A rural county in central Wisconsin has filed a lawsuit seeking to remove its county treasurer elected less than a year ago and replace her with the person she defeated in that election.
Adams County filed suit last week asking the court to declare that Treasurer Kara Dolezal “vacated” her position and her former opponent Kim Meinhardt is “entitled to hold that office.”
Dolezal, a Republican, defeated Meinhardt, an independent, by more than 900 votes in November 2024. In April, Dolezal was reelected to her post as town treasurer for the town of Lincoln in Adams County, a position she held prior to being elected to county-wide office.
In both the lawsuit and the county board resolution, Adams County has argued Dolezal vacated her county office by accepting a “legally incompatible” position with the town.
In a statement, Adams County said it is “confident in its legal position.” The county said it’s taking the issue to court to bring “finality” to the situation.
“Understanding that a lot of interest in this issue has found its way into the media and on social media, the County is not going to comment on ongoing litigation or try the case outside of the courtroom,” the statement reads.
But Krug said it’s long been common in Wisconsin for people to hold similar offices for both their town and county.
He said he’s working with colleagues to introduce legislation to clarify it’s possible for the same person to hold positions as county and town treasurer at the same time if both are elected positions.
“We are specifically going to say that there is no contradiction or incompatibility between the role of county treasurer and town treasurer when both are elected by people in their community,” Krug said.
But he also said the lawmakers are trying to do so without interfering with the court’s process.
“We’re trying to be cognizant of the court process while we’re introducing legislation,” Krug said. “But at the same time … we still want legislation coming forward to protect those individuals from having to go through the same type of thing, and, on the flip side of it, trying to protect their communities from having to go through exorbitant legal fees.”
Republican Rep. Scott Krug is seen at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Wis., on Nov. 2, 2023. (Meghan Spirito / Wisconsin Watch)
While Dolezal has continued to perform her duties as county treasurer following the county board’s vote, Meinhardt took the oath of office for the position on May 12, according to the suit.
Dolezal has held both offices since January and was never asked to resign from her post with the town, she told WPR earlier this month. In a May 3 statement, Dolezal said she didn’t view the two positions as “incompatible” and she was transparent about being a town treasurer when she ran for county office.
“The voters still elected me as their County Treasurer,” she stated. “I believe it sets a concerning precedent if County Board Supervisors can override the will of the voters.”
Dolezal’s attorney, Catherine La Fleur, was not available for comment Tuesday.
In the lawsuit, attorneys for the county said public officials cannot simultaneously hold incompatible offices, citing a past state attorney general opinion that says the duties of a local treasurer and county treasurer are “wholly inconsistent.”
“A town treasurer collects property taxes on behalf of, not only the town, but the county, state, and other taxing jurisdictions in which the town is located,” the complaint states. “As a result, the town treasurer is subordinate to the county treasurer.”
After Dolezal took office with the county in January, the complaint states that disputes arose between Dolezal and local treasurers within the county during the property tax settlement process in the spring of 2025.
According to the complaint, the dispute was “regarding the treatment of certain property tax payments, resulting in the County directing an audit of the County Treasurer’s office.”
Mary Lou Poehler, treasurer for the town of Springville in Adams County, spoke in public comment at the county board’s meeting last month. Poehler said “financial issues” had arisen with the county since Dolezal took office.
“Being a town treasurer, I know of a lot of these,” Poehler said at the April 29 meeting. “And our town, for one, was shorted quite a bit of money.”
But Krug, the area lawmaker, said the county did not follow the proper process for removing an elected official, which requires a notice, public hearing and two-thirds vote.
Regardless of whether the county felt both offices were incompatible or had performance concerns, Krug said the board still should have followed the process outlined in state statute.
“You could just follow a simple state statute process to legitimize it,” he said. “When you take time to think and slow down, you could actually accomplish the same goal without looking like you’re trying to do something behind the scenes.”
At the Republican state convention Saturday, Derrick Van Orden suggested ending Wisconsin’s spring elections — a move that would require an amendment to the state constitution. His suggestion comes after a series of losses by conservatives in spring elections.
The next battle for Wisconsin's Supreme Court is shaping up with liberal state Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor announcing Tuesday that she will challenge conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley. While the race won't tip the balance of power on the state's highest court like the last two Supreme Court contests, it could potentially grow liberals' current majority.
Randy Bryce in a still from the video for his 2026 Congressional campaign. (Bryce campaign photo)
Randy Bryce, the former iron worker who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in Wisconsin’s First District in 2018, is taking another shot at the seat, focusing again on a pitch for voters to send an everyday worker to Washington.
Bryce announced Tuesday he would seek the Democratic nomination to run against Republican incumbent Bryan Steil in 2026.
Bryce said he expects the top issues in the race to be preserving Social Security and other safety net programs, resisting President Donald Trump’s steep tariffs and attacks on immigrants and pushing back against the general climate of fear as Republicans enact the Trump agenda.
“I cannot sit and just watch this happen,” Bryce said in an interview Monday. “And with Trump it’s even worse now, with people literally being afraid.”
Bryce’s first2026 campaign video, launched Tuesday morning, hearkens back to the 2018 campaign, when “one man stood up to Washington,” in the words of the opening narration. “He’s not a politician or a billionaire. He’s something much more rare in Congress, someone who actually works for a living.”
The video puts Trump and his policies front and center, and it depicts the 2026 campaign as finishing a job that Bryce began in his first run for the seat.
When the president’s image first appears, the narrator says, “as old enemies come out of the shadows…” A follow-up shot shows a welder — Bryce — in a darkened workshop, and the narrator says, “we need him one more time.”
“I’ve never left the job unfinished,” Bryce tells the camera. “For 20 years, I’ve helped build Wisconsin with these hands while they shipped our jobs overseas. I stayed right here fighting for working families. Trump promised to bring manufacturing back. Eight years later, we’re still waiting.”
Bryce made national headlines with the 2018 race — a campaign he launched the year before with the intention of running against the district’s 20-year incumbent, then-U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan.
Ryan, who by then was U.S. House Speaker, unexpectedly declined to run for an 11th term however. Since then Bryce has claimed credit for having “chased Paul Ryan out.”
Steil, a corporate lawyer who was once a Ryan congressional aide, ran in Ryan’s place after handily overcoming five primary election challengers.
Bryce’s campaign was widely seen as energetic and novel for the district, which has been in Republican hands since the 1994 election. With the exception of Rob Zerban in 2012, Ryan’s Democratic challengers since 2004 garnered only about a third of voters, ranging from 30% to 37%. In 2018, Bryce finished with 42%. Since that election, Democrats have cleared from 40% to 45% in the 1st CD.
Since that campaign Bryce has headlined a fundraising operation raising money for progressive political candidates, many of them with working-class backgrounds akin to his.
Bryce is entering the 2026 campaign midway through the first year of a Trump term. Progressive and Democratic Party groups who asked if he would run again pointed out that his last campaign had roughly the same timing in Trump’s first term, Bryce told the Wisconsin Examiner, and the decision to run has “been gradually building.”
Cuts to the Veterans Administration is another issue that helped push him to run, said Bryce, a U.S. Army veteran. The agency is one of several that have been disrupted by the DOGE operation (the “Department of Government Efficiency,” although it is not an official U.S. government department) that until recently was run by billionaire and Trump supporter Elon Musk.
