On Friday, a Waukesha County judge ordered the state Elections Commission to verify the citizenship status of all Wisconsin voters in time for the next statewide election. But the Dane County Clerk says overhauling the current system would be a “huge multiyear project.”
The post Citizenship verification at odds with Wisconsin’s same-day voter registration, county clerk says appeared first on WPR.
New documents show Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson's phone records were obtained by the FBI during a now-shuttered investigation into President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn his 2020 loss to former President Joe Biden.
The post FBI obtained US Sen. Ron Johnson’s phone records during Jan. 6 investigation appeared first on WPR.
A Waukesha County judge who ordered a review of the citizenship status of millions of Wisconsin voters has stayed part of his ruling while the case is appealed, though much of his decision remains in effect.
The post Waukesha County judge orders citizenship check of Wisconsin voter rolls appeared first on WPR.
Fred Clark announced Wednesday he's running for Wisconsin's 7th Congressional District. (Screenshot)
Fred Clark, a former Democratic state legislator and executive director of Wisconsin Green Fire, announced Wednesday he’s running for Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District
The 7th District covers much of northern and central Wisconsin. It is currently held by Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany, who recently announced he is running for governor. Clark served in the Legislature from 2008 to 2015. After leaving the Legislature, he worked for Green Fire, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting Wisconsin’s environment.
In a video announcing his run, Clark complained that Congress is allowing President Donald Trump to institute tariffs that are harming the northern Wisconsin economy while cutting federal benefits and failing to keep the government funded.
“We’re all starting to pay more for the things we need because this Congress refused to stop an insane tariff war against our best trading partners,” Clark said. “And unbelievably, they just voted for a massive handout to billionaires that will add $3.4 trillion to our national debt while taking health care away from 270,000 Wisconsinites who need it the most, leaving the rest of us to pay more for health care that’s just getting worse.”
On his campaign website, Clark says his priorities are rebuilding rural economies, maintaining secure borders while providing a pathway for immigrants to live and work in the country, expanding health care coverage and responsibly managing the state’s farms and forests.
Jessi Ebben, a Republican from Stanley had filed to run for the seat before Tiffany announced his gubernatorial campaign. Republican state lawmakers from the area, including Senate President Mary Felzkowski (R-Tomahawk) could also get in the race.
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Assembly Republican and Democratic authors announced competing bills at a joint press conference last week. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
Wisconsin lawmakers are once again trying to make changes to the state’s elections system, including allowing elections clerks to start processing absentee ballots the day before Election Day, though partisan divisions on how the changes should be made are already showing.
Assembly Republican and Democratic authors announced competing bills at a joint press conference last week, saying they are starting a conversation around the proposals and aim to get them done this session. It’s unclear whether those conversations will end in new laws ahead of the 2026 elections, which will include a spring Supreme Court election, a high-profile, open race for governor and state legislative races where control is up for grabs.
“There’s not a lot new in here,” Assistant Majority Leader Scott Krug (R-Rome) said. “We’ve gone through a lot of these things before, but we’re here to talk about things that should matter to every Wisconsinite, whether you’re Republican, Democrat or independent, about having faith and confidence in your elections from the beginning of the process all the way through to the end.”
Krug said his proposals would help ensure three things for voters: the “person who’s voting next to them is who they say they are,” that the “person is eligible to vote” and that they know “who won the damn election before they go to bed.”
One bill, Krug said, would take a “comprehensive look at how we approach absentee voting in the state of Wisconsin.” This would include allowing for processing of absentee ballots to start on the Monday before Election Day and regulating drop boxes in Wisconsin.
“Absentee voting is here to stay, so we want to make sure that we include a process where we can actually get these results across the finish line before we go to bed,” Krug said. He added that by pairing the issue with drop boxes regulations in his new bill he hopes it will “draw all legislators to the table.”
Election clerks have called for change for years. Currently in Wisconsin, elections workers aren’t allowed to start processing absentee ballots until 7 a.m. on Election Day. This has led to extended processing times, especially in the larger cities including Milwaukee — bolstering suspicions among Republicans since 2018 about late night “ballot dumps” in Democratic cities.
Despite passing the Assembly, a bill to implement Monday processing died last legislative session due to opposition in the Senate.
In addition to reviving Monday processing, Krug promoted new standards for drop boxes.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court reversed a decision that had banned drop boxes in Wisconsin until the new ruling in July 2024. Some Republicans, though not Krug, were critical of the decision.
“People who are in our communities who see drop boxes on the corner want to know if they have security, that they have standards, that they’re being used the same across the state of Wisconsin,” Krug said. “I know we don’t all agree on what those provisions and those standards should be, but we’ll have a good conversation about that.”
Another bill, Krug said, would eliminate the “ballot drawdown” process from Wisconsin statute and replace it with a process known as “risk-limiting audits.” The drawdown is used when there is a numerical discrepancy and as a result a ballot may be randomly selected and removed from the vote count.
“Clerical errors can lead to an actually legal ballot being tossed out,” Krug said. “We’ve got to get rid of the drawdown.”
Risk limiting audits are a statistically based audit technique, which audits a certain number of ballots depending on the margin of victory in a given election, has been growing in popularity in recent years, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The bill language for Krug’s first two bills is not available.
Krug said AB 312, which was introduced earlier this year, is also included in his package. The bill would require absentee voting sites to be open for at least 20 hours during the period for voting absentee in-person.
“There’s going to be a limited number of session days going into the fall and spring,” Krug said, adding that it could be difficult to get “27 or 30 election bills” across the finish line individually.
“Time is of the essence,” Krug said for getting the changes done before 2026 fall elections.
While the lawmakers held their press conference jointly, Rep. Lee Snodgrass (D-Appleton) said she is not currently supportive of Krug’s bills but that having the conversation is important.
“I think it’s over bloated,” Snodgrass said about Krug’s “Monday processing” proposal. “I’d like to see a cleaner bill.”
“We are meeting the moment. Our country, and our state has never been more divided and more contentious. The partisan divide has become not just contentious, but even hostile,” Snodgrass said, adding that she and Krug want to “model that civil conversations in debate can happen in the same room, from the same podium and with the same goal in mind despite diverging ideas.”
In addition to Assembly Democrats not being on board with Republican election proposals, there already appear to be some obstacles in the Senate.
While speaking to reporters after the Assembly press conference, Sen. Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit) criticized Krug’s Monday processing proposal, saying he was “very disappointed” with the new version as it contains a “poison pills” meant to satisfy the right-wing portion of his party.
“The Monday processing concept has always been a good idea on its own merits, but it’s never been about the right to vote. It has always been about efficiencies for our clerks and our election officials to process ballots more smoothly,” Spreitzer said. “None of those things are about voting rights, and I’m not willing to trade those things for undermining people’s voting rights.”
Spreitzer said the dropbox restrictions are “nonstarters” that would “functionally ban them in most communities.” A bill draft, according to VoteBeat, includes a ban on clerks fixing errors on ballots and guidelines for dropboxes, including where to place them, how to secure them, how to collect ballots and how to keep records of when they’re emptied as well as requiring they be under a continuous, livestreamed video feed.
“I don’t know where these ideas are coming from, but it’s got to be from the extreme part of the Republican caucus, and I just don’t think these are what we should be putting forward related to our elections,” Spreitzer said.
Spreitzer said Monday processing may not happen until Democrats have control, given the recent version of the bill.
“It may mean that we need to wait for a Democratic majority to pass this,” Spreitzer said. Senate Republicans currently hold a 17-15 majority. Democrats are hoping to change that in 2026 and need to win at least two additional seats to flip control of the chamber for the first time in over 15 years.
Waiting would delay any changes to 2027 at the earliest.
Snodgrass, alongside three of her Assembly Democratic colleagues, introduced proposals that have overlapping goals with Krug’s legislation last week.
Snodgrass said the Democratic package is meant to focus on “strengthening our democracy” by increasing access, educating people and providing the resources necessary to ensure that all eligible electors can vote. She said they specifically want to remove barriers to voting, not impose them.
One bill would require elected state officials to serve as poll workers during their first term and once every three years after that to help increase their understanding of the state’s election administration.
