of Democratic votes. Milwaukee is the state’s most populated city and is heavily Democratic. Its chief elections official was chosen with bipartisan support.

The reporting of those absentee ballots swung the 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden, fueling baseless conspiracy theories that the election had been stolen from President Donald Trump.

Milwaukee’s absentee ballots are counted at a central location and reported all at once, often well after midnight on Election Day. Elections officials for years have made clear that those ballots are reported later than usual due to the sheer number that have to be counted and because state law does not allow them to be processed until polls open.

A bipartisan bill to allow for processing prior to Election Day died in the Republican-controlled Senate last year. Republicans, who have controlled the Legislature since 2011, routinely complain about slow processing in Milwaukee but have not passed bills to allow for speedier counting.

In 2018, the reporting of more than 47,000 absentee ballots after midnight put Democrat Tony Evers ahead of then-Gov. Scott Walker. Evers went on to win, and Walker criticized the late reporting, saying it blindsided him.

And in November, Hovde said he was “shocked” by the reporting of more than 108,000 ballots in Milwaukee early in the morning after the election in his defeat to Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin.

Schimel said in the radio interview he didn’t know what happened.

“I don’t know if there was fraud there,” Schimel said. “There’s no way for me to know that. All I know is this: We need to turn our votes out. That’s the best insulation we have against any potential fraud, is just get our people to the polls.”

Asked about his concerns during an appearance later Tuesday at the Milwaukee Rotary Club, Schimel said he brought up fraud because voters often ask him how to guarantee election integrity.

“I tell people, by following the rules,” Schimel said. “And then I tell them, ‘Here’s the best way to make sure your vote isn’t stolen: Go use it.’ That’s the answer.”

Yet despite his concerns, Schimel said: “I will always accept the results of the election.”

Crawford’s spokesperson, Derrick Honeyman, said Schimel was “dabbling in conspiracy theories to please his ally, Elon Musk, and it’s unbecoming of a judge and candidate for the state’s high court.”

Groups funded by billionaire Musk have contributed more than $11 million to help Schimel’s campaign. Crawford is backed by several billionaire Democrats, including philanthropist George Soros and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker.

Schimel’s comments drew criticism from the Democracy Defense Project, a bipartisan coalition promoting truth about elections that includes former Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen.

“There is no evidence of fraud in Milwaukee, but the failure of the state to allow early counting on absentee ballots before the close of polls feeds into conspiracy theories,” the group said in a statement.

The election comes as the court faces cases on abortion, public sector unions, voting rules and congressional district boundaries.

The court is currently controlled 4-3 by liberals, but one of them is retiring, creating the battle for the majority.

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

Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel resurfaces debunked voting fraud concerns 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.

Four Wisconsin voters whose ballots were not counted in the November presidential election initiated a class-action lawsuit Thursday seeking $175,000 in damages each.

The voters were among 193 in Madison whose ballots were misplaced by the city clerk and not discovered until weeks after the election. Not counting the ballots didn’t affect the result of any races.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission investigated but did not determine whether Madison Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl failed to comply with state law or abused her discretion.

She didn’t notify the elections commission of the problem until December, almost a month and a half after the election and after the results were certified on Nov. 29.

The goal is to reinforce and strengthen the right to vote in Wisconsin, said attorney Jeff Mandell, who is general counsel of Law Forward, which filed claims against the city of Madison and Dane County on Thursday.

“When people’s votes are not counted, when the right to vote is violated, our democracy is diminished,” Mandell said during a news conference announcing the action.

The four affected voters are seeking $175,000 each from the city of Madison and Dane County. That is above the $50,000 maximum that can be sought in class-action lawsuits against municipalities.

The lawsuit will argue that the cap is unconstitutional, the notice of claim said.

The number of affected voters who could join the lawsuit might grow, Mandell said. All of the voters whose ballots were not counted are named in the notice made public Thursday.

Madison takes election integrity seriously, the city’s spokesperson, Dylan Brogan, said in reaction. He noted that the clerk’s office apologized for the error both publicly and to each affected voter.

The clerk’s office has also taken steps to ensure the such a mistake won’t happen again and looked forward to additional guidance from the state elections commission, Brogan said. He declined to comment specifically on the lawsuit.

The state elections commission is scheduled to discuss its investigation into the uncounted ballots on Friday.

According to a summary of its findings, the clerk didn’t explain what exactly happened at the polling places, how the uncounted ballots went unnoticed all day on Election Day or how they were misplaced.

She also hasn’t said whether she spoke to the chief inspectors in the affected wards to find out what happened, making it difficult to develop guidelines to help election clerks throughout the state avoid similar issues, investigators said.

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

Wisconsin voters whose ballots were not counted in November election seek damages 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.

A divided Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that a Republican Party official lacked the standing to bring a lawsuit challenging the use of a mobile voting van in 2022.

The lawsuit sought to ban the use of mobile voting vans in any future election in the presidential battleground state. The court did not address the legality of mobile voting sites in its ruling, meaning mobile voting vans could be used in future elections.