The campaign video plays up Bryce’s longtime social media nickname, “IronStache” — trading on the thick mustache he has sported for decades. While it shows flashes of Steil’s face and includes snippets of voters who are criticizing the incumbent, neither the narration nor Bryce mention the incumbent by name.
In the interview, Bryce said in addition to working with the union and grassroots progressive groups that rallied behind him in his first race, he would make an appeal to disaffected Trump voters who are being harmed by current federal policies.
“I want to go places where Democrats normally haven’t gone,” he said. “I want to bring more people together.”
Steil is “listening to his leadership [in Congress] and his donors, he’s not listening to the people that voted for him,” Bryce charged. “And he’s not doing anything to stand up to Trump. The Constitution was drawn up to stop somebody like Trump. But Congress isn’t doing their job. They’re helping enable whatever Trump wants to go on.”
Wisconsin Republican Party Chair Brian Schimming called on Wisconsin Republicans to focus and move forward to elections next year, saying they "won the country last November and saved America. Next year, we can save Wisconsin." Schimming and state Treasurer John Leiber speak to reporters at the RNC in 2024. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)
Wisconsin’s Republicans urged party members to put aside their differences over the weekend, saying that unity will be necessary if they want to win the 2026 elections for governor, Congress and the state Legislature.
The state party reflected on recent elections as they met in Rothschild, Wisconsin. Many of the state’s top Republicans delivered glowing reviews of Trump’s first few months in office and celebrated Wisconsin’s role in helping reelect him.
“We are seeing President Trump honor the promises he made,” U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson said. “That was made possible because of people like you that delivered the 10 electoral votes to President Trump of Wisconsin.”
Despite Trump carrying the state in November, the state party is reeling from recent losses.
Johnson called the April Wisconsin Supreme Court election “stinging” and a “crushing defeat.”
Republicans’ preferred candidate Brad Schimel lost his bid for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court by nearly 10 percentage points, solidifying a liberal majority on the Court at least until 2027. It was the third Supreme Court election in a row that conservatives lost after Dan Kelly was defeated by double digits in both 2020 and 2023. The Republican-endorsed candidate for the spring state Superintendent race, Brittany Kinser, also lost in April. Kinser, a school choice advocate, thanked the party for its help at the convention.
“There’s no way you can sugarcoat that,” Johnson said.
Johnson said the results were because of “voters who came out to try and save America by electing Donald Trump” but didn’t come out to vote in April to “ensure that [Trump] would have four years where he could implement his agenda without possibly the majority shifting in the House.” He said the party needs to work to get voters out in non-presidential elections. , especially as Trump is in his second term and is barred from running again by the U.S. Constitution.
“As much as many would want Donald Trump to be on the ballot again, he won’t be. He won’t be, and we’re going to figure out how we win, but without Donald Trump on the ballot here in Wisconsin, so that’s just a hard truth,” Johnson said.
Fights within county parties have also broken out since the April elections. Those divisions were on display at the convention as some from a local county party sought to keep Kelly Ruh, the party treasurer and one of the people to serve as a fake elector for Trump in 2020, from being seated as a delegate. Her supporters said it was “absurd” that members of the party would seek to block their own treasurer from voting, while others said she shouldn’t be seated because to do so would subvert the vote taken by the county party. The full convention voted to seat her anyway.
“There’s always power struggles,” Johnson, who declined to take sides in any fights, said. “But I have to admit in the 15 years since I entered the political process, I’ve never seen as many squabbles.”
Johnson warned that the party won’t be able to win if Republicans are “disunified.”
U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden echoed Johnson’s calls for unity, saying that people didn’t vote because Republicans were fighting.
“If I hear one more person, say, RINO [an acronym for Republican in Name Only], you’re gonna get the horn,” Van Orden said. “Knock it off. We are Republicans who are Americans who are patriots. We love our country. We love our families. We love our communities.”
Wisconsin RNC Chairman Terry Dittrich said Republicans need to up their game and don’t have time to waste ahead of 2026.
“We stop the infighting. We start working together. We welcome the youth in. We pay attention to our goal… to make sure President Trump can finish his job in four years and go on with JD Vance for another four years and another four years and another four years,” Dittrich said. “Let’s all unify.”
State Treasurer John Leiber is leading an effort to examine the recent losses — a job he was assigned by Schimming. At the convention, Leiber cautioned party members against “pointing fingers” at others.
“That doesn’t help anyone… What I’m focused on is how we can use that experience, learn from it and figure out how to win in 2026,” Leiber said.
Lieber said his committee is working to gather information and data to understand ways of making progress, and he asked attendees to fill out a handout to provide feedback. He noted that he is up for reelection in 2026.
“I want to win, so I don’t have any reason to try to smooth things over or sugarcoat. If anything I want to identify what exactly we need to do, what we can do better, how we do it better, and identify the ways that we can all work together to accomplish our goal, which is of course winning,” Leiber said.
Schimming said that the party has to be honest about the April elections and the frustration about them. But he said Republicans need to focus and move forward to win the next election.
“Doesn’t mean we agree on everything. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t change tactics or strategies, but it means we gotta look forward… We’re gonna work together. We’re gonna listen. We’re going to lead. We’re going to lead, and we’re going to do what it takes to win. We won the country last November and saved America. Next year, we can save Wisconsin,” Schimming said.
2026 gubernatorial, legislative and Supreme Court elections
The calls for unity come during an off year for Wisconsin elections but also as crucial gubernatorial and state legislative races lie ahead in November 2026. A race for the state Supreme Court will also take place in April with Justice Rebecca Bradley up for reelection, though that race, which won’t tip the ideological balance of the Court, wasn’t a prominent focus at the convention.
Gov. Tony Evers has yet to decide whether he will run for a third term, but Republicans are intent on putting a Republican in office, whether that means ousting Evers or defeating another Democratic candidate. So far, only one Republican, Washington Co. Executive Josh Schoemann, has launched his campaign for the office.
U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany is also considering a run for governor and spent the majority of his time on stage at the convention taking jabs at Evers.
“The question — as we have this great reset led by President Trump — is will Wisconsin be one of the winners?” Tiffany said. “Will Wisconsin be one of the winners like Texas and South Dakota, Tennessee, Florida? States like that are winning, people are moving to those states, businesses are growing, people want to be there. Are we going to be one of those states or are we going to be like the losers in Illinois and Minnesota?”
“We all know what the problems are. The question is how are we going to fix it?” Tiffany said. “We can fix it easily by replacing Tony Evers in 2026.”
U.S. Rep. Tony Wied from Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional District said Republicans need to keep up their momentum into the next year, and in the race for governor the “fight starts right now” and can’t wait.
“We have a governor who refuses to even say the word mother,” Wied said, referring to Evers’ proposal to update language in state laws related to infertility treatments, “who fights the Trump administration at every single turn, who would rather protect illegal aliens than hard-working Wisconsinites.
State Rep. Mark Born (R-Spring Green) and Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) were also critical of Evers during a panel discussion. Born said he introduced a “ridiculous budget again” that included “reckless spending,” and “massive policy trying to rewrite everything that’s happened in the state in the last more than a decade now.” LeMahieu said that Evers is trying to “turn us into Minnesota, turn us into Illinois — states that have out of control spending.”
“If you could think of a dumb idea for government, the governor probably had it in his budget,” Born said.
Lawmakers said it would be essential they keep control of the Senate and Assembly to continue to stop Democrats’ agenda.
