The Democratic-backed candidate for Wisconsin Supreme Court defeated a challenger endorsed by President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk on Tuesday, cementing a liberal majority for at least three more years.

Susan Crawford, a Dane County judge who led legal fights to protect union power and abortion rights and to oppose voter ID, defeated Republican-backed Brad Schimel in a race that broke records for spending, was on pace to be the highest-turnout Wisconsin Supreme Court election ever and became a proxy fight for the nation’s political battles.

Trump, Musk and other Republicans lined up behind Schimel, a former state attorney general. Democrats including former President Barack Obama and billionaire megadonor George Soros backed Crawford.

The first major election in the country since November was seen as a litmus test of how voters feel about Trump’s first months back in office and the role played by Musk, whose Department of Government Efficiency has torn through federal agencies and laid off thousands of workers. Musk traveled to Wisconsin on Sunday to make a pitch for Schimel and personally hand out to $1 million checks to voters.

Crawford embraced the backing of Planned Parenthood and other abortion rights advocates, running ads that highlighted Schimel’s opposition to the procedure. She also attacked Schimel for his ties to Musk and Republicans, referring to Musk as “Elon Schimel” during a debate.

Schimel’s campaign tried to portray Crawford as weak on crime and a puppet of Democrats who, if elected, would push to redraw congressional district boundary lines to hurt Republicans and repeal a GOP-backed state law that took collective bargaining rights away from most public workers.

Crawford’s win keeps the court under a 4-3 liberal majority, as it has been since 2023. A liberal justice is not up for election again until April 2028, ensuring liberals will either maintain or increase their hold on the court until then. The two most conservative justices are up for re-election in 2026 and 2027.

The court likely will be deciding cases on abortion, public sector unions, voting rules and congressional district boundaries. Who controls the court also could factor into how it might rule on any future voting challenge in the perennial presidential battleground state, which raised the stakes of the race for national Republicans and Democrats.

Musk and groups he funded poured more than $21 million into the contest. Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, campaigned for Schimel in the closing weeks and said electing him was essential to protecting the Republican agenda. Trump endorsed Schimel just 11 days before the election.

Schimel, who leaned into his Trump endorsement in the closing days of the race, said he would not be beholden to the president or Musk despite the massive spending on the race by groups that Musk supports.

Crawford benefitted from campaign stops by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the vice presidential nominee last year, and money from billionaire megadonors including Soros and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker.

The contest was the most expensive court race on record in the U.S., with spending nearing $99 million, according to a tally by the Brennan Center for Justice. That broke the previous record of $51 million record, for the state’s Supreme Court race in 2023.

All of the spending and attention on the race led to high early voting turnout, with numbers more than 50% higher than the state’s Supreme Court race two years ago.

Crawford was elected to a 10-year term replacing liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley who is retiring after 30 years on the bench.

Wisconsin enshrines voter ID in state constitution

Wisconsin’s photo ID requirement for voting will be elevated from state law to constitutional amendment under a proposal approved by voters.

The Republican-controlled Legislature placed the measure on the ballot and pitched it as a way to bolster election security and protect the law from being overturned in court.

Democratic opponents argued that photo ID requirements are often enforced unfairly, making voting more difficult for people of color, disabled people and poor people.

Wisconsin voters won’t notice any changes when they go to the polls. They will still have to present a valid photo ID just as they have under the state law, which was passed in 2011 and went into effect permanently in 2016 after a series of unsuccessful lawsuits.

Placing the photo ID requirement in the constitution makes it more difficult for a future Legislature controlled by Democrats to change the law. Any constitutional amendment must be approved in two consecutive legislative sessions and by a statewide popular vote.

Republican legislators celebrated the measure’s passage.

“This will help maintain integrity in the electoral process, no matter who controls the Legislature,” Sen. Van Wanggaard, who co-authored the amendment, said in a statement.

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who is leading Trump’s efforts to shrink the federal government, also noted the outcome on his social media platform, X, saying: “Yeah!”