A single van has been used only once — in Racine in a primary election in 2022. It allowed voters to cast absentee ballots in the two weeks leading up to the election. Racine, the Democratic National Committee and others argue that nothing in state law prohibits the use of voting vans. City officials said that in light of the state Supreme Court ruling, they plan to use the van again during the state’s elections in April, calling it an important tool for ensuring all voters can cast their ballots.

The court did not rule on the merits of the case. Instead, it ruled 4-3 to dismiss the case, with four liberal justices in the majority and three conservative justices dissenting.

The Supreme Court ruled that the Racine County voter who brought the lawsuit, the county’s Republican Party chairman, Ken Brown, was not “aggrieved” under state law and therefore was not permitted to sue.

Brown filed a complaint the day after the August 2022 primary with the Wisconsin Elections Commission, arguing that the van violated state law. He argued that it was only sent to Democratic-leaning areas in the city in an illegal move to bolster turnout.

Racine city Clerk Tara McMenamin disputed those accusations, saying it shows a misunderstanding of the city’s voting wards, which traditionally skew Democratic.

The elections commission dismissed the complaint four days before the 2022 election, saying there was no probable cause shown to believe the law had been broken. Brown sued.

Justice Rebecca Bradley, who wrote the dissent in Tuesday’s ruling, said the ruling means that the elections commission’s decision will be left unreviewed by courts “and the People are left, once again, without a decision on fundamental issues of election law enacted to protect their sacred right to vote.”

Bradley said the ruling will make it more difficult for any voter who believes election law has been violated to bring lawsuits.

“The majority, once again, refashions the law to its own liking as it shuts the doors of the courthouse to voters,” Bradley wrote.

The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, a conservative law firm, represented Brown. The firm’s deputy counsel, Lucas Vebber, said in a statement that the ruling prevents Wisconsin residents from holding government officials accountable.

Wisconsin’s Democratic attorney general, Josh Kaul, praised the ruling, saying the decision means that “in-person absentee voting will remain widely available and won’t be unnecessarily restricted.”

Republicans in this case argued that it violates state law to operate mobile voting sites, that their repeated use would increase the chances of voter fraud, and that the one in Racine was used to bolster Democratic turnout.

Wisconsin law prohibits locating any early voting site in a place that gives an advantage to any political party. There are other limitations on early voting sites, including a requirement that they be “as near as practicable” to the clerk’s office.

For the 2022 election, McMenamin, the Racine clerk, and the city had a goal of making voting as accessible to as many voters as possible.

Racine purchased its van with grant money from the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a nonprofit funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife. Republicans have been critical of the grants, calling the money “Zuckerbucks” that they say was used to tilt turnout in Democratic areas.

Wisconsin voters last year approved a Republican-backed constitutional amendment banning the use of private money to help run elections.

The van was used only to facilitate early in-person voting during the two weeks prior to that 2022 election, McMenamin said. It traveled for two weeks across the city, allowing voters to cast in-person absentee ballots in 21 locations.

A Racine County Circuit Court judge sided with Republicans, ruling that state election laws do not allow for the use of mobile voting sites.

The elections commission argued on appeal that Brown did not have standing to seek an appeal in court of the commission’s decision. The law allows for anyone who is “aggrieved” by a commission order to seek judicial review, but the state Supreme Court said Brown failed to show how he suffered because of the commission’s decision.

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.

Wisconsin Supreme Court rules Republican had no right to bring lawsuit challenging mobile voting 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.

Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims.

No.

Twenty-one states, including Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia offered Election Day voter registration for the Nov. 5 election.

That meant eligible voters could both register and cast a ballot on Election Day.

North Dakota has no registration but requires proof of identification to vote.

Republican Eric Hovde claimed Feb. 12 that the number of states was six. He suggested fraud caused his Nov. 5 loss to U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis. 

The margin was nearly 29,000 votes (49.3% to 48.5%).

Hovde didn’t reply to a call for comment. 

He might have been alluding to the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, which exempted six states. Wisconsin was exempted because it had Election Day registration. 

Wisconsin requires proof of residency to register and photo identification to vote.

Its same-day registration can complicate verifying eligibility of certain voters.

Wisconsin’s spring election, featuring two candidates for Supreme Court, is April 1; the primary, featuring three candidates for state schools superintendent, is Feb. 18.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

• National Conference of State Legislatures: Same-Day Voter Registration
• Center for Election Innovation and Research: Data Dive: Voter Registration Deadlines before the 2024 General Election
• North Dakota secretary of state: Voting in North Dakota
• X: Eric Hovde post
• Wisconsin Elections Commission: WEC Canvass Reporting System County by County Report 2024 General Election
• University of Wisconsin-Madison: Political science professor Barry Burden email
• Bipartisan Policy Center: Matthew Weil email
• U.S. Justice Department: National Voter Registration Act of 1993
• Wisconsin Elections Commission: Proof Of Residence For Voter Registration
• Wisconsin Watch: Wisconsin’s system to block ineligible voters lets some on felony probation slip through

Is Wisconsin one of only six states with same-day voter registration? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Friday rejected an attempt by a conservative activist to obtain guardianship records in an effort to find ineligible voters, but the case could return.