Running under new legislative maps in 2024, Republican lawmakers lost 14 state legislative seats in the last elections — leaving them with slimmer majorities in the Senate and Assembly. In 2026, Democrats are seeking to flip the Assembly, which currently has a 54-45 Republican majority, and the Senate, which currently has an 18-15 Republican majority.
“We’re going to be up against it this next year, but we’re out there fighting, knocking on doors. We are the firewall against really horrible liberal policies coming into Wisconsin,” LeMahieu said.
The Senate will be particularly crucial as it will be the first time the new district lines are in place for the half of the seats up for election. While addressing the convention, former Gov. Tommy Thompson said some have been telling him that they are afraid they will lose the state Senate.
“Don’t even think that way,” Thompson said. “We are winners, not losers. We’re going to campaign. We are going to unite… and we’re going to win.”
Trump’s agenda
Republicans were complimentary of Trump’s first few months in office, including his efforts to detain and deport noncitizens, bar transgender people from certain spaces, eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and cut investments in social programs.
Wied said the border is “more secure than at any other point in history.”
“Trump is doing what he said he would do. Under President Trump and Republican leadership, illegal immigrants will no longer be given a free pass in this country,” Wied said. “If you break the law, you are going to face consequences.”
“Isn’t it great that border crossings are going down and deportations are going up?” Tiffany asked. “Isn’t it great to live in America like that?
Johnson was not completely on board with everything Trump is doing, expressing concern about the cost of the so-called “big beautiful bill” Trump is working to get through Congress, which using the budget reconciliation process to make the 2017 tax cuts permanent, increase funding for immigration enforcement, expand work requirements for food assistance and cut Medicaid costs by implementing work requirements.
“The big, beautiful bill isn’t what it’s advertised to be,” Johnson said. “We’re not going to be bending the debt curve down. We would be exacerbating the problem by a total of about $4 trillion over the next 10 years.”
Splitting from Johnson, Van Orden said that Republicans should also be united on Trump’s bill.
“We don’t need grandstanders in the Republican party — stop talking and get it done,” Van Orden said, echoing Trump.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina delivered a keynote address to the convention, praising Trump for his immigration policies and his efforts to stop transgender women from participating on women’s sports teams. Mace is known for seeking to bar transgender people from certain spaces, including bathrooms, locker rooms, and targeting her Democratic transgender colleague in the House of Representatives and other transgender individuals.
“I like an immigration policy kind of how I like my sweet tea — with a lot of ICE,” Mace said, playing on the acronym for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“There has never been a president stronger than Donald Trump. They impeached him. They raided his home. They indicted him. They even shot him, and the man still survived. He stood tall. We prayed for him every single time, because no weapon formed against him shall ever prosper,” Mace said. “Trump is back. He’s securing the border. He’s deporting illegals. He’s protecting women’s sports, and he’s declaring there are only two genders, and DEI under Donald J Trump is DOA.”
Mace, who noted she’s considering running for governor of South Carolina in the future, took her comments further telling convention goers that the U.S. is in a battle.
“It’s not necessarily a battle between the parties or left and right or ideology. It is a battle between good and between evil, and we cannot allow this evil to win,” Mace said.
Republican activists gathered in Rothschild for their annual state party convention this weekend. While speakers celebrated President Donald Trump's agenda, the event also underscored divisions within the party after a bruising defeat in April's Wisconsin Supreme Court election.
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.”
Rock County Clerk Lisa Tollefson, seen at an Aug. 29, 2023, hearing at the State Capitol in Madison, Wis., supports an ongoing legislative effort to repeal a law requiring election officials to write down unique ID numbers on absentee ballots. (Drake White-Bergey / Wisconsin Watch)
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.
Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer is joining the DLCC board. Neubauer takes questions from reporters alongside Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein in Jan. 2025. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
Wisconsin Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer is joining the Board of Directors for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) — the national organization dedicated to electing Democrats to state legislatures.
The Racine Democrat, who has been in the Legislature since 2018 and has led Assembly Democrats since 2021, joins the board as Wisconsin Democrats seek majorities in both chambers for the first time in many years in 2026.
Neubauer said DLCC President Heather Williams asked her to join the board and it’s a sign of the organization’s “deep commitment” to Wisconsin and understanding that a trifecta could be possible in 2026.
“They want to be a part of helping us flip this state blue,” Neubauer said. “DLCC of course is focused on the national strategy of supporting democratic legislatures to win majorities in legislative chambers. They have had great success in the last few years… so I’m excited to be part of that national strategy work.”
Williams said in a statement that “all eyes should be on the states in 2025” and Neubauer is a leader to watch.
“As state Democrats continue to overperform in special elections and counter the chaos in Washington, we are laying the foundation for Democratic success up and down the ticket,” Williams said. “Our board members represent some of the sharpest minds in politics, and I’m excited to partner with them to build our plan for victory for cycles to come.”
In the past, the DLCC has invested in helping Wisconsin Democrats win and outlined strategies for winning targeted seats.
Neubauer said it has been helpful getting to know leaders in other states where Democrats have successfully flipped control of their legislative chambers including Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania. She said she has learned a lot from those leaders and is trying to bring those lessons back to Democrats in Wisconsin, especially when it comes to preparing to be in the majority.
“When we do win, we want to take advantage of the opportunity and pass policy that is going to materially improve people’s lives very quickly, so that’s been really helpful to me to speak with them about how they prepared to govern, how they worked with their caucuses,” Neubauer said, adding that Democrats have 10 new Assembly members this year and hope to grow that number now that the Legislature has passed new maps that no longer overwhelmingly favor Republicans. “The level of program that we run during the campaign cycle, the amount of money we need to raise and candidates we’re supporting has grown significantly since we got the fair maps. I’m getting all sorts of advice from those leaders both about governing and about effectively campaigning, winning majorities.”
When it comes to its targets for 2025-26, Wisconsin is one of five of the DLCC’s “battleground” states where legislative majorities are determined by the slimmest of margins.
New legislative maps were put in place last year by the state Legislature and Gov. Tony Evers after the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled the old maps were an unconstitutional gerrymander. Democrats in Wisconsin haven’t held a legislative majority in the Senate or Assembly since 2010, and under the old maps, Senate Republicans were able to win two-thirds of the seats, while Republicans held a 64-35 majority.
Under the new maps, Democrats in 2024 were able to pick up 10 Assembly seats and now hold 45 of 99 seats. They also added four Senate seats and now hold 15 seats out of 33 in that chamber.
Wisconsin’s 2026 elections will be the first time that control of the Senate will be in play as only half of the body was up in the last election and Assembly Democrats will again be working to try to win a majority.
“It is absolutely doable, but it is going to take quite a bit of work,” Neubauer said.
Democratic lawmakers, she said, are taking a few approaches to getting things done for voters ahead of the next elections. This includes working across the aisle in the budget process to get investment into programs that Wisconsinites rely on, including child care and public schools and ensuring “Republican attacks on our rights and freedoms are not successful” by upholding the governor’s veto.
Neubauer said her party is also “focused on that long-term vision and communicating what we will do when we have a Democratic trifecta — how we will change the state, how we will make Wisconsin a place where everyone has the ability to thrive, wants to live, raise a family, retire.” She noted that Democrats introduced a package of bills in January to address prescription drug access, ensure students have access to food in school and help improve housing, but Republicans haven’t shown interest in them.