“There’s no better way of learning than doing so,” Snodgrass said, adding that the bill would help elected officials be a “voice to talk about how Wisconsin’s elections are secure.”
A pair of bills seek to ensure that polling places and voting are more accessible by requiring that election officials have one hour of voter accessibility training, and requiring election officials use the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s accessibility checklist at each polling place and uniform signs with instructions for curbside voting. Several of the bills focus on helping young people in the state participate in elections.
One bill would require that at least one special school registration deputy be present at each public high school in the state so eligible students can register to vote at school during the day. One bill would require high schools to give voter registration forms and nonpartisan voting information to students who are eligible to vote.
The Department of Public Instruction would be required, under one bill, to develop a curriculum on the electoral process and voting. The agency would also have to mandate at least one hour of voter education instruction annually for K-12 students.
“Too often, young people want to get involved, but don’t know how,” Rep. Jodi Emerson (D-Eau Claire) said. “By making voter registration and civic information part of the high school experience, we eliminate barriers and send a clear message, your voice matters, and your vote counts. This bill is not about partisanship. It’s about participation. It’s about preparing students to step confidently into adulthood, not just as graduates, but as citizens ready to shape their communities and their future.”
The package also includes a constitutional amendment proposal that would allow 17-year-olds to vote in primaries if they will be 18 by the general election. Another bill would allow 16- and 17-year-olds to preregister to vote if they turn 18 before the next election.
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On a quiet Friday at Mo’s Bar, a lakeside dive where regulars gossip over beer and fried perch, Rep. Scott Krug blended in easily.
He nursed a Miller Lite and gestured out the window toward Big Roche a Cri, one of the lakes that he said had taught him everything he needed to know about surviving the Capitol’s sharpest fights.
“I was the water guy in the Legislature for years and years,” said Krug, an eight-term Republican who represents a region of farms, lakes and rivers stretching south and west from Wisconsin Rapids. Instead of sticking to the party line, he said, he tried to balance the interests of farmers, the tourism industry and clean water — ultimately winning support from both conservation and agricultural groups.
“I don’t give a shit about getting my head kicked in by both sides,” Krug said.
That willingness to buck party orthodoxy has mattered even more in recent years amid Wisconsin’s fierce battles over election administration. As many Republicans leaned into Donald Trump’s false claims about fraud, and the Assembly’s elections committee became a stage for conspiracy theories, Krug carved out a different role: the pragmatist trying to keep the system running.
He took over as chair of the committee in late 2022 after his predecessor’s hard-line tactics cost her influence. This session, Krug has moved up to assistant majority leader, a role that puts him at the center of GOP caucus strategy. That might mean winnowing 18 election ideas down to five bills, huddling with Wisconsin Elections Commission appointees, talking with clerks across the state, or working the halls to find a path for bipartisan proposals long stuck in gridlock.
It has been hard for Krug to overcome the conspiracy theories embraced by a small GOP faction and rally his colleagues behind his proposed election reforms. When Republicans do unite on election policy, their bills usually face Democratic opposition and a veto from Gov. Tony Evers.
Still, Krug has kept pushing for the policies that clerks have long asked for, like allowing absentee ballots to be processed the day before an election.
He said he measures his success not only on whether he can get his proposals enacted, but also on whether he can change the tone of the debate, increase confidence in elections and cool the conspiracy talk on the elections committee and in his party, even as Trump and his allies help fuel it.
“Messaging,” he said, “has become more important than actual policy.”
Krug took over the election committee from Rep. Janel Brandtjen, a Trump loyalist who regularly invited conspiracy theorists to testify. Groups like True the Vote and people like Peter Bernegger, a prolific election litigant, used the committee’s platform to veer into unsubstantiated accusations of malfeasance or outright fraud by election officials.
Brandtjen also routinely exceeded her authority as chair, issuing invalid subpoenas to counties and other election offices.
Brandtjen also embraced former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman’s partisan review of the 2020 election, which floated the idea of an unconstitutional decertification of the election, threatened to jail mayors and ultimately cost taxpayers more than $2 million.
While Trump praised Brandtjen’s loyalty, her standing within her own caucus weakened. Assembly Republicans voted to bar her from closed caucus meetings in 2022, writing to her that past issues “led our caucus to lose trust in you.” Brandtjen dismissed the note as “petty.”
Krug saw an opportunity to restore order and told Assembly Speaker Robin Vos: “Give me the election committee,” he recalled. Vos handed him the gavel that December.
The tone shifted immediately.
In one of the committee’s first sessions, Krug held public hearings on bipartisan bills to limit polling place closures and compensate local governments for holding special elections. In the next session, he held a hearing on another bipartisan bill to increase penalties for harming election officials.
He didn’t shy away from giving space to Republican-backed priorities either — including a bill to specially mark noncitizens’ IDs as not valid for voting, and an informational hearing to investigate whether noncitizens were on the state’s voter rolls. The first was vetoed by Evers, and the second didn’t go far after the Department of Transportation declined to turn over the necessary data. (Krug told Votebeat he thought the number was minuscule but still wanted the department to share its data.)
Still, for clerks and legislators across the state, Krug has been a welcome change.
Rock County Clerk Lisa Tollefson, who has been advocating for clerks in the Legislature for about eight years, told Votebeat that Krug was the best chair she’s worked with so far. “He wants to understand the system the most,” she said.
Rep. Lisa Subeck, a Madison Democrat and former member of the election committee, said Krug brought a civility back to the committee that had disappeared after the 2020 election. She also praised some of his ideas, though she questioned the effectiveness of his advocacy, noting many proposals he supported never got Assembly approval.
Krug said a lot of the obstacles come from the state Senate, which blocked the Monday processing bill last year. The Senate, he said, has more “further-outs” on elections.
Kim Trueblood, the Republican county clerk in Marathon County, called Krug’s leadership “refreshing” but said she doesn’t know what to do to convince some GOP senators “that the bogeyman under the bed is not real.”
Krug said he’ll keep trying, and his record suggests he won’t shy away from intraparty disagreements.
He tried to calm down the rhetoric after 2024 U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde delayed conceding for two weeks, blaming his loss in part on “improbable” absentee ballot totals in Milwaukee. Krug recalled Hovde raising the issue again in a phone call during this year’s Supreme Court election. Krug, who was observing Milwaukee’s absentee ballot counting facility, said he told Hovde: “I’m telling you, it’s not the issue here.”
Hovde said he couldn’t recall the exchange. He told Votebeat that while he does not blame his loss on central count, his skepticism of the process remains.
Other states, meanwhile, are still battling the ghosts of 2020 in their legislative committees. In neighboring Michigan, Republicans rebranded their House’s Elections Committee into the Election Integrity Committee and placed it in the hands of a legislator who believes the 2020 election was stolen, regularly inviting the type of firebrands Brandtjen once welcomed. In Georgia and Arizona, hearings on election-related legislation regularly erupt into partisan shouting matches.
Vos, the Assembly speaker, said Krug has treated election concerns as “a problem to be solved,” rather than “milked.” He praised Krug for being practical with legislation rather than holding out until he found perfection.
“I think he’s really done a good job of bringing people together,” Vos continued. “He’s been an incredible leader to try to showcase that it doesn’t have to always be partisan.”
Krug stepped down as committee chair this session, shifting to vice chair and taking on a new role as the Assembly’s assistant majority leader, where he’ll help rally Republican votes. He said he hopes to bring the same spirit of compromise to his leadership role.
The new role means he can write his own bills for the election committee, which he was unable to do last session, as committee chairs generally are not allowed to preside over their own legislation.
Krug said one of his biggest hurdles this session is dealing with election conspiracy theorists — a faction he argues has lost influence in Wisconsin but remains disruptive.
The tougher challenge, he added, will continue to come from Washington. Trump and his allies have called for banning mail voting, overhauling voting machine standards, requiring proof of citizenship to vote, and using the Department of Justice to scrutinize the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
Krug has tried to give where he can, incorporating some provisions of a Trump executive order on elections into draft legislation.
But his tone changed when Trump posted on social media that he wanted to ban mail-in voting and criticized voting machines. “My whole goal is to get results quicker,” he said, “not to go back to hand-counting and wait for results until the Friday after the election.”