Wisconsin is one of nine states where people must present photo ID to vote, and its requirement is the nation’s strictest, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Thirty-six states have laws requiring or requesting that voters show some sort of identification, according to the NCSL.

State schools chief Jill Underly wins reelection over G0P-backed rival

Jill Underly, the Democratic-backed state education chief, defeated her Republican-aligned opponent, Brittany Kinser.

Underly will guide policies affecting K-12 schools as Trump moves to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education. Her second term comes at a time when test scores are still recovering from the pandemic, Wisconsin’s achievement gap between white and Black students remains the worst in the country and more schools are asking voters to raise property taxes to pay for operations.

Wisconsin is the only state where voters elect the top education official but there is no state board of education. That gives the superintendent broad authority to oversee education policy, from dispersing school funding to managing teacher licensing.

Underly, 47, had the support of the teachers union in the general election after failing to secure it in the three-person primary. She also was backed financially by the state Democratic Party.

Underly, who was first elected as state superintendent in 2021, ran as a champion of public schools. Kinser is a supporter of the private school voucher program.

Underly’s education career began in 1999 as a high school social studies teacher in Indiana. She moved to Wisconsin in 2005 and worked for five years at the state education department. She also was principal of Pecatonica Elementary School for a year before becoming district administrator.

Kinser, whose backers included the Wisconsin Republican Party and former Republican Govs. Tommy Thompson and Scott Walker, previously worked for Rocketship schools, part of a national network of public charter institutions. She rose to become its executive director in the Milwaukee region.

In 2022 she left Rocketship for City Forward Collective, a Milwaukee nonprofit that advocates for charter and voucher schools. She also founded a consulting firm where she currently works.

Kinser tried to brand Underly as being a poor manager of the Department of Public Instruction and keyed in on her overhaul of state achievement standards last year.

Underly said that was done to better reflect what students are learning now, but the change was met with bipartisan opposition including from Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who was previously state superintendent himself. Evers did not make an endorsement in the race.

High turnout leads to ballot shortage in Milwaukee

Unprecedented turnout led to ballot shortages in Wisconsin’s largest city Tuesday as voters cast ballots in “historic” numbers.

The race for control of the court, which became a proxy battle for the nation’s political fights, broke records for spending and was poised to be the highest-turnout Wisconsin Supreme Court election ever.

Early voting was more than 50% ahead of levels seen in the state’s Supreme Court race two years ago, when majority control was also at stake.

Seven polling sites in Milwaukee ran out of ballots, or were nearly out, due to “historic turnout” and more ballots were on their way before polls closed, said Paulina Gutierrez, the executive director of the Milwaukee Elections Commission.

Clerks all across the state, including in the city’s deep-red suburbs, reported turnout far exceeding 2023 levels.

A state race with nationwide significance

The court can decide election-related laws and settle disputes over future election outcomes.

“Wisconsin’s a big state politically, and the Supreme Court has a lot to do with elections in Wisconsin,” Trump said Monday. “Winning Wisconsin’s a big deal, so therefore the Supreme Court choice … it’s a big race.”

Crawford embraced the backing of Planned Parenthood and other abortion rights advocates, running ads that highlighted Schimel’s opposition to the procedure. She also attacked Schimel for his ties to Musk and Trump, who endorsed Schimel 11 days before the election.

Schimel’s campaign tried to portray Crawford as weak on crime and a puppet of Democrats who would push to redraw congressional district boundary lines to hurt Republicans and repeal a GOP-backed state law that took collective bargaining rights away from most public workers.

Voters in Eau Claire seemed to be responding to both messages. Jim Seeger, a 68-year-old retiree, said he voted for Schimel because he’s concerned about redistricting.

Jim Hazelton, a 68-year-old disabled veteran, said he had planned to abstain but voted for Crawford after Musk — whom he described as a “pushy billionaire” — and Trump got involved.

“He’s cutting everything,” Hazelton said of Musk. “People need these things he’s cutting.”

What’s on the court’s agenda?

The court will likely be deciding cases on abortion, public sector unions, voting rules and congressional district boundaries.