“We have a big and deep policy agenda that we’ve been working on for over a decade that we are ready to implement, and so we just have to get out and communicate about it,” Neubauer said. “And that of course looks like fanning out across the state, both in districts we represent and other communities, and talking about the work that we need to get done.”
Neubauer said they are going to continue to work to lower costs, especially as “Trump engages in reckless, irresponsible trade wars and weakens the economy for no good reason.” She said state legislatures are essential in pushing back on his agenda.
The first part of Trump’s term in office could have an effect on Wisconsin Democrats’ chances as well, Neubauer said.
“We have a number of Republican legislators who have really tried to position themselves as being moderate. They go home to their districts and they emphasize the bipartisan proposals that they’ve signed on to or tried to get passed, but what they don’t talk about is their voting record being in line with Republican leadership almost 100% of the time,” Neubauer said.
Neubauer said that Wisconsin Republicans haven’t distanced themselves from Trump’s agenda.
“The first several months of the legislative session here in Wisconsin, we saw Republicans focused on culture wars rather than lowering costs for working families, making their lives easier, investing in our schools — the things that we all hear about when we run into our constituents at the grocery store,” Neubauer said. “Republicans are going to have to answer for Donald Trump and his attacks on Wisconsin families next year, and that is going to be difficult for them to do in extremely purple districts.”
Wisconsin’s gubernatorial election is also coming up in November 2026. Evers hasn’t said whether he’ll run for a third term, saying he’ll likely decide after the next budget is done. Republican Josh Schoemann, who serves as the county executive of Washington, is the first candidate to announce his campaign.
“We’re all eagerly awaiting that decision,” Neubauer said of Evers’ choice whether to make a re-election bid. “[I] always look forward to working with the governor.”
Neubauer is one of seven legislative leaders joining the DLCC board alongside California Speaker of the Assembly Robert Rivas, Colorado Senate President James Coleman, Illinois Speaker Pro Tempore Kam Buckner, Michigan Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks, Oregon Speaker of the House Julie Fahey and Virginia Speaker of the House Don Scott.
New York Senate President Pro Tempore and Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, who also serves as the DLCC chair, said in a statement that she is thrilled Neubauer is joining.
“There has never been a more important time to ensure we have battle-tested, experienced leaders at the helm of Democratic strategy in the states as Donald Trump upends Washington and our economy,” Stewart-Cousins said, adding that Neubauer “embodies the diverse expertise needed to drive and elevate our strategy to build durable state power through the end of the decade.”
The more than $100 million spenton this spring’s Supreme Court election in Wisconsin set a new national record for spending on a state judicial race. The figure almost doubles the previous record of $51 million, which donors pouredinto the Wisconsin Supreme Court race in 2023.
“The spending in this race is an indication of just how dominant state high courts have become in the biggest political fights playing out today,” Douglas Keith, a senior counsel in the Brennan Center’s Judiciary Program, told the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD). He pointed to the “growing recognition” of the significance of state courts in ruling on both challenges to election laws and abortion rights since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022.
The record spending on the 2025 Wisconsin race, the pathways the money traveled and the outsized influence of a few major donors raise questions about the future and fairness of judicial elections in Wisconsin and beyond.
Outside spending
The campaign for liberal candidate Susan Crawford — who ultimatelywonthe election by 10 points — raised more than $28.3 million, while her conservative counterpart Brad Schimelpulled in over $15.1 million in campaign funding, according to a CMD analysis of Wisconsin Ethics Commission filings.
Special interest and ideological political action committees (PACs) accounted for the majority of the spending, dropping almost $57 million on both theliberaland conservativecandidates. Thirteen of those outside groups spent more than $1 million each (and in many cases, well over $1 million) on the race, for a total of $48.8 million — more than the combined total raised by the two campaigns.
“Big money has ruined us,” Janine Geske, a retired Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, told CMD. “It distresses me. It just goes to the heart of the independence of the judiciary.”
Several of the highest spending groups are linked to just a small number of individuals. Billionaire Charles Koch’s astroturf operation Americans for Prosperityspent more than $3.3 million, while shipping giant Richard Uihlein’s Fair Courts Americasuper PAC spent over $4.4 million.
Few backers drew more attention than Trump’s top campaign donor Elon Musk, who funneled nearly $18.7 million into the race to boost Schimel through his America PAC and the Building America’s Future PAC, a group he has reportedlyfunded in part since 2022.
“The Musk involvement helped politicize [and polarize] the race,” Charles Franklin, professor of law and director of the Marquette Law School Poll, told CMD. “That was a brand new element.”
There was a strong turnoutin the April election, with 51% of Wisconsin’s eligible voters casting ballots — remarkably high for an election in which the state Supreme Court was the highest office on the ballot.
“Voter turnout is up because the race is important, but it’s also up because so much money is being poured into it,” Franklin said, noting a 15-year rise in turnout in the state’s elections for its highest court.
Political party loophole
Although Wisconsin Supreme Court elections are officially nonpartisan, the state’s Republican and Democratic parties played major roles. “It’s been so obviously a de facto partisan race for several cycles,” said Franklin, who also highlighted the significance of endorsements from President Trumpand former President Obamain the election.
The maximumamount that can be legally given to the campaign committee of a candidate running for the Wisconsin Supreme Court is $20,000. However, individuals can make unlimited contributions to a political party. Some donors use this as a legal loophole to funnel money to judicial candidates by first giving money to the state party, which then transfers the funds to the candidate’s campaign committee.
In the most recent election, the Wisconsin Democratic Party gave more than $10.4 million to Crawford while the state GOP contributed over $9.5 million to Schimel, according to a CMD analysis of Wisconsin Ethics Commission filings. The contributions from the state parties accounted for almost two-thirds of Schimel’s overall campaign spending and more than a third of Crawford’s.
The top donor to one of the two major political parties in Wisconsin is Diane Hendricks, who has given just under $3.6 million so far this year to the state GOP. She is the owner of Hendricks Holdings and a co-founder of ABC Roofing Supplies, the largest roofing supply company in the country.
In addition to the $18.7 million Musk spent through PACs, he also gave $3 million to the Wisconsin GOP this year. Similarly, Richard Uihlein has given nearly $1.7 million to the
Wisconsin GOP in 2025 on top of the $4.4 million his PAC dropped on the race. His wife, Elizabeth Uihlein, gave more than $2.1 million to the state party. The couple each sentthe maximum individual contribution of $20,000 to Schimel’s campaign as well.
Major donations also flowed in on the Democratic side. Billionaire investor George Soros gave $2 million and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker gave $1.5 million to Wisconsin’s Democratic Party.
Reform prospects
The Marquette Law School Poll conducted in February found that 61% of respondents believeparty contributions reduce the independence of judges.
“It’s crucial that the public be able to look at courts and think they’re doing something different than raw politics,” Keith said. “This kind of an election makes it really hard for them to think of courts that way if the process for picking judges looks like the process for picking a U.S. senator.”
Geske, who supports judicial elections in principle, shares that concern. “If there is no faith, we don’t have a system. It doesn’t work.”
Yet, in that same poll, 90% of respondents saidit was better to elect rather than appoint state Supreme Court justices. Wisconsin is one of 14 states that rely on nonpartisan elections to choose their Supreme Court justices, a practice it has followed since becoming a state in 1848.
While the Marquette Law School Poll suggests there is broad public support for electing judges, record-breaking spending on those races raises concerns about judicial independence.