Usually, when his constituents or other Assembly members come to him espousing these ideas, he can calm them down with “truth and data,” a strategy he says works until another press release comes from the Trump administration.
“And that’s our struggle,” he said. “You see this ebb and flow, and it’s all based on what comes out of Washington. So we put the fire out. He stokes it, then I put the fire out, he stokes it.”
Krug, a real estate agent, parent of six, and grandparent, said he’ll stay busy even if his tactics make him politically unpopular. If his constituents force him out for telling the truth, he said, he’ll just go sell more houses — and keep adding to his bobblehead collection, a running competition with Evers.
At Mo’s Bar, where workers and patrons greet him like a neighbor, it’s clear his independence hasn’t yet cost him local support. Despite the headwinds, he insists the atmosphere around elections has changed.
“I feel it when I talk to everybody,” he said. “It used to be my first conversation when I walked in here: ‘What are you gonna do about the goddamn election?’ It’s over. People don’t do that.”
Buoyed by that shift, Krug is scheduled to introduce several election-related bills on Wednesday, telling Votebeat he expects most to win bipartisan support. The measures would let clerks process ballots the day before an election, add new auditing requirements, regulate the use of drop boxes, and repeal a law critics say puts ballot privacy at risk.
He also sees promising signs of improvement from within his own party.
In April — when Hovde and U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson were still criticizing Milwaukee’s election operation — losing Republican Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel conceded defeat without caveat or complaint.
As some supporters booed him, Schimel said, “You’ve gotta accept the results.”
Krug said he hoped the concession would be a sign to other GOP candidates that the “shine has worn off” of holding radical election positions.
“I’ll never find a way to fix it entirely,” he said, but he has to keep at it because the effort will shape how Wisconsinites view the Legislature on all other issues.
“Everything starts from elections,” he said.
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.
State Rep. Scott Krug emerges as GOP’s voice of pragmatism on Wisconsin election policy is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
Wisconsin’s controversial practice of randomly removing ballots to resolve discrepancies between the number of ballots and the number of voters would be prohibited under new draft legislation that requires meticulous audits in every county.
The draft proposal, obtained by Votebeat from Republican Rep. Scott Krug, will be formally released this week. Krug said the proposed ban on removing random ballots, known as drawdowns, was inspired largely by a Votebeat investigation highlighting election officials’ reluctance to use the practice and questions about its constitutionality.
“That practice undermines public trust,” Krug said, calling drawdowns “outdated.”
Wisconsin’s law allowing drawdowns is almost as old as the state, and it appears to be used most often in recounts. Other states have had similar laws, but most have repealed them.
Drawdowns occur when records show more ballots cast than the number of voters who cast ballots. These discrepancies usually stem from minor recordkeeping errors or process mistakes.
For example, if poll workers discover an absentee ballot envelope was improperly filled out but had already been separated from its ballot, the ballot still counts, leaving more ballots than valid voters. Because ballots are generally unidentifiable, the law would call for election officials to remove one ballot at random.
Multiple Wisconsin clerks have told Votebeat that they loathe the practice, and national election experts have been flabbergasted that it exists.
A legislative study committee in 2005 questioned the practice’s constitutionality without resolving the issue. Courts have similarly scrutinized its use. The Wisconsin Elections Commission has said a drawdown should be reserved as a last resort “when you cannot explain why you have more ballots than voters.”
Sam Liebert, Wisconsin state director of the group All Voting Is Local and a former clerk, said he once had to conduct a drawdown. He called it “one of the most gut-wrenching things I think I’ve ever done.”
“Every one of those ballots — it’s an American citizen’s hopes and dreams of the candidate or candidates that they want to represent them,” he said.
Although drawdowns are rare and usually limited to recounts, they’ve drawn national attention.
When President Donald Trump tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Wisconsin, his team invoked the law to seek a drawdown of 220,000 absentee ballots in Dane and Milwaukee counties, calling the practice “the only legally available remedy” to account for what it alleged were unlawfully cast ballots. The Wisconsin Supreme Court narrowly rejected the effort.
Other states typically require officials to explain discrepancies rather than resolve them by discarding ballots. Krug’s legislation would require exactly that — for election officials to document the discrepancy and record the number and type of excess ballots.
The bill also requires risk-limiting audits, a kind of post-election review designed to give statistical confidence that votes are accurately tallied.
In these audits, workers review a statistically significant sample of ballots that should mirror the vote totals. If the sample doesn’t align with official results within the allowed margin of error, officials review more ballots until it does. The number of selected ballots varies from election to election, depending on how close a race is and how many ballots were cast.
The math behind risk-limiting audits is complex, but election experts and officials have long supported the practice.
Jennifer Morrell, CEO of The Elections Group, a consulting firm, said she has long promoted risk-limiting audits because they can include more ballots than other reviews. They can be laborious in close races but less burdensome in lopsided ones.
Morrell said jurisdictions that have implemented risk-limiting audits have become better at accounting for their ballots and reconciling vote totals, knowing that any issues would become obvious during an audit.
Liebert, from All Voting is Local, called risk-limiting audits “an effective way to ensure a correct count and detect any statistical anomalies,” while boosting voter confidence.
Closer races require larger samples, and in very tight contests, such audits may require a full hand count. Rock County Clerk Lisa Tollefson said that could happen often, as races across the county tend to be quite close.
Krug’s proposal calls for county clerks to perform a risk-limiting audit for the contest garnering the most votes at each general or spring election before they certify the election results. It also calls for an additional audit of a random contest in those elections that the Wisconsin Elections Commission selects.
A pilot program would begin in 2026, with full implementation in 2027.
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.
Wisconsin bill would repeal ‘outdated’ ballot drawdown law and require risk-limiting audits 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.
Rep. Tom Tiffany made his intention to run for governor official Tuesday after teasing his plans for weeks. (Congressional photo)
Wisconsin U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany launched his campaign for governor Tuesday afternoon — becoming the third, and highest profile, candidate in the 2026 Republican primary.
The 2026 race for governor in Wisconsin will be the first open election in over 15 years as Gov. Tony Evers decided to retire at the end of his second term. Two other Republicans are already in the race: Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann and Whitefish Bay manufacturer Bill Berrien.
“In 2026, Wisconsin will have a choice between opportunity, security, and freedom or following the path of failure seen in Minnesota and Illinois,” Tiffany said in a statement after officially launching his campaign on a conservative talk radio show hosted by Dan O’Donnell. “I will not allow our state to be dragged down that woke and broke road.”
Tiffany, who lives in Minocqua, had been teasing a run for governor for months and is expected to have an official launch event in Wausau on Wednesday evening.
The 67-year-old said in a statement that he would seek to “freeze property taxes, protect our farmland from Communist China, and fight every day for families, for farmers, and for the hardworking people who make this state great.”
In contrast to the short list of Republicans running so far, the Democratic primary field has become increasingly crowded in recent weeks. Official candidates include Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, state Sen. Kelda Roys, state Rep. Francesca Hong and beer vendor Ryan Strnad. Others considering a run include Attorney General Josh Kaul, former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes and Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation CEO Missy Hughes, who recently announced she would be stepping down from her position in the Evers administration.
Tiffany was elected to represent Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District, a massive area that encompasses the northern part of the state, in the House of Representatives in a special election in 2020. He took over from current U.S. Transportation Secretary and former Republican Rep. Sean Duffy, who had resigned to care for his family.
Before going to Washington, D.C., Tiffany was in the state Legislature, first in the Wisconsin State Assembly for about three years, followed by nearly eight years in the state Senate. During his tenure, he served on the state’s Joint Finance Committee, which is responsible for writing the state budget. Before that, Tiffany was the Town Supervisor of Little Rice and managed petroleum distribution for Zenker Oil Company.
Tiffany said that he could stay in Congress for much longer if he wanted to, but that he thinks he can do more as governor and is in the race to “uphold conservative principles.”
“It really is time for new leadership and I believe I have the vision to be able to lead the state of Wisconsin and make us one of the great states of America once again,” Tiffany said.