Last year the court declined to take up a Democratic-backed challenge to congressional lines, but Schimel and Musk said that if Crawford wins, the court will redraw congressional districts to make them more favorable to Democrats. Currently Republicans control six out of eight seats in an evenly divided state.

Musk was pushing that message on Election Day, both on TV and the social media platform he owns, X, urging people to cast ballots in the final hours of voting.

There were no major voting issues by midday Tuesday, state election officials said. Severe weather prompted the relocation of some polling places in northern Wisconsin, and some polling places in Green Bay briefly lost power but voting continued. In Dane County, home to the state capital, Madison, election officials said polling locations were busy and operating normally.

Record-breaking donations

The contest is the most expensive court race on record in the U.S., with spending nearing $99 million, according to a tally by the Brennan Center for Justice.

Musk contributed $3 million to the campaign, while groups he funded poured in another $18 million. Musk also gave $1 million each to three voters who signed a petition he circulated against “activist” judges.

Schimel leaned into his support from Trump while saying he would not be beholden to the president or Musk. Democrats centered their messaging on the spending by Musk-funded groups.

“Ultimately I think it’s going to help Susan Crawford, because people do not want to see Elon Musk buying election after election after election,” Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler said Monday. “If it works here, he’s going to do it all over the country.”

Democratic-backed Susan Crawford wins Wisconsin Supreme Court seat, cementing liberal majority 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.

State Superintendent Jill Underly was reelected Tuesday, beating educational consultant Brittany Kinser to continue leading Wisconsin's Department of Public Instruction. 

The post Jill Underly reelected as Wisconsin superintendent of schools appeared first on WPR.

Dane County Judge Susan Crawford has won a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, preserving liberals’ 4-3 majority after a hard-fought, highly politicized contest that attracted national attention and shattered spending records.

The post Susan Crawford wins Wisconsin Supreme Court race as Democrats take stand against Donald Trump, Elon Musk appeared first on WPR.

Wisconsin voters have agreed to add a voter ID requirement to the state constitution.

The post Voter ID requirement will be added to Wisconsin Constitution after referendum passes appeared first on WPR.

The campaign for Wisconsin Supreme Court neared the finish line Monday as the candidates wrapped up tours of the state and outside spending continued to smash records.

The post Record-setting Wisconsin Supreme Court race nears finish line appeared first on WPR.

Voters can show their IDs from a Wisconsin college or university in order to vote. But not all IDs are accepted.

The post Can you use a student ID to vote in Wisconsin? Yes, but it’s complicated. appeared first on WPR.

Unprecedented levels of funding backing either Dane County Judge Susan Crawford or Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel have come from across the country.

The post Out-of-state billionaires fuel Wisconsin Supreme Court election appeared first on WPR.

A Wisconsin appellate court denied the state Democratic attorney general's request to stop billionaire Elon Musk from handing over $1 million checks to two voters at a rally planned for Sunday

The post Wisconsin appeals court won’t stop Musk’s $1M payments to voters after attorney general sues appeared first on WPR.

Billionaire Elon Musk says he’ll visit Wisconsin to personally give $2 million to two people ahead of the state Supreme Court election, despite a state law that explicitly bans giving people anything of value in exchange for voting. Wisconsin Attorney General filed a lawsuit in Dane County Circuit Court Friday seeking to stop the event.

The post Elon Musk plans Wisconsin visit to give $2M to 2 people ahead of state Supreme Court race appeared first on WPR.

The state Department of Public Instruction sets the direction of public education in Wisconsin. Here’s what the agency and the state superintendent do.

The post Voters will decide the next state superintendent April 1. What does the Department of Public Instruction do? appeared first on WPR.

Voting booths set up at Madison, Wisconsin's Hawthorne Library on Election Day 2022. (Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump Tuesday signed a sweeping executive order that overhauls the administration of U.S. elections, including requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote.

It’s likely to face legal challenges from voting rights groups and Democratic state attorneys general.