The rising tide of outside spending is unlikely to recede, particularly given the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Citizens United v. FEC (2010) allowingunlimited outside spending on elections, including for judicial races.
“Citizens United really set us back,” Geske said. “It destroyed the ability to have an independent judicial race where people can really look at the quality of the candidate versus the politics of it.”
In 2017, she was one of 54 judges who petitionedthe Wisconsin Supreme Court for stricter ethics rules to prevent judges from hearing cases involving major campaign contributors. But since the petition was ultimately rejected, no state rule currently requires a judge’s recusal or automatic disqualification from hearing such a case. The decision to recuse is left up to each individual justice in each case.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co. (2009) held that a judge’s recusal is required when the campaign support received is so significant that it creates a “serious risk of actual bias,” but that standard has rarely been appliedsince the decision.
Geske had hoped that Wisconsin’s highest court would revisit the possibility of stricter ethics rules in this context but now thinks that is unlikely given the significant financial contributions several justices have received. She believes that stronger guidelines rather than requiring mandatory recusal may be a more viable option.
Even if recusal guidelines were strengthened, Geske noted there would be practical complications if a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice stepped aside from a case. Unlike some other states, Wisconsin has no system for replacing a recused justice. If one of the seven justices steps aside, the court could be left with risking a deadlocked 3–3 decision.
Beyond the question of independence, Keith said more could be done to enhance transparency in Wisconsin judicial elections overall, such as requiring more frequent financial disclosures. “While we know a lot about what groups were spending and how much they spent, we know very little about where their money was coming from,” he pointed out. “A lot of it is informed guesswork.”
“The unprecedented and obscenely high amount of political money being raised and spent in Wisconsin Supreme Court elections is a fairly new and horrific development in our state,” wroteJay Heck, executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin, in 2024. “It wasn’t always this way here and it cannot and should not continue.”
Heck pointed out that Wisconsin enacted the Impartial Justice Act in 2009, which provided public financing for state Supreme Court campaigns in exchange for a voluntary spending cap and a ban on soliciting private contributions. However, Republican Governor Scott Walker and the GOP-controlled legislature repealed the measure and dramatically weakened Wisconsin’s campaign finance laws.
“We went from being the progressive good government promised land to the political wasteland of the country,” Heck said.
Common Cause has called for updating and reinstating the 2009 reforms, along with strengthening recusal rules and prohibiting coordination between campaigns and outside groups.
A recent poll by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign found that almost three of four Wisconsin voters want limits on outside PACs, but that reform is not possible until the Citizens United decision is overturned.
Next year’s Supreme Court election
Major reforms are unlikely before the next election in April 2026, when conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley will be seeking to retain her seat. Spending will likely be lower than in this year’s race given that the court’s new 4–3 liberal majority will not be in play.
However, the scale and tone of the 2025 race may influence the 2026 election and others in different ways. Geske said she knows judges who would have previously considered running for the state Supreme Court but are no longer interested.
“When you get into these kinds of numbers and that kind of race, they’re not going to put themselves and their families through it,” she said. “It narrows the number of people who are willing to run for the court.”
Geske said that if judicial elections had been like this when she ran in 1993, she wouldn’t have run. “When I was running, we really tried to have bipartisan support,” she said. “Now it really is: ‘Whose side are you on?’”
“I think that will continue and, as a result, I think that big money will continue to follow.”
Milwaukee's top election official is planning to order one ballot per registered voter for future spring elections after some polling sites in the city ran out of ballots during the April election.
GREEN BAY, WISCONSIN - MARCH 30: Billionaire businessman Elon Musk arrives for a town hall meeting wearing a cheesehead hat at the KI Convention Center on March 30, 2025 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The town hall is being held in front of the state’s high-profile Supreme Court election between Circuit Court Judge Brad Schimel, who has been financially backed by Musk and endorsed by President Donald Trump, and Dane County Circuit Court Judge Susan Crawford. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
On April 1 Wisconsin voters decisively voted against unprecedented, massive outside interference in our state Supreme Court election by the nearly $30 million from the richest and second (to Donald Trump) most egotistical person in the world – Elon Musk. In handing Musk’s endorsed candidate, Brad Schimel, a more than 10 percentage point, 269,000-vote drubbing, Wisconsinites rendered the nation a great service by humiliating Musk here and thereby driving him from the corridors of power and influence in Washington D.C. where he has been savaging vital U.S. government services and programs that helped the poorest people in our nation and in the world.
Wisconsin also opted to preserve recent democracy reforms in our state by maintaining the current 4-3 progressive majority on the Court. Fairer and more representative state legislative voting maps and the restoration of the use of secure ballot drop boxes for voters will be preserved and the possibility of new and enhanced political reform is possible in the years immediately ahead either through upholding reforms passed legislatively, through court action, or both.
But what can be done about the obscene amount of political money raised and spent to elect a new Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice in 2025 – as much if not more than $105 million – by far the most amount ever spent in a judicial election in the history of the United States? Wisconsin faces new state supreme court elections every April for the next four years and a continuation of such frenzied and out of control spending for the foreseeable future seems both unbearable and unsustainable.
Voluntary spending limits for Supreme Court candidates with the incentive of providing them with full public financing if they agree to statutory spending limits is a possibility. Wisconsin actually had such a law in place for exactly one Supreme Court election in 2011. The Impartial Justice Act was made possible by passage with overwhelming bipartisan majorities in the Wisconsin Legislature and enactment into law in 2009. In 2011, both candidates for a seat on the high court agreed to the voluntary spending limits of $400,000 each and received full public financing. That campaign was robust, competitive and the result was close, which is what you would expect in Wisconsin. And it cost just a tiny fraction of the more than $100 million that was spent in 2025.
Unfortunately, later in 2011, then-Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican-controlled Wisconsin Legislature defunded the Impartial Justice Act and all other public financing for elections, Four years later, Walker and the GOP completely eviscerated and deformed Wisconsin’s campaign finance laws. They did away with limits on what political parties and outside groups can raise and spend in elections, increased individual campaign contribution limits and, most alarmingly, legalized previously illegal campaign coordination between so-called issue ad spending groups and candidates, which greatly increased opportunities for corruption and undue influence through campaign spending. Disclosure requirements were weakened and, in some instances, dismantled altogether.
In just four short years, Wisconsin was transformed from one of the most transparent, low spending and highly regarded election states in the nation to one of the worst, least regulated special interest-controlled political backwaters in the nation, akin to Texas, Louisiana or Florida.
This current corrupt status quo will remain in place for the upcoming state Supreme Court elections in 2026, 2027, 2028 and 2029 unless the governor, Legislature and the Wisconsin Supreme Court take action and do the following:
Re-establish an “impartial justice” law for the public financing of state Supreme Court elections modeled after the 2009 law which was in place for only one election before it was repealed. Update and revise it to better fit current times and circumstances including more realistic spending limits and higher public financing grants.
Establish clear recusal rules for judges at all levels in Wisconsin that clearly decree that if a certain campaign contribution is reached or surpassed beyond a certain threshold amount, then the beneficiary of that contribution (or of the expenditure against her/his opponent) must recuse from any case in which the contributor is a party before the court.
Restore sensible limitations on the transfer of and acceptance of campaign funds and make illegal again campaign coordination between outside special interest groups engaged in issue advocacy with all candidates for public office — particularly judges.