In Congress, Tiffany is a member of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus and has been a consistent ally to President Donald Trump. Tiffany also supported attempts to overturn former President Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 presidential election. So far this year, Tiffany has supported Trump’s tariffs and crack down on immigration, including targeting the H-1B visa program.
“I support them,” Tiffany said of Trump’s tariffs in his interview with O’Donnell. “At the end of the day if the tariff regime is handled properly, we are going to bring manufacturing back to the United States of America.”
The Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Devin Remiker criticized Tiffany in a statement, calling him “Tariff Lover Tom” and saying he “has been jacking up prices on Wisconsin families with his blind support for a trade war that is making everything from beer to beef to school supplies way more expensive — working Wisconsin families can’t afford Tariff Lover Tom being in charge.”
Tiffany said that he would also seek to uphold Wisconsin’s 20-week abortion ban. He has supported federal legislation in the past that would ban abortion at six weeks.
“I do support that law, and I will uphold it as governor of the state of Wisconsin,” Tiffany said. “I think back to the debate that we had 10 years ago, and you had people on both sides. You had some that were, like, we want unlimited abortions. We had others that said there should be no abortions allowed in the state of Wisconsin, and ultimately, the people of the state said we really want to see something in the middle.”
Tiffany also said he would work to reduce taxes in Wisconsin, including freezing income taxes. He didn’t commit to a flat income tax or eliminating the income tax as some Republicans have proposed.
“I also believe we can reduce income taxes. Can we take it down to zero? I don’t know the answer to that,” Tiffany said.
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Jessica Seawright was joined at her launch event Monday by state Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee) and Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee). (Photo courtesy of campaign)
Jessica Seawright, a social worker, disability rights advocate and mother, launched her campaign for Assembly District 21 Monday.
All 99 Assembly seats will be up for election in 2026 and it will be the second time that legislative maps adopted in 2024 will be used. Under those maps, Democrats were able to gain 10 seats in 2024, bringing their numbers up to 45.
Their goal for 2026 is to hold all of their seats and gain at least five more in order to flip the chamber. Republicans have held the Assembly for the last 15 years.
Rep. Jessie Rodriguez (R-Oak Creek) currently holds the 21st seat located in Milwaukee County, including Oak Creek and a portion of the city of Milwaukee near the Mitchell International Airport. She was first elected in a special election in November 2013, and has won reelection six times. Since 2021 she has also been a member of the powerful Joint Finance Committee, which is responsible for writing the state budget every two years.
Under the new maps, Rodriguez won another term in 2024 with 51% of the vote against her Democratic challenger. According to an analysis by John Johnson, a research fellow at Marquette University, the district leaned Democratic by 4 percentage points in the presidential election and 7 percentage points in the U.S. Senate race. Rodriguez has not yet announced her reelection campaign.
Seawright said the new legislative maps provide the opportunity to ask for more from representatives.
“I wanted more — more understanding, more presence and I decided that it was time to step up,” Seawright said.
Seawright was joined at her launch event Monday by state Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee) and Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee). The Oak Creek venue where she made her announcement was previously part of Sinicki’s districts, before the maps changed.
Seawright said she sees the 21st as a 50-50 district.
“It’s really close, and not everyone is going to agree with me,” Seawright said. “The strength that I believe that I bring is decades of training, listening to people, understanding their perspective, understanding the impact of coming off extremely partisan, and what that does to stifle coordination, collaboration and participation of the voters of their residents in a community.”
Seawright said her family has lived in Wisconsin since 2018, first in Racine and now in the Garden District community in Milwaukee. They moved from Utah because they had family in the state who would help with caregiving and respite for her 10-year-old son.
“We have a fantastic neighborhood. I love it,” Seawright said. “We have community support. We have some great work happening in our parks,” including projects to make the spaces more accessible.
Seawright said she has been working to build a coalition over the last six months leading up to her launch and she is launching over a year out from next year’s general election in November so she has time to get to know the district.
“I want to be out there. I want to have open-ended conversations that aren’t pressured by me asking for folks’ vote before I earn it,” Seawright said. “I want to show up. I’ll be out in the community… I have the opportunity starting early to do the work that it will require to run for this office.”
Her 10-year-old son, who has complex medical needs due to a genetic condition, is the major reason she became an advocate. She joined U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin to speak out against cuts to Medicaid and told the story of her son qualifying for and receiving services through the Katie Beckett program, which helps children with disabilities access Medicaid coverage while living at home instead of being in an institution. Her son also received a waiver for children’s long term support through Medicaid. Seawright worked with the Wisconsin Board for People with Developmental Disabilities and serves on the state’s Council for Children with Long-Term Support Needs.
“I began to have the opportunity to spend time with adult self-advocates, and that was so powerful and inspiring, and it’s motivating,” Seawright said. “You want to step up. You want to be there to make sure that your friends feel heard.”
Seawright said that she wants to work for an expansion of Badgercare — Wisconsin’s Medicaid program — even as federal changes to Medicaid by the Trump administration caused Gov. Tony Evers’ administration to declare that it is “fiscally and operationally unfeasible” to expand it due to changes in Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act.
“I look forward to exploring the options that make it feasible, because right now, we’re looking at folks on the marketplace having premiums increase so high that they’re going to lose access,” Seawright said.
Seawright said that fully funding public education is another of her top priorities, especially increasing the special education reimbursement that public schools receive from the state.
The special education reimbursement rate was raised to 45% under the most recent state budget passed by the Republican-led Legislature and signed into law by Evers. It is the highest rate in years, but fell below what Democrats and public education advocates had called for — a 60% or even a 90% rate.
“Kids like my son, who do need various services in order to access public school, have costs that are mandated by federal protections… I’ve heard from school boards and other school leadership, teachers that it is often pulled from the general fund, and it is making it very difficult to create the inclusive educational environment that I dream of for my son,” Seawright said. “I’d really like to continue and come back to special education reimbursement.”
She said she is flexible about the size of the increase to the reimbursement.
“I look forward to building connections with local leaders, with school boards, within the state Assembly, and talking about a pathway forward that moves us up every year, that moves us on a trajectory where Wisconsin regains its prowess around supporting our kids,” Seawright said.
Her background as a social worker and her research on criminal justice inform her focus on improving community safety through treatment, prevention and alternatives to incarceration.
“I am grateful for the work of first responders, for police officers, and I’ve worked alongside correctional professionals at the juvenile and adult level, and that’s kind of where I’m coming from,” Seawright said. “I am seeing what first responders are being asked to do… My mom is an emergency room nurse, and I see what folks are going through in terms of what comes into the emergency room, and I’m dismayed by any changes moving us away from prevention services being funded.”
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This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.
Some of the 193 Madison voters whose ballots mistakenly didn’t get counted in the 2024 presidential election filed a lawsuit on Thursday seeking class-action status, arguing that the city unconstitutionally deprived them of their right to vote.
The lawsuit stands out because it seeks monetary damages for alleged violations of voting rights — a remedy that has become increasingly rare. According to election experts, that type of claim is unlikely to succeed.
“These voters deserved better,” Scott Thompson, an attorney for the plaintiffs with the firm Law Forward, said in a statement. ”In Wisconsin, we value the right to vote, and there will be consequences when that right is denied.”
During the November 2024 election, Madison election officials made a series of errors that kept 193 absentee ballots from being counted on Election Day. Officials waited so long to report the ballots to the county and state that they couldn’t be added before the election results got certified.
The incident led to the city clerk’s suspension and resignation, city and state investigations, and specific orders imposed by the Wisconsin Elections Commission that require the city to establish new procedures.
The named plaintiffs are some of the 193 voters whose ballots didn’t get counted in the 2024 election: Precious Ayodabo, Cary Bloodworth, Benjamin Jones, Sara Browne, Jenna Innab, Amira Pierotti, Miriam Sham, and Johannes Wolter. They’re represented by attorneys at Law Forward, a liberal election law group, and Holwell Shuster & Goldberg LLP.
They’re suing the city of Madison, the city’s clerk office, former Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl, and current Deputy Clerk Jim Verbick, seeking monetary damages for the city’s failure to count the voters’ ballots. The complaint doesn’t specify the amount, but in a claim filed in March, the group representing the plaintiffs requested $34 million, or $175,000 for each disenfranchised voter.