The order is an extension of the president’s rhetoric on the campaign trail about noncitizens voting in federal elections and his crackdown on immigration since returning to office.

Trump has often pushed back against other issues in elections administration, railing against early voting and vote-by-mail. He falsely claimed the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him through voter fraud. 

Tuesday’s order aligns with a priority for House Republicans to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE, Act that would require proof of citizenship in federal elections. That bill, if signed into law, would codify parts of the executive order.

States are responsible for administering elections — even those at the federal level — but the order uses federal funding to compel states to follow it. Those that do not comply with the order will have federal funds revoked, according to the order.

The order directs the federal Election Assistance Commission, which distributes grants to states, within 30 days to start requiring people registering to vote to provide proof of citizenship, such as a passport or state-issued identification that indicates citizenship.

The order also prohibits the counting of absentee or mail-in ballots that are received after Election Day. States set their own rules for ballot counting and many allow those that arrive after Election Day but postmarked before.

The order also instructs the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, along with Trump megadonor Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service, to gain access to state voter rolls in order to ensure the voter lists are up to date. Those entities will also have access to immigration databases and states will be allowed to request DHS to verify if any noncitizen is on the state’s list of voters.

The Department of Government Efficiency, which is not actually a federal department, has come under scrutiny for the access it has been given to Americans’ private data housed in other federal departments.

The order instructs DHS Secretary Kristi Noem within 90 days to provide the attorney general “information on all foreign nationals who have indicated on any immigration form that they have registered or voted in a Federal, State, or local election, and shall also take all appropriate action to submit to relevant State or local election officials such information.”

While noncitizens are not allowed to vote in federal elections, certain municipalities in California, Maryland and Vermont, as well as the District of Columbia, allow noncitizens to participate in local elections. If someone who is not a U.S. citizen votes, it could lead to a felony charge and subject that person to deportation.

Congressional Republicans and the president have taken aim at noncitizen voting, even though it’s extremely rare. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, conducted an analysis of election conduct from 2003 to 2023 and found 29 instances of noncitizens voting.

Voters can't escape ads for the Wisconsin Supreme Court race on April 1, but the same election will also decide whether a voter ID requirement should be enshrined in the state constitution. We know more now about how the requirement impacts voting than we did when it was passed as a law 14 years ago.

The post Debates over Wisconsin voter ID law go back years. What does the evidence show? appeared first on WPR.

A new executive order issued by President Donald Trump that seeks to affect voting laws will have no impact on next week’s Wisconsin Supreme Court election.

The post Trump order on noncitizen voting won’t affect Wisconsin’s high-stakes Supreme Court election appeared first on WPR.

The top Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives says Wisconsin's Supreme Court election is vital because the only way to challenge "gerrymandered" congressional voting maps is "if you have an enlightened Supreme Court" overseeing a legal challenge.

The post Top House Democrat says liberal Supreme Court majority only path to revisit Wisconsin’s congressional maps appeared first on WPR.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court race has entered a new level of spending that experts say could reach $100 million by the time it's all said and done.

The post A week out from Wisconsin Supreme Court race, finance numbers reach stratosphere appeared first on WPR.

Less than two weeks out from Wisconsin's high stakes Supreme Court election, Elon Musk's political action committee is offering voters $100 if they sign a petition opposing "activist judges."

The post Ahead of Wisconsin Supreme Court election, Elon Musk PAC offers cash for pledge appeared first on WPR.

Election officials in Madison are already facing a state and city investigation into the series of errors that resulted in nearly 200 absentee ballots not being counted in last fall’s election. Now officials there face a claim for compensation in an unusual case that aims to emphasize the importance of properly counting all ballots and set a monetary penalty for denying people their vote. 

A liberal election law group called Law Forward served a $34 million claim this month against Madison and Dane County, seeking damages amounting to $175,000 for each Madison voter whose absentee ballot got misplaced. The filing is likely a precursor to a lawsuit, as the group is seeking out other disenfranchised voters to join its case.

“There is going to be a price to pay when you interfere with someone’s right to vote in Wisconsin,” said Scott Thompson, staff counsel for Law Forward.