Petition the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the disastrous 2010 Citizens United vs F.E.C. decision which ended over 100 years of sensible regulation of unlimited corporate, union and other outside special interest money in federal and by extension state elections, unleashing the torrential flood of campaign cash drowning democracy today.
These are common-sense, achievable reforms that, if enacted into law, would go a long way toward restoring desperately needed public confidence in the fairness, impartiality and trust in Wisconsin’s courts and in particular, our Wisconsin Supreme Court which was regarded as the model for the nation and the best anywhere a quarter century ago. But it will take determined action by all three branches of Wisconsin’s state government working together with the voters to uphold election integrity and curb corruption in a way all of us can embrace.
Ultimately, of course, it’s up to us, the voters, to hold our governmental institutions accountable and ensure that they work for us instead of for their own narrow interests and those of the donor class. In this critical season of resistance and defiance against tyranny — speak up, make noise and ensure that your voice is heard. Demand real reform and an end to the corruption of our representative government.
The treasurer of rural Adams County in central Wisconsin says she has no plans to leave office despite the county board's vote to replace her with the person she defeated in the most recent election.
A couple of years ago, Lorraine Beyersdorff was ready to retire from her job as clerk of the town of Texas, Wisconsin, after 34 years of service.
“I will not run again,” she said in a community Facebook post in late 2022. “Nomination papers can be circulated for signatures beginning December 1st. If interested, call me for more information.”
About a dozen people thanked her for a job well done. But no one filed nomination papers. Nobody called. And because of a quirk in Wisconsin law, no one from outside of the 1,600-person town could take the job.
State law requires all elected town clerks — and the appointees who replace clerks departing mid-term — to live in the town where they serve.
Beyersdorff, 73, knew there was another option: The town could switch from electing its clerk to appointing one. That would allow officials to consider candidates from outside the town’s borders.
But in small towns such as Texas — those with fewer than 2,500 residents — making that change is slow and cumbersome. It first requires a vote at a town meeting to put the measure on the ballot, then another vote by residents to approve it.
In Beyersdorff’s case, that months-long process stretched into years. She remained on the job until voters finally approved the switch in November. In April, the town appointed a new clerk, whom Beyersdorff is training. The clerk job is part-time — about 20 hours a week, though that varies depending on elections and other town business.
“I wanted to get out, but I was OK hanging in,” Beyersdorff said. “After so many years, you’re almost scared to not have it. It’s been part of my life for so long, and because you can do it from home, it’s kind of intermingled with cooking and doing laundry and everything else.”
A proposal to make switching easier
Now, Wisconsin lawmakers want to streamline the process for towns like Texas. A bill introduced April 16 with bipartisan support would allow towns under 2,500 people to switch to appointing a clerk with a simple vote at a town meeting — no referendum required.
The proposal would also eliminate another hurdle: Under current law, even if a town approves the switch, it can’t take effect until the end of the current clerk’s term. The bill would let towns make the change immediately if the clerk position is vacant or becomes vacant.
The legislation passed committees unanimously last year but never received a full floor vote. The proposal authors, state Sen. Romaine Robert Quinn, a Republican who represents a northern Wisconsin district, and state Rep. Alex Dallman, a Republican from central Wisconsin, didn’t respond to requests for comment about the proposal. In a public hearing last year, Dallman said the proposal “will allow towns to operate more efficiently.”
Beyersdorff agrees. “You’d have a much quicker way to replace (clerks) and a bigger pool,” she said. “It can happen that somebody dies in the middle of the term, and then how do you replace them?”
Even in less dire situations, she said, appointing clerks can be advantageous because it allows the town to weigh qualifications heavily. In elections, Beyersdorff said, sometimes small communities vote for the people they know best, without caring “if they have any qualifications or even are capable of doing it.”
The multiple hurdles that small towns face under current law make it challenging for them to recruit and train qualified clerks, said Sam Liebert, a former clerk who is now the Wisconsin state director for All Voting is Local. “Giving local communities the flexibility to appoint their clerks is a common-sense solution.”
About one-third of Wisconsin towns now appoint their town clerks, and more are considering the switch, said Joe Ruth, government affairs director and legal counsel for the Wisconsin Towns Association. The role has become increasingly complex, and the longtime clerks who held the position for decades are aging out, he said.
It can be easier for towns to look for already qualified candidates who might live outside their municipal limits, he said, an option only available if the town appoints its clerk. By forgoing the currently required referendum that small towns need to make that change, towns can save the costs of administering that ballot question.
Ruth said that he often fields calls from towns that are desperate for help.
“We often hear the question, ‘We just lost our clerk. What do we do?'” he said. “Or, ‘We lost our clerk last year, we appointed someone to fill that vacancy, and now that person quit, and we can’t find anybody else.’ Those situations are really what have driven us towards these types of changes.”
The bigger challenge that towns face, Ruth said, is when elected clerks quit early in their tenure and no other town residents seek to replace them. Because state law prohibits towns from switching to appointing clerks until the end of the current term, towns can sometimes go one or two years without a clerk — a problem that this proposal would fix, he said.
More complications in town of Wausau
While Beyersdorff was OK continuing in her job until the town could find a replacement for her, that wasn’t the case 10 minutes away in the town of Wausau.
Late last year, the longtime clerk retired and moved out of town. The town supervisors thought they had the situation under control: They appointed a town resident. That person quit after two weeks.
Scrambling to find a clerk before the Wisconsin Supreme Court election in April, town supervisors advertised the opening in the town’s newsletter, during a budget meeting and on its website, said Sharon Hunter, a town supervisor.
People were interested in the job, she said, but they were typically working full time or had part-time jobs. “So the concern was the number of evening meetings, all of the responsibilities of the clerk, and especially running the elections,” she said.
Ultimately, nobody stepped up for the April election, so two town supervisors filled in. Hunter said she had been putting in an extra 20 hours of work per week between processing permits, licenses, keeping meeting minutes and preparing agendas, doing paperwork on the annual budget, and filing reports.
The town was lucky to have a chief election inspector — the official in charge of the town’s only polling place — with detailed knowledge, she said, because it would have been time-consuming for her to learn those duties.
In the April election, the town put forth a referendum to switch to appointing clerks, but voters rejected it by a narrow margin. Hunter attributes the loss to the failure of supporters to explain why it was necessary. The town will try the referendum again in the future, she said.
For now, at least, the town has a clerk. In the April election, voters elected another clerk, who ran unopposed.
“I’m sure she’ll do a wonderful job,” Hunter said. “My concern is stepping in and not realizing all that is involved. Maybe she finds out that this is something she really doesn’t want to do and then she resigns. Well, then we’re in the same situation again, without a clerk for two years.”
Town clerk takes on extra role after nobody else steps up
If you were to stumble across Sam Augustin at her northern Wisconsin house early on a weekday, you would find her sipping a coffee at her table, surrounded by four laptops.
One is a personal laptop. One is issued by Forest County, where she’s a board member. Another is from the town of Armstrong Creek, where she’s an elected clerk, and the last one from the town of Caswell, where she’s an appointed clerk.
It’s good to have all those laptops open at once, she said, because if she gets a call for help at any of her three public service jobs, she just has to wake up one of her laptops rather than locate it and start it up. It also helps that they’re four different colors, Augustin said.
Work for her didn’t used to be as complicated — or busy. Originally, she held the clerk position only in Caswell, where she lives. After the Armstrong Creek clerk died in late 2020, though, town officials approached her to become the clerk there, too.