Madison’s interim City Clerk and City Attorney Mike Haas declined to comment on the lawsuit.
This lawsuit aims to emphasize the importance of properly counting all ballots and set a monetary penalty for denying a person their vote. Election law experts note that claims for such remedies were common in voting rights battles of the late 1800s and 1900s — particularly when officials deliberately worked to disenfranchise Black voters — but are now rarely pursued and unlikely to succeed.
Although election officials around the state have repeatedly emphasized the severity of Madison’s errors, some told Votebeat that seeking monetary compensation for election mistakes would add unnecessary pressure on them.
Thompson, the Law Forward attorney, told Votebeat that he understands how clerks feel but wants there to be a clear penalty for disenfranchising voters, especially as some conservative groups in the past have sought to prohibit clerks from counting certain ballots.
The lawsuit will likely play out for months or longer. Madison has already hired a new clerk, Lydia McComas, who is set to start in late September.
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.
Disenfranchised voters sue Madison for monetary damages over 2024 ballot error is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
Wisconsin Republicans are reviving a plan to let poll workers process absentee ballots on the Monday before an election, a change long sought by election officials, but blocked by a small but influential group of conservative lawmakers.
This time, the proposal is tied to measures conservatives want, including regulations for ballot drop boxes and an explicit ban on clerks fixing, or curing, errors on ballots. By bundling the measures together, GOP leaders hope to finally unite their party on a plan that would shorten the wait for election results, reduce the opportunity for election misinformation and avoid a veto by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers.
The proposal, which Votebeat obtained in draft form from Republican Rep. Scott Krug, is set to be publicly released next week. Krug, former chair of the Assembly Elections Committee and now assistant majority leader in the Assembly, said he “will use every little ounce of political capital effort I created on elections to get Monday processing done, because that’s 90% of our problem in the state: perception.”
Early processing of absentee ballots has had support from Democrats and many Republicans, but proposals to allow it have repeatedly stalled in the past due to concerns over whether Milwaukee, a Democratic stronghold that has been a target of election conspiracy theories in the past, could be trusted with the head start on processing ballots.
Krug said he is “confident” that this measure will pass.
“I think the right-leaning voters of the state will appreciate that we’re codifying the court decision that (clerks) can’t cure ballots anymore,” said Krug. “I think the middle and the left-leaning people are going to be able to appreciate the Monday processing, and I think everybody’s going to be able to appreciate that there’s standards for drop boxes — they’re not going away.”
Evers’ team has said he would sign a Monday processing proposal that’s packaged with other measures, as long as they didn’t contain a “poison pill” or make voting harder.
Most states allow some early processing of absentee ballots, but in Wisconsin, local clerks in Wisconsin cannot begin until the morning of Election Day. That process includes verifying voters’ information, checking for complete witness information and running the ballots through a tabulator. This proposal would allow everything to begin on Monday, except tallying the results.
In Milwaukee, where absentee ballots numbering between 50,000 and well over 100,000 in general elections are counted in a central location, counting often stretches into the early hours of Wednesday. As those ballots get tabulated in batches overnight, they can swing who is ahead in the vote tallies broadcast by the media, fueling false claims of fraudulent “ballot dumps.”
Democrats have long asked for a bill that includes only the Monday processing proposal, but Krug told Votebeat it’s unlikely that enough Republicans would get behind such a measure for it to pass. Evers himself has proposed “clean” versions of the Monday processing bill in past state budgets, but ran into Republican opposition.
In 2023, the Assembly quickly approved a version of a Monday processing bill, only for it to stall in the Senate after Republican Rep. Janel Brandtjen, a former elections committee chair who has spread election conspiracy theories, testified against it.
“Why would we give bad actors an extra day to cheat?” Brandtjen said in a statement in 2022 criticizing the transparency of Milwaukee’s election operation. (Claims of widespread voter fraud have never been substantiated.)
The current proposal is similar to past versions and includes previously proposed measures to create a centralized database of Wisconsin residents deemed incompetent to vote and to eliminate an obsolete practice of counting absentee ballots.
This version also proposes eliminating a law to record unique ID numbers on the back of absentee ballots at central counting facilities — a requirement that election workers say can risk ballot secrecy and creates needless work. It also includes a provision that would standardize witness address requirements on absentee ballot envelopes.
The proposal would require municipalities that count absentee ballots at a central location to begin processing them on Monday; it would allow municipalities that count them at polling places — such as Madison and the vast majority of other municipalities — to start on Monday, too, as long as they pass an ordinance allowing it.
An extra day to process ballots would allow election officials to work shorter shifts and get the job done more efficiently, said Rock County Clerk Lisa Tollefson, a Democrat.
It could also give election observers, some of whom are skeptical of the voting process, more opportunity to observe both ballot casting and counting, she said.
Tollefson said she was “hopeful” that the bill will finally cross the finish line this session.
“I really would like to have a large municipality have the option to use this, especially for your April and your November elections,” she said. “Those are really long days.”
Krug said the proposal is one of his top priorities this session. And enough elements might have lined up for it to finally head to the governor’s desk.
Krug’s new leadership role could help. As assistant majority leader, he brokers support within the GOP caucus, which can only afford four defections in the 99-seat Assembly. He said he’s been trading support for colleagues’ priorities to build votes for Monday processing. He also is no longer chair of the elections committee, freeing him to author bills and advance them directly.
Ballot drop boxes may prove to be a key bargaining chip. The conservative-led state Supreme Court banned them in 2022; the liberal-led court reinstated them in 2024 but left them unregulated in statute.
Krug said he helped work on a poll in April that found 76% of Wisconsinites support the Monday processing proposal and 80% support standardized rules for absentee ballot drop boxes.
He decided to put the provisions together, proposing requirements for drop boxes, including where to place them, how to secure them, how to collect ballots, and how to keep records of when they’re emptied. He also proposed a requirement for the drop box to be under a continuous, livestreamed video feed.
Some members of the Republican caucus, Krug said, still want to get rid of drop boxes entirely. So “we had to kind of beef up the requirements for drop boxes to meet their hurdle. We’re not allowing them, we’re codifying them.”
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.
Wisconsin has a new bill to allow early start to absentee ballot processing. Can it pass? 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.
Jung launched his campaign on Tuesday from the waterfront in Racine, and was joined by some current lawmakers, including Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) and Sen. Dora Drake (D-Milwaukee). (Photo courtesy of State Senate Democratic Committee)
City of Racine transit and mobility director Trevor Jung is running as a Democrat for southeast Wisconsin state Senate District 21 — the final of three districts that Democrats aim to flip in 2026 to help them capture the Senate majority.
“I owe everything to my hometown,” Jung, who was born in Russia and raised in Racine, told the Wisconsin Examiner in an interview. “This is a special place with a lot of warmth and compassion… The state really has turned its back on places like the neighborhood that I grew up in, and whether you’re in Racine or Franklin or Greendale, the state has really neglected us.”
Jung launched his campaign on Tuesday from the waterfront in Racine, and was joined by some current lawmakers, including Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) and Sen. Dora Drake (D-Milwaukee).
“For me, this is about giving back to the place that gave me everything, and focusing on affordability, good paying jobs and making sure that we avoid what everybody is really sick of, which is the nastiness, the politics that too often turn people,” Jung said.
Democrats, who haven’t held a majority in either legislative chamber in over 15 years, need to flip two seats and hold their current seats in order to win the Senate majority in 2026.
Along with SD 21, Wisconsin Democrats are aiming to flip are Senate District 17, currently represented by Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green), and Senate District 5, currently represented by Sen. Rob Hutton (R-Brookfield).
The 21st district’s incumbent, Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine), has served in the Senate for the last decade. He was first elected to the Senate in 2010, but lost a recall election in 2012. Wanggaard was unchallenged during his most recent general election in 2022. In his 2018 reelection bid, he beat the Democratic candidate with nearly 60% of the vote.
But this year the district has changed considerably under new maps adopted in 2024.The current district encompasses part of Racine County, including the northern part of the city, and part of Milwaukee County, including Franklin, Hales Corner, Greendale and Greenfield.