Cases like this have a history that goes back to the voting rights fights of the late 1800s and 1900s, when officials intentionally sought to bar Black people from voting. But they’re highly unusual today — most voting rights cases seek only to have a challenged right restored, rather than damages — and experts say it’s unlikely that Law Forward’s claim in the Madison case will lead to any damages being paid out.

The threat of a financial cost for errors could add to the pressure on local clerk’s offices, which already deal with the challenges of new laws and court rulings, along with persistent scrutiny from election skeptics and lawmakers. (Madison’s city clerk has been placed on leave while the investigation into her office continues.) Some clerks around the state said they consider the errors in Madison serious, but questioned the move to assign liability.

Melissa Kono, the clerk in the small town of Burnside in western Wisconsin, said that instead of a payout to voters affected by an error, money would be better spent on developing a better system for clerks to manage the increasing number of absentee ballots, which have surged since the COVID-19 pandemic. The uncounted ballots in Madison were all absentee ballots.

Thompson acknowledged the potential impact of his group’s action on clerks. But he said it serves as a broader response to the steady stream of lawsuits filed by conservative groups since 2020 aimed at preventing officials from counting certain ballots because of the way they’re returned or the information they’re missing. In the context of these lawsuits, he said, it’s important to send a message that there should be a cost for disenfranchising people.

“Elections are about exercising the right to vote,” he said. “They’re not about finding ways to kick people off the voter rolls.” 

Legal filing says Madison and Dane County violated constitution

In a statement, Madison spokesperson Dylan Brogan didn’t directly address the Law Forward claim but said every ballot should be counted accurately and that the city is cooperating with ongoing investigations while conducting its own. 

Here’s what investigators have said about the case so far: In all, 193 absentee ballots that were sent to two polling places in the city for tabulation on Election Day went missing, and were not counted, even after they were found. For reasons still unknown, the election workers at those polling places never opened the courier bags containing those ballots. Those ballots then went to the city clerk’s office, but workers didn’t open one of the parcels until Nov. 12 and the other one until Dec. 3. 

The ballots in the bag opened on Nov. 12 could still have been counted — city and county officials have given conflicting accounts on why they weren’t.

The sum total of the oversights, Law Forward alleges in its claim, resulted in the unconstitutional disenfranchisement of the 193 voters. The group appears to be preparing for a class-action lawsuit and is welcoming the other disenfranchised voters to join the case. 

In the claim, the group cites two Wisconsin Supreme Court cases that it says allow it to sue for damages, even if what happened in Madison turns out to be a series of unintentional oversights. 

One of those cases was a judgment from 1866, in which the court ruled that government officers can be found liable for their actions in denying Black Wisconsin residents the right to vote, even if those actions are done without malice. The other is a 1916 finding that because a group of voters was entitled to vote, people depriving them of that right can be held liable for their disenfranchisement.

Claims like these typically move to lawsuits if they’re not resolved, and the city and county are unlikely to accept or negotiate the requested amount, likely prompting Law Forward to file suit this summer.

When voters seek monetary damages 

Why ask for money on behalf of the voters? Thompson said it’s because there’s nothing else to ask for besides money and a finding of the city’s wrongdoing. It was too late, he said, to give the voters back the right they had been deprived of: the right to vote and have their ballots counted in the November 2024 election.

Thompson said attorney-client privilege prevented him from disclosing how the group arrived at the $175,000 figure for each voter. Wisconsin law currently caps damages against government officials at $50,000. Thompson said a secondary goal of the forthcoming lawsuit is to have a court find that law unconstitutional and allow groups to seek larger damages. 

Voter lawsuits seeking monetary damages were never very common, but there were instances in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, typically tied to racial discrimination, said Justin Levitt, an election law professor at Loyola Marymount University and a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s civil rights division. 

The most prominent cases of this kind were in Texas, where between the 1920s and 1940s Black voters who were barred from voting in Democratic primaries because of their race sometimes sued for damages in court, Levitt said.