“Nobody will step up in the town,” she said. “My grandparents said, ‘If you can help, you will help.’ Did I want to? Not necessarily, but I could not have, in good conscience, said no when I knew I could do it.”
Serving as a clerk in two communities is sometimes the reality in outstate Wisconsin, where about 30% of clerks leave their positions every year and, in Augustin’s view, younger people “don’t want to serve their community” despite more and more older clerks retiring.
It’s even more challenging because of frequent internet outages in rural Wisconsin. In big cities, Augustin said, clerks are used to the internet operating virtually everywhere.
“We have to go, ‘Oh no, the wind’s blowing the wrong way here. That means it’s going to knock out,’” she said.
Sharon Drefcinski, chief election inspector for the town of Rib Mountain, Wis., right, boxes mailed-in absentee ballots to send to the county for archiving during the primary election on Aug. 11, 2020. Town Clerk Joanne Ruechel, left, sent out 1,348 absentee ballots ahead of the election. (Coburn Dukehart / Wisconsin Watch)
Augustin said having Starlink, a satellite internet service, ensures she typically has internet.
“Most people don’t have that option up here because it’s not cheap,” she said.
When residents or town officials seek her help, she said, she can receive calls anytime from 7 a.m. until 10 p.m.
“You never know if they’re going to knock on your front door because everybody knows where you live,” she said. “So heaven forbid you don’t answer your phone. If they see your vehicle at your house, they’re going to stop.”
To be able to manage elections in two towns, she said, “you have to make sure you have good chief inspectors in place.”
“I have one town that’s better at it than the other,” she said, “so I tend to spend more time with one town than I do with the other.”
On Election Day in November, Augustin had to drive to the county seat in Crandon, 30 minutes away, to get more paper ballots for each of her towns, which are 11 miles apart.
“You just have to make sure you’re keeping your poll workers trained,” she said. “You have to keep, make sure you’re keeping everybody abreast of everything. And it changes so fast.”
The demands of her job go far beyond just running elections.
In mid-April, she said, she had an accounting meeting at the county at 1 p.m., an annual meeting in Caswell at 5:30 p.m. and then work in Armstrong Creek at 6:30 p.m.
“Two would be my limit,” she said.
Because towns of different sizes have to follow varying sets of laws, the best-case scenario is for people to be the clerk of two comparably sized towns, she said.
Augustin told Votebeat that she “definitely” supports the proposal.
It can cost $1,000 or more to hold an election on a referendum to switch to appointing a town clerk, Augustin said, “and small towns don’t have that kind of extra money laying around.”
“The process would be a heck of a lot simpler,” she said, “because it can be delayed by a great deal of time, the way they make you do it.”
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
Shaundel Washington-Spivey, La Crosse’s first Black and first openly gay mayor, currently serves on the Governor's Equity and Inclusion Advisory Council.
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.
Democratic legislators on April 10 introduced Assembly Bill 227, which would expand Wisconsin’s existing election bribery laws to also prohibit people from making payments to voters in exchange for signing petitions during an election period.
The bill was introduced just nine days after the April 1 election, before which Elon Musk offered the public $100 to sign a petition opposing “activist judges.” At an event just two days before the election, Musk gave two Wisconsin voters $1 million checks.
Here’s what you need to know:
Context
Wisconsin law already prohibits election bribery and makes it illegal to offer “anything of value,” including money, to bribe an elector to go to or refrain from going to the polls, vote or refrain from voting, or vote or refrain from voting for or against a particular person.
In a deleted X post from March 27, Musk said $1 million checks would be awarded “in appreciation for you taking the time to vote” in the April 1 election between liberal Judge Susan Crawford and conservative Judge Brad Schimel. Musk followed this up with another X post a day later on March 28 to say the checks would be awarded to two individuals to be “spokesmen for the petition.”
On March 29, Democratic Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul filed a lawsuit against Musk and the Musk-affiliated America PAC. In the complaint, Kaul requested the court grant a temporary restraining order to stop Musk from promoting the $1 million gifts, calling the giveaway “a blatant attempt to violate Wis. Stat. § 12.11.”
But judges in Columbia County Circuit Court, the Court of Appeals and the Wisconsin Supreme Court refused to hear Kaul’s petition. Columbia County Circuit Court Judge W. Andrew Voight filed a dismissal order April 1, saying Kaul’s complaint lacked two of the four required elements for a temporary restraining order — no alleged irreparable harm and no explanation of why the temporary restraining order was the only possible solution.
Voight noted at the end of his dismissal that the court did not come to a conclusion as to whether Musk and America PAC’s actions were illegal.
Musk gave out the $1 million checks to two Wisconsin voters who signed his America PAC petition during a Green Bay rally on March 30.
The actions on behalf of Musk and America PAC consequently sparked debates regarding the legality and ethics of the petition.
The bill
In an effort led by Rep. Lee Snodgrass, D-Appleton, the “Petition Payment Prohibition Act” would expand existing election bribery laws to prohibit bribing voters to sign or refrain from signing election nomination papers, recall petitions and other petitions, including in support or opposition of candidates.
“To be clear, election bribery is already illegal in Wisconsin,” the co-authors wrote in a memo to their legislative colleagues. “However, Musk has attempted to circumvent this law by paying people to sign a petition instead — something not explicitly banned by current law.”
If passed, the bill would prohibit anyone from offering anything of value — exceeding $5 — to influence whether or not someone signs a petition relating to elections. These petitions include those opposing and supporting candidates or referendums, political or social issues, state law, and proposed or potential legislation, according to the bill.
The prohibition would only be enforced when it relates directly to an election or referendum or if it is circulated during an election period, which the bill defines as the period between Dec. 1 and the spring election or April 15 and the general election.
Under the bill, it would be illegal to pay someone $100 to sign a petition within an election period that is in support of a state referendum or a candidate.
Election bribery is currently a Class I felony, meaning if the bill passes, violators could face up to three-and-a-half years in prison, a fine as high as $10,000 or both.
So, what’s next?
So far 34 Democratic lawmakers support the “Petition Payment Prohibition Act,” in addition to Snodgrass. No Republicans have signed on.
The bill has been referred to the Committee on Campaigns and Elections where the Republican who heads the committee could schedule a public hearing and vote. Republicans who control the Legislature could then schedule it for a vote in the full Assembly. An identical version must also pass the Senate.
If this bill passes, it would be sent to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who can either sign or veto it.
Democratic sponsors said the bill should be bipartisan.
“Candidates and issue groups should use the strength of their message to attract voters to their cause, not cash bribes or promises of financial reward,” the sponsors said in a memo to colleagues. “It is a gross perversion of our democracy and must not be allowed to continue in future elections. Failing to act is a tacit acceptance that our votes are for sale. Rejecting this premise is something members of both parties should be able to agree on.”
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The firm Law Forward is suing in Wisconsin to bring back a long-dormant practice known as fusion voting, where a candidate can appear on the ballot more than once, next to every political party that endorses them.
Madison’s city clerk, Maribeth Witzel-Behl, resigned Monday as the city and state continued to look into how she and her staff lost track of nearly 200 ballots that never got counted in November.
Witzel-Behl, who took the post in 2006, gained wide recognition for running elections in the state’s second largest city during the pandemic and multiple presidential elections. In all, she oversaw more than 60 elections.
But her reputation took a blow in the November 2024 election, when 193 ballots from two polling stations went missing on Election Day and never got counted. Clerks and the Wisconsin Elections Commission have criticized her for failing to promptly inform state and city officials about the issue.