According to an analysis by John Johnson, a research fellow at Marquette University, the area encompassed by the new district lines leaned Democratic by 1 percentage point in the 2024 presidential election and by 2.2 percentage points in the 2024 U.S. Senate race.
“You’re going to have to earn every vote,” Jung said of the district. “We’re going to be out there. We’re going to be listening to people. We’re going to be having conversations about what priorities residents of the district have, and we’re going to make sure that folks know that this is not about left or right. This is about building relationships and solving problems and having honest conversations about how the state can work together with the private sector and local government to make the quality of life better for people who live in southeast Wisconsin.”
Shortly after Jung’s campaign announcement, Wanggaard criticized the Democratic candidate in a statement.
“While Trevor is a nice, friendly, soft spoken young man, he uses that to hide his crazy liberal ideas that are more at home in San Francisco than in Milwaukee and Racine counties,” Wanggaard said. “Do not be mistaken — he is every bit an extreme Madison/California liberal as there is. He will vote in lockstep with everything the Democrats stand for — from raising taxes to allowing boys in girls’ locker rooms.”
Wanggaard said in a statement that he plans to make a decision about whether to run near the end of this year. In his most recent campaign finance report, he reported raising only $0.80 this year.
“My timeline for making a decision whether or not to run for another term remains the same,” Wanggaard said. “As I stated last November, last January, and in July, I will continue to discuss another term with my family and friends.”
Wanggaard said that he has been receiving support and encouragement to run.
“The priorities for the next term will remain the same, and what I’ve heard throughout the district — grow the economy, improve public safety, eliminate fraud and abuse, and protect the vulnerable,” Wanggaard said.
Jung said he will run a positive campaign focused on the issues that matter to people in the district.
“While my opponent is going to try to make whatever the national narrative is that’s focused on politics and name calling, we’re going to be focused on having a vision for making people’s lives better in Wisconsin,” Jung said, adding that it is still unclear who his opponent ultimately will be.
Jung said his campaign is about responding to people’s needs.
“We’ve got dramatic cuts in shared revenue to make sure that we’ve got proper public services and public safety,” Jung said. “You have the state of Wisconsin ranking 27th in spending per pupil in our public schools, when just a generation ago, we were one of the best states in the nation in terms of making sure our students have what they need to succeed.”
Jung said the 2023 changes to shared revenue were a “Band-Aid” for local communities such as his and that he wants to ensure public schools have adequate funding.
“We’re funding two education systems, and that’s not efficient,” Jung said, referring to the expansion of taxpayer-funded private schools — though he fell short of saying he’d want to see an end to the state’s school voucher system.
Jung said in his current position in Racine city government, he and others have worked to expand transit service to the Social Security office as a way to ensure that elderly and disabled residents are able to access their benefits. He said they have also worked to prioritize savings, by helping bring down the cost of public transit, service, by ensuring people get the most out of public transit and sustainability, through environmentally conscious decisions.
In his current role, which he plans to continue as he runs for state Senate, Jung said that he has seen the state of Wisconsin fail to be an adequate partner.
“Instead of being an ally in that work to save local government money and to deliver better service, in large part, they’ve been an adversary,” Jung said. “They too often focused on national politics rather than getting stuff done for people at the local level.”
This isn’t Jung’s first time running for public office. He previously served as the youngest member of the Racine Common Council, elected at age 23. He ran for the office after graduating from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee with a degree in urban studies and a focus on urban planning.
His position on the common council, Jung said, “gave me a really good insight into, because of levy limits and revenue constraints and shared revenue, cuts that we had to make — really difficult decisions that we shouldn’t have had to make because of the state turning its back.”
Jung said that he has several priorities that he would want to work on in the state Senate that boil down to what he calls the “five Ts”: talent, training, transportation, technology and tourism.
“If we get those right, Wisconsin can be one of the fastest growing states in the union,” he said.
“What do we do to keep young people here and attract the next generation of talent in order to be a competitive place?” Jung asked rhetorically. “We need to work with organized labor and create a pipeline for the skilled trades so that people have access to family-supporting jobs.”
Jung said that the state also needs to support public transportation, “whether that’s a robust public transportation system that gets people to work, doctor’s appointments, school or investing in alternatives to the personal vehicle, like transit and rail.”
“We’ve got this new revolution in robotics and green energy and advanced manufacturing,” he added. “What can we do to make sure that Wisconsin is a place that is a leader in these new sectors?”
“This is the most beautiful state in the country,” Jung said, laying out his argument that tourism can do more for the economy. “Southeastern Wisconsin has an incredible architecture on the shores of Lake Michigan. We have a beautiful opportunity to make sure that visitors coming here can sustain the quality of life for residents who live here.”
Jung said the state needs new energy and leadership that rejects “austerity” in favor of “investment.”
“We need a positive vision for the future,” Jung said. “I’m excited about the youthful energy that we can bring to this campaign, but also looking forward to collaborating with people of all different walks of life to make sure that this is a well rounded and informed effort.”
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Voters in DeForest have agreed to oust a trustee mid-term following a special recall election Tuesday. Those results could eventually lead to fluoride being restored to the village's water supply.
The post Wisconsin village’s voters unseat trustee after anti-fluoride vote, other controversy appeared first on WPR.
Madison state Rep. Francesca Hong has launched a bid for governor, joining a growing primary field for the Democratic nomination.
The post Madison Rep. Francesca Hong joins Democratic primary for governor appeared first on WPR.
State Sen. Kelda Roys calls attention to the issue of child care funding during a June press conference alongside her Democratic colleagues. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
Democratic state Sen. Kelda Roys of Madison said she will fight back against “extremists” as she launched her campaign for governor Monday morning.
Roys, 46, is now the fourth candidate to enter the open Democratic primary. She joins Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez and Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley as well as Mukwonago beer vendor Ryan Strnad.
“I’ve been protecting our freedoms when others didn’t even see the threat coming. That’s leadership. See the problem. Build the coalition, deliver results,” Roys said in her campaign announcement ad. “I’ve done it while raising five kids and running a small business, because when something matters, we find a way.”
Roys gave two reasons for why she is running for governor in an interview with the Wisconsin Examiner.
“I’m running because Wisconsin needs a governor who’s going to stand up to what the Republican regime is doing and protect Wisconsinites from the harms that they are causing us,” Roys said. “And also because this is a time of incredible opportunity for Wisconsin, and we need a governor who knows how to get things done, how to deliver meaningful change for families across the state.”
Promising to push back on the Trump administration, Roys said that means that “as people are losing their health care coverage because of the federal budget, as farmers don’t have the workforce to help harvest their crops, as small businesses are struggling with the high cost and uncertainty caused by Trump’s policies, I’m going to do everything in my power to help Wisconsinites thrive.”
Roys said the Democratic Party is struggling with low approval ratings because people aren’t seeing Democrats do enough to combat Trump.
“When I talk to folks all around the state, it’s because people are angry that Democrats don’t seem to be meeting this moment and ringing the alarm bells the way that we need to be right now,” Roys said.
Roys was elected to the Senate in 2020 and has served as one of four Democrats on the Joint Finance Committee, which is responsible for writing the state’s biennial budget, since 2023. Prior to this, she served two terms in the state Assembly, including one under former Gov. Jim Doyle and one under former Gov. Scott Walker.
Roys said her experience in the Legislature would help inform the way she would lead as governor.
“Much to my chagrin, when you look at the governors who have been effective at cementing their legacies into the law, it’s the governors that have come from the Legislature,” Roys said. “Tommy Thompson and Scott Walker are really the top examples that we have, because they understood how to work with the Legislature.”
Roys said the makeup of the state Legislature will not change her determination to get things done, though she is “bullish” in her belief that the state Senate will flip Democratic in 2026 and possibly the state Assembly, too.
“My feeling is that you’re never going to get anything done alone. You always are going to need a team, and the job of the governor is to build that so that you can make durable change, and I will continue to maintain a strong relationship with Republican and Democratic legislators,” Roys said. “As governor, I’m going to be always looking for opportunities to partner with the Legislature, to reach across the aisle, because this is a purple state.”
Roys said her history shows her ability to advance her priorities, even in a Republican Legislature, and that is what sets her apart from other Democratic candidates in the race.
One accomplishment, she noted, was her experience as a law student working with the Wisconsin Innocence Project to help pass Act 60, a criminal justice reform law aimed at helping prevent wrongful convictions, in a Legislature dominated by Republicans. Roys also noted the when she was executive director of NARAL Wisconsin, she advocated for the passage of the Compassionate Care for Rape Victims Act, which requires Wisconsin hospital emergency rooms to provide medically accurate oral and written information regarding emergency contraception to victims of sexual assault and to dispense emergency contraception upon request.
Roys has been an outspoken advocate for reproductive rights during her service in the Legislature as well, calling for the repeal of the 1849 criminal law that ended abortion services in the state for a year and a half after Roe v. Wade was overturned, and the loosening of other abortion restrictions in the state.
Roys, who voted against the recent state budget, said she did so in part because of the lack of education funding. As governor, she said she would want to improve public education and ensure that “we’re not perpetually forcing our schools to go to their neighbors and ask them to raise their own property taxes just to keep the lights on and keep teachers in the classroom.”
Beyond funding, Roys laid out a couple of priorities for schools on her campaign website, including “using evidence-based learning, keeping smartphones out of the classroom, retaining high standards, engaging parents and community members as stakeholders and ensuring high quality professional development for educators.”
This is Roys’ second time running. She came in third in the Democratic primary in 2018, when Evers was first elected, behind Mahlon Mitchell, president of the Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin.
Wisconsin’s gubernatorial primaries are about 11 months away, scheduled for August 2026.
The Republican primary is still taking shape as well. Whitefish Bay manufacturer Bill Berrien and Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann have officially entered the race. U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany has said he will make a decision about entering the race by the end of the month.
Berrien said in a statement about Roys’ campaign launch that Wisconsinites were not going to “elect a career politician who views the governor’s mansion as another stepping stone in her career” and that voters had already rejected her “extreme, far-left policies and Medicare for All Agenda.”
“As governor, I’ll create prosperity for all through work because it doesn’t matter who the Democrats nominate, I will beat them,” Berrien said.
Roys said she hadn’t seen Berrien’s full statement, but it sounded “laughable.”
“I’ve actually spent more of my career in the private sector than in the public, but I still have way more experience than any of the Republicans thinking of running for governor,” Roys said.
In the six-year gap between her service in the Assembly and Senate, Roys founded Open Homes, an online real estate service, in 2013, as a way to “lower fees and make it easier for people to buy and sell their homes,” according to her campaign announcement. She first got her real estate license at 19 when she lived in New York City to help pay for college, according to the business website.
As for Berrien’s charge that she is “extreme,” Roys says, “there is no place for violence or violent rhetoric in our politics, but you have to look no further than the President that these Republicans support, who has unleashed an incredible amount of violent rhetoric that is meant to scare and intimidate Americans who disagree with him, and it’s not just his words, but it’s his actions.”
Roys noted Trump’s pardons of January 6th insurrectionists.
“I don’t know what you can call those pardons, if not a permission slip for violence,” Roys said. “I don’t want to hear one word from Republican candidates about extremism, until they denounce their own president and his contributions to the terrible situation that this country is in.”
Roys said the biggest challenge that Democrats face in competing statewide in 2026 is a group of “very, very well funded billionaires and right wing extremists that gerrymandered our state and have been trying to buy elections here for a generation.” She said she would work to combat that by “building a strong statewide grassroots campaign of people from across the political spectrum who want to see Wisconsin actually solve our problems and move forward again.”
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State Senate candidates Lisa White (left, photo courtesy of candidate), Corrine Hendrickson (center, Wisconsin Examiner photo) and Sarah Harrison (right, photo courtesy of candidate)
Wisconsin Democrats have their eyes set on winning the Senate majority in 2026 and are two seats away from that outcome. With the general elections over a year away, current lawmakers started working towards their goal over the summer — endorsing their preferred candidates and working with them to boost their messages and critiques of Republican incumbents.
But the strategy has ruffled feathers with some announced and potential candidates, who say lawmakers discouraged them from running and are acting as though party “insiders” should be able to determine who represents local communities.
November 2026 will be the first time legislative maps adopted in 2024 will be in effect for the 17 odd-numbered Senate seats up for election. Democrats were able to cut the Republican majority from 22 seats to 18 seats in 2024. They will need to win two additional seats to take the majority in 2026.
There are three seats on Democrats’ target list: Senate District 17, currently held by Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green), Senate District 5, currently held by Sen. Rob Hutton (R-Brookfield), and Senate District 21, currently held by Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine). Democrats are also looking to hold Senate District 31, currently represented by Sen. Jeff Smith (D-Brunswick).
After the new state budget was signed in early July, Democrats immediately turned their attention to the elections. Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton) and other members of the Senate Democratic caucus showed up for a pair of campaign announcements in July.
Rep. Jenna Jacobson (D-Oregon) announced her challenge to Marklein, and Rep. Robyn Vining (D-Wauwatosa) launched her campaign challenging Hutton. The announcements were boosted by the Wisconsin State Senate Democratic Campaign Committee (SSDC), which is the lawmakers’ political arm that works to help Democrats win elections.
“One of the reasons why senators are getting involved with these candidates that are running is because we’ve known them for years,” Hesselbein said, recalling that she first met Jacobson in 2017 while she was serving on the village of Oregon Board of Trustees. “I was really excited about her candidacy.”
Hesselbein told the Examiner in July that the endorsements are not coming from the party.
“It’s senators that know the content of the character of Jenna Jacobson and Robyn Vining,” Hesselbein said. “That’s why we’re supporting them. We know that if there’s going to be a primary, there’ll be a primary.”
Hesselbein said she spoke with all of the people who were considering running to let them know what she was thinking. She said it was important to her that people know where she stood, mentioning that when she ran unsuccessfully for the Assembly in 2010, a late endorsement took her by surprise.
“I wish I would have known at the beginning what they were going to do. I’ve always been very extremely honest and forthright with everybody,” Hesselbein said. “They might be upset that I chose a candidate, but they certainly know the reasons why, and we had a conversation about it.”
For the last decade, Marklein has represented Senate District 17 — winning three elections easily and serving as the chair of the powerful Joint Finance Committee since 2021.
Lafayette County Democratic Party Chair Nancy Fisker said her community is looking for someone who will represent the values and needs of rural Wisconsin and the task of beating Marklein, who tends to vote along party lines, will be hard.
“He’s a great politician. He has a really great ground game. He’s been in office long enough that he has people in place who will put him in the right place at the right time,” Fisker said. “He’s very sociable, and people love that.”
Marklein won SD 17 with 60% of the vote in 2022. Under the new maps, however, the district is more competitive. An analysis by John Johnson, a research fellow at Marquette University, found the district leaned Democratic by 1 percentage point in the 2024 presidential election and by over 4 percentage points in the 2024 U.S. Senate race.
Marklein hasn’t announced whether he will run for reelection yet. In July, he reported raising over $69,000.
Fisker said the new maps have led to renewed excitement around these races. That excitement can be seen, she said, in the number of people who have shown interest in running, which was as many as seven people at one point.
The first candidate to enter the race was Lisa White, a Potosi businesswoman and grandmother. She said she’s been concerned about cuts to Medicaid by the Trump administration as well as women’s and rural health care in general.
“My determination is to represent the southwestern portion of our state, which has not happened for decades,” White told the Wisconsin Examiner in an interview. “I feel I’m the singular voice in that pool of people who can truly, truly represent the entire district, and not just the Madison area.”
White also said she wants to see an end to the private school voucher program in Wisconsin.
Corrine Hendrickson, a well-known child care advocate, is also planning to enter the race for the seat and launch her campaign later this month.
Hendrickson told the Examiner in an interview that the recent budget process pushed her to consider running. The budget’s investment in child care did not meet what many child care advocates, including Hendrickson, said was necessary to help keep them afloat. Hendrickson also recently made the decision to close her own family child care program.
“We’re talking to the representatives. We’re inviting them in. We’re showing them our books… and it’s not enough, and so to me, that means that our representatives truly aren’t listening, and they’re just really moving the goal posts so that they have an excuse not to invest in child care,” Hendrickson said.