In those cases, Black voters were designed to be left out of the voting process. In Madison, by contrast, it appears at this point that a series of mistakes — not malice or intent — led to these ballots getting lost initially.

But Thompson cautioned against coming to conclusions about why the Madison ballots didn’t ultimately get counted.

“It is too early for anyone, I think, to say with certainty exactly what happened and why it happened here,” he said. 

Lawsuits seeking damages against government officials face two significant challenges, said Richard Hasen, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA School of Law: First, courts usually look for something more egregious than negligence, such as malicious intent. Second, he said, a number of legal doctrines usually give government officials a raised level of immunity. 

He said he couldn’t think of any cases of this kind, where voters deprived of their right to vote successfully sued election officials for damages, since the 1960s.

Clerks question monetary penalty for errors

If the city accepts the claim or a court does award damages, it could have a financial impact of millions of dollars and would send a signal across the state.

“It’s not normal for this quantity of ballots to go uncounted, and I think everybody recognizes that that’s not normal,” Levitt said. “If this case succeeded, it would substantially increase the stakes of an error like that.”

But Madison’s errors stand out as unusually serious, said Wood County Clerk Trent Miner, a Republican. He said he thinks that Law Forward’s claim proposes too high a penalty, but that it shouldn’t make clerks fear the prospect of penalties for the far less consequential errors that they encounter from time to time.

“Humans run elections, so errors will happen,” he said. “This, I think, pole vaults over a minor error.”

Kono, the Burnside clerk, pointed out that the initial error of not counting the ballots at the polling sites was at the hands of the poll workers at the Madison polling sites who never opened or processed the 193 ballots.

“If you’re relying on unpaid or low-paid, glorified volunteers, essentially, what is the liability?” she said.

Even if the court doesn’t ultimately award monetary damages, the discovery phase of the expected lawsuit — where the two sides must share evidence — could significantly increase transparency around Madison’s ballot-counting errors, Thompson said. This process would likely place additional pressure on Madison and Dane County to fully disclose information beyond what has already emerged from ongoing city and state investigations.

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.

Madison’s missing-ballot mess leads to an unusual claim for monetary 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.

All told, clerks across the state report receiving nearly 29,000 more votes this year than at the same point in the 2023 Supreme Court race.

The post Wisconsin clerks see surge of early, in-person voting ahead of April Supreme Court election appeared first on WPR.

Voting carrels set up at Madison's Hawthorne Library on Election Day 2022. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

In-person absentee voting in Wisconsin’s spring elections began Tuesday, allowing voters across the state to cast absentee ballots at their municipal clerk’s office or other designated locations. 

Each municipality sets its own hours and locations for early voting access, local details can be found at the websites of local governments, the state election commission, or myvote.gov. 

On the ballot this spring are races for the state Supreme Court, state superintendent of schools, a proposed constitutional amendment codifying the state’s law requiring a photo ID to vote and local races for city council, school board and circuit court judgeships. 

To cast an in-person absentee ballot, voters need to be registered, which can be done online at MyVote.wi.gov or at a municipal clerk’s office. Voters also need to show a photo ID to receive a ballot. Acceptable IDs include a state-issued driver’s license, military ID card, U.S. passport and university IDs (only student IDs that expire within two years of issuance are accepted. If a student ID is expired, you may use it along with proof of current enrollment such as a tuition receipt or course schedule). 

In-person absentee voting ends March 30 and the deadline to request an absentee ballot by mail is March 27 — though if a request is made that late there will likely not be enough time for a voter to receive and return the ballot through the mail. Absentee ballots can also be returned to a municipal clerk’s office, a voter’s poll location on Election Day or to absentee ballot drop boxes in municipalities that use them. 

Election Day is April 1. 

Tuesday, March 18 marks Wisconsin's first day of early in-person voting ahead of the spring 2025 election. Exact hours and locations for early voting vary depending on your local community.

The post Early, in-person voting kicks off ahead of April 1 Wisconsin Supreme Court race appeared first on WPR.