The court did not rule on the merits of the case, instead saying in its 5-2 decision that a lower appeals court did not follow proper procedure when it issued a ruling saying the records should be released.

Here’s what to know:

Conservative activist brought the case

The case tested the line between protecting personal privacy rights and ensuring that ineligible people can’t vote.

Former travel agent Ron Heuer and a group he leads, the Wisconsin Voter Alliance, allege that the number of ineligible voters doesn’t match the count on Wisconsin’s voter registration list. Heuer asked the state Supreme Court to rule that counties must release records filed when a judge determines that someone isn’t competent to vote so that those names can be compared to the voter registration list.

Justices lean on technicality to reject the case

The justices said the District II appeals court, based in Waukesha, was wrong to overturn a Walworth County Circuit Court ruling denying access to the records. In a nearly identical lawsuit, the District IV appeals court, based in Madison, had denied access to the records saying they were not subject to disclosure under the state public records law.

Justice Janet Protasiewicz, writing for the majority, said that the District II appeals court could have sent the case to the Supreme Court, explaining why the other appeals court ruling was incorrect.

If it follows the proper procedure for doing that, the case could end up right back before the Supreme Court again. In the meantime, the Supreme Court sent the case back to the appeals court for further action.

All four liberal justices were joined by conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn in the majority. He said the different branches of the appeals court must be unified in their actions.

Chief Justice Annette Ziegler and Justice Rebecca Bradley, both conservatives, dissented, saying the court “leaves unresolved issues of great importance to voters, election officials, and people from whom courts have removed the right to vote due to incompetency.”

Sam Hall, the attorney for Walworth County, praised the ruling.

“We all agree that election integrity is fundamental and our citizens must have confidence in our elective process, while also respecting the dignity of those individuals subject to guardianship orders,” he said.

A court has the power to remove the right to vote from a person under a guardianship order if the person is determined to be unable to understand “the objective of the election process.”

The attorney for Heuer did not immediately return an email seeking comment.

Case was one of several targeting 2020 election

The case was an attempt by those who questioned the outcome of the 2020 presidential race to cast doubt on the integrity of elections in the presidential swing state. Heuer and the WVA filed lawsuits in 13 Wisconsin counties in 2022 seeking guardianship records.

The District II appeals court in 2023 overturned a circuit court ruling dismissing the case and found that the records are public. It ordered Walworth County to release them with birthdates and case numbers redacted.

Heuer and the WVA have pushed conspiracy theories about the 2020 election in a failed attempt to overturn President Joe Biden’s win in Wisconsin. Heuer was hired as an investigator in the discredited 2020 election probe led by former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman that found no evidence of fraud or abuse that would have changed the election results.

The WVA also filed two unsuccessful lawsuits that sought to overturn Biden’s win in Wisconsin.

Trump won Wisconsin in 2024 after losing in 2020

Biden defeated Donald Trump by nearly 21,000 votes in Wisconsin in 2020, a result that has withstood independent and partisan audits and reviews, as well as lawsuits and the recounts Trump requested. Trump won Wisconsin in 2024 by about 29,000 votes.

There are no pending lawsuits challenging the results of the 2024 election or calls to investigate the outcome.

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.

Wisconsin Supreme Court refuses to release voter records sought by conservative activist 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.

Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims.

No.

U.S. citizenship is required to vote in Wisconsin, but election officials generally don’t try to verify citizenship when someone registers to vote.

Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, made the citizenship claim Nov. 24, 2024. 

The Wisconsin Elections Commission said Nov. 5:

• “Voters must attest to their U.S. citizenship on their voter registration form under penalty of perjury.” 
• Wisconsin and federal law don’t provide for systematically verifying citizenship “beyond the attestation.”
• Falsely claiming citizenship at registration is a felony.

There’s no evidence of noncitizens voting in elections in meaningful numbers.

Voters Nov. 5 amended the Wisconsin Constitution to limit voting to citizens. Republican supporters said it would prevent any move allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections, as some U.S. jurisdictions allow.

Over 9% of voting-age U.S. citizens (21.3 million people) cannot readily access proof of citizenship, because they do not have it or could not access it easily, a University of Maryland survey released in June said.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

• Wisconsin Elections Commission What Are the Rules Regarding Citizens and Voting in Wisconsin?
• WISN 12 News UPFRONT: Speaker Vos 1-on-1
• Wisconsin Watch Noncitizen voting rarely happens. But Wisconsin voters are hearing a lot about it.
• Associated Press Noncitizen voting, already illegal in federal elections, becomes centerpiece of 2024 GOP messaging
• University of Maryland Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement Who Lacks ID in America Today? An Exploration of Voter ID Access, Barriers, and Knowledge
• Wisconsin Public Radio Wisconsin voters OK changes to constitutional language on citizens and voting
• Wisconsin Watch Has the District of Columbia adopted a law allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections?
• Ballotpedia Laws permitting noncitizens to vote in the United States

Do Wisconsin election officials verify citizenship when a person registers to vote? 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.