Hendrickson said she was excited when she learned so many people were considering running in the race.
“We’ve had to beg people to run against this man in the past,” Hendrickson said, adding that knowing there were others weighing running made her consider, “Am I the best person? What makes me the best person?”
“Really, the only way to find that out is to go through the process,” Hendrickson said.
With so many potential candidates, Fisker said county parties across the district decided they would host forums for those considering a run.
County Democratic parties in Wisconsin usually do not endorse candidates in primaries, Fisker said.
“It’s always been very difficult to get people to run. People just aren’t interested in running for a variety of reasons. So this year we started looking around like we always do, and you know, we had seven people who raised their hand and said, ‘I think I’m interested, but I want to look into it a little further,’” Fisker said. “We were amazed.”
It’s not entirely unheard of for the state party to make endorsements ahead of primaries, especially when an incumbent is running for reelection. During the 2025 primary for the state superintendent, for example, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin endorsed state Superintendent Jill Underly for a second term.
Fisker noted the SSDC has nothing to do with the state party, and she said it was clear early that the sitting senators were planning to endorse a candidate.
“We thought we really had convinced them to wait,” Fisker said. “All it would have taken was them to wait for three or four months. We’re way out here from the election, and you know, the candidates would have self-selected at some point.”
Jacobson, surrounded by five Democratic senators, launched her candidacy the Monday after Gov. Tony Ever signed the new state budget — just a few days ahead of any county party forums taking place.
Hendrickson said she received a heads up from Hesselbein that she would be endorsing Jacobson and the top Senate Democrat encouraged her to run for the Assembly instead. Hendrickson said she felt the decision for Jacobson to announce alongside the senators just ahead of the forums being held “was a move to pressure us to back up.”
“They’re not voters. They don’t live in this district,” Hendrickson said of the lawmakers. “This district is hungry for a candidate that’s from the area, that understands the deep rural part of this district and how hard we’re all struggling as communities because of the state budget and because of the decisions that Marklein’s making as the co-chair of the JFC.”
Matt Raobin, owner of Brix Cider in Mount Horeb has decided against running for personal reasons, he said, but he described a similar experience in a Facebook post, saying that he reached out to members of the SSDC as he was considering a run.
“In that meeting, it quickly became clear that these are the people who choose the candidate, for better or worse. “We want to avoid a primary,” I heard repeated multiple times,” Raobin wrote, adding that he understood the desire to avoid a primary but also found it problematic.
“We are in a moment when the Democratic Party needs to reinvent itself. Approval ratings are low. Nationally, we’re taking beating after beating from a Republican trifecta and a hard right Supreme Court. The last thing the Democratic Party should be doing is taking steps to block out new voices from having a chance to be heard,” Raobin wrote. “Avoiding a primary means avoiding the hard work of renewal. It stifles creativity. It squashes out new ideas before they’ve had a chance to grow. It prevents us from testing a candidate’s true viability, and it heavily favors insiders over outsiders.”
The county parties pushed ahead with the forums, giving candidates and potential candidates a chance to introduce themselves to answer questions from the community.
“I’ve really not seen anything quite like this… we had people from six different counties who came to our forum in Hazel Green,” Fisker said. “It’s been really interesting and fun to see how much people want this… This is what democracy looks like. It should be up to them whether they want to run or not, and then, and then it’s up to us as voters to get out and vote for them in the primary and make our choice.”
White, who is continuing her campaign, said she understands that she is the “underdog” in the race, but thinks it will be worth it no matter the outcome. She said she hopes she is informing people along the way about the issues faced by the district.
“There’s no way I can lose if you look at the big picture,” White said. “How can you lose when you are bringing people in… that would have ordinarily tuned out.”
In the southeast corner of the state, a similar situation has taken shape in Senate District 5.
The district has been represented by Hutton since 2022 but has changed since the last time he ran. It’s a purple district that represents portions of Milwaukee County, including West Allis and Wauwatosa, and Waukesha County, including Pewaukee, Brookfield and Elm Grove.
Weeks before Vining’s announcement, Brookfield businesswoman Sarah Harrison became the first to enter the race.
Harrison told the Wisconsin Examiner she was encouraged by people in her community to run for the seat — some even reached out to make sure she was still running after Vining’s announcement. She said there is excitement about the race for the 5th Senate District because it appears winnable for Democrats.
The self-described “data geek” said that as she considered whether to run, she looked at where Democrats had the strongest performances in the past and areas where Democrats could pick up votes and Democrats could grow more in parts of the district that cover Waukesha County. She said her strong “grassroots ties” there would help her connect with voters in areas that have long been represented by Republicans. She said she also brings her experience as a single mom, a business owner and someone who has worked with Fortune 50 and Fortune 500 companies.
“I still believe that I’m the best candidate for this seat,” Harrison said. Waukesha County residents, she said, “have been underrepresented for so long.”
Vining currently represents a third of the district in the Assembly. The other two Assembly districts are represented by Rep. Adam Neylon (R-Pewaukee) and Rep. Angelito Tenorio (D-West Allis).
Hutton hasn’t announced whether he’ll run again. He has raised over $5,600 this year, according to his July 2025 report, and has about $89,770 on hand. Campaign filings from July 2025 showed that Vining had raised about $3,000 from January through June and had about $22,000 on hand. Harrison had raised a little over $2,100.
Harrison said she felt heard in her initial conversations with the SSDC about running, but that it soon became clear that there wasn’t anything she could do to earn the support of the lawmakers. She said primaries should be about vetting the “best candidates and the best ideas.”
“We fought to end the gerrymandered maps so that voters could choose their representatives, and I respect that the SSDC wants to have a say,” Harrison said. “I won’t let that stop me from running. I’m a fighter.”
Harrison has run for office, running in 2022 for the Assembly in the seat once held by Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, who is now the first Democrat to announce a campaign for governor. She pulled in 43% of the vote in the Republican-leaning seat.
“It was drawn to be essentially unwinnable,” Harrison said.
Michalski lost his reelection bid in 2024 to Vining. When Vining made her own pitch for her Senate candidacy in July, she underscored her record of winning competitive races.
In 2024 with new legislative maps in place, Harrison ran for the Assembly again, this time against Rep. Adam Neylon of Pewaukee. She brought in 41% against the incumbent.
“I took on the work and the labor, and I ran two really good campaigns that were beneficial to folks up the ticket, beneficial to the communities. I did all of that at my own cost, in terms of money and time. I had some support from the party, but not a lot.” Harrison said. “To turn around and make this endorsement, it was disappointing.”
Harrison, who runs a data consulting company, said some of her top issues include ensuring local governments have sufficient funding and that people have access to affordable and accessible child care.
“We’re seeing that folks are hit hard by the need for local referendums because the state has not fully funded a lot of the things they’re requiring,” Harrison said, adding the 2023 law, which updated the way local governments received their shared revenue payment, was just “a toe in the right direction.”
When it comes to health and child care, she said “both of those impact working families and their ability to participate in the economy and to build a better life for their families.”
She said she would also want the state to accept the Medicaid expansion and work towards “making sure that folks are able to be seen [by a doctor] in a timely manner.” However, she acknowledged the new obstacles that will exist to making those changes under the Trump administration.
“I’m very concerned, especially with some of the changes at the national level that we at the state level are going to have to provide more of a safety net,” Harrison said.
As she continues her campaign, she has been doing “walk and talks,” getting out in the community to find out what’s on the minds of residents.
“A lot of people do not want an anointed candidate that was chosen, kind of, by folks who are seen as being insiders. They want to make that choice. They want to have that primary to vet the best candidate. They don’t want a candidate handed to them.”
“It absolutely does make it more challenging for me,” Harrison said of the senators’ involvement. “But it also shows that I’m not someone who’s going to be a yes man. I am going to stand up for what I believe is correct.”
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The top-elected official in Milwaukee County, who rose out of poverty in one of the state’s poorest neighborhoods, launched a bid for Wisconsin governor on Tuesday, saying his background and experience in office make him uniquely prepared for the job.
Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley joins the battleground state’s Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez as the two highest-profile Democratic candidates in the 2026 race to replace Gov. Tony