“On behalf of city of Madison residents, I want to extend my gratitude to Maribeth for her commitment and dedication to public service,” Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said.
Witzel-Behl was placed on leave in March, with Mike Haas, the city attorney and former commission administrator, acting as clerk in the interim. It’s unclear who will replace Witzel-Behl; Haas previously told Votebeat he does not want the job permanently. The city is undertaking a national search, officials said.
Madison interim City Clerk Mike Haas, left, acting in the role since Maribeth Witzel-Behl was placed on leave, and Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell, right, address the press at the City-County Building in Madison, Wis., after the spring election on April 1, 2025. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
In addition to ongoing city and state investigations, the November error has also led to legal action, with a liberal election law group seeking $34 million in damages on the grounds voters were disenfranchised.
In its probe, the Wisconsin Elections Commission found that mistakes by the clerk’s office began well before Election Day, including printing poll books for the two polling sites earlier than recommended by the commission.
Had the poll books been printed later, they would have automatically indicated that certain ballots had been returned, making it clearer to poll workers on Election Day that some ballots had been received but not counted.
Clerk’s staff found the first batch of ballots — 68 in total — in a previously unopened courier bag in the clerk’s office on Nov. 12, while Dane County was in the middle of certifying the election.
There are conflicting accounts of what happened next: An unidentified Madison election worker claimed that the county was informed about the ballots that day, but Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell has denied that. Witzel-Behl, who according to records obtained by Votebeat was on vacation for much of the time following Election Day, didn’t follow up with the county, and those ballots were never counted.
A second batch of 125 ballots was discovered in the clerk’s office on Dec. 3. However, staff didn’t relay that information to the Wisconsin Elections Commission until Dec. 18, well after the state certified the election. The commission then notified Haas about the error, and he relayed the news to the mayor’s office — which is when both learned of the problem for the first time.
Facing growing scrutiny, Witzel-Behl proposed procedural changes, including requiring clerk’s staff to verify all election materials received on election night and ensuring that each polling place receives a list of the absentee ballot courier bags it handles to prevent any from being overlooked.
Those measures were implemented fully in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, for which she was on leave. The city apparently didn’t have any significant oversights in that election. City officials say they’re still refining the procedural changes.
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
After two high-profile cases in which candidates were unable to remove their names from the ballot, Wisconsin lawmakers are weighing a change to one of the nation’s strictest withdrawal laws.
Under current Wisconsin law, once candidates qualify for the ballot, they can only be removed if they die.
The restriction received renewed attention in August 2024, when Robert F. Kennedy Jr., running as an independent, unsuccessfully sought to withdraw from the Wisconsin presidential ballot — a request that ultimately reached the state Supreme Court.
More recently, in January, Madison Ald. Dina Nina Martinez-Rutherford announced she was dropping out of her reelection race and endorsing her opponent, citing two major life events. Despite her public withdrawal, she remained on the ballot and was reelected in April.
On Tuesday, the Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections held a public hearing on the proposal written by Rep. David Steffen, a Republican, to allow candidates for certain statewide, congressional and legislative offices and independent candidates for president and vice president to withdraw from the ballot any time before the Wisconsin Elections Commission certifies candidates’ names.
Steffen said he’s working on an amendment to address concerns raised by election clerks about how the proposal could disrupt tight ballot production timelines.
Calling the current law outdated, Steffen told lawmakers that candidates deserve a straightforward way to remove themselves from consideration before Election Day.
While the bill would not apply to local or off-cycle races like Martinez-Rutherford’s, election clerks say even the limited version could still cause issues. They warned that allowing candidates to withdraw up until the day of certification doesn’t give them enough time to finalize ballots, which are often already in production before that point.
“I have no problem if a candidate wants to remove their name,” Columbia County Clerk Sue Moll, a Republican, said. “I just want to make sure that the timeline is such that we can meet our deadlines.”
Most states provide nominees who wish to drop out of a race some sort of off-ramp. Many states allow nominees to drop off the ballot between 60 and 85 days before an election. Some states require polling places to have notices clarifying candidates’ withdrawal if they drop out after ballots are already printed.
Wisconsin law used to allow nominees to drop off the ballot if they declined to run, but it changed in 1977 to the current policy — allowing withdrawal only in the event of death.
Under the proposal presented on Tuesday, nominees could drop off the ballot anytime before the election commission certifies candidate names.
Processing a candidate’s withdrawal on that last day would put clerks on a “really tight” timeline, Moll said.
Even with a head start to prepare ballots, county clerks are scrambling at the last minute to get their ballots programmed, printed and sent to municipal clerks in time for them to send out by the state’s legal deadline, which is 47 days before a federal election, Moll said.
It would have taken about an extra half-day of work to reprogram everything if Kennedy dropped off the ballot last-minute, she said. It could take more time in counties that rely on vendors to prepare their ballots and program voting equipment, she added.
When a candidate changes his or her mind and drops out, Moll said, “Well, OK, that’s one candidate. What happens if there’s five candidates?”
Rock County Clerk Lisa Tollefson, a Democrat, told Votebeat that clerks would risk going past the deadline for sending out ballots if candidates waited until the last minute to drop out.
If the deadline to withdraw was about a week before the commission certifies candidates’ names, Tollefson said, “we should be OK.”
Rep. David Steffen, R-Howard, listens to testimony during an Assembly committee hearing March 11, 2025, at the State Capitol in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Steffen, the author of the proposal, said at the Tuesday public hearing that an amendment in the works would do exactly that: Require nominees to withdraw at least seven business days before the Wisconsin Elections Commission meeting to certify nominees. The amendment would require clerks to be notified of a nominee’s withdrawal at least five days before the meeting.
At the hearing, Tollefson said she agrees with the amendment. She told Votebeat that the timelines would still be tight under the amendment, particularly in bigger counties like Milwaukee County and Dane County, but that clerks should be able to get their ballots done in time.
February and April elections don’t have long enough window
Giving nominees a path to withdraw their candidacy for the February and April elections — like the one Martinez-Rutherford won after trying to exit — would be virtually impossible because those elections are run in such a short time span, clerks told Votebeat.
Clerks only have about a week between the February and April elections to prepare their ballots, get them printed and send them out to municipal clerks, Moll said.
If the amended measure becomes law and plays out well, Steffen said he may introduce a separate proposal that addresses local races. But he also acknowledged the tight timelines that clerks face in February and April elections.
Just after the hearing, at the Eastmorland Community Center in Madison, Martinez-Rutherford, the candidate who won a city council seat in April despite informally dropping out of her race, said that she would remain on the council but that it would be “reasonable” to create a process for candidates to formally drop out.
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
In September, California adopted a law that prohibits local governments from requiring voters to present identification to vote.
The law states that voter ID laws “have historically been used to disenfranchise” certain voters, including those of color or low-income.
The law says California ensures election integrity by requiring a driver’s license number or Social Security number at registration and verifying the voter’s signature with the voter’s registration form.
Voter ID supporters say requiring a photo ID helps prevent voter fraud and increases public confidence in elections.
California is among 14 states that don’t use voter ID. They verify voter identity in other ways, usually signature verification, according to the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures.
Wisconsin has required photo ID since 2016. On April 1, voters approved a referendum adding that requirement to the state constitution.
Elon Musk alluded to the California law during remarks March 30 in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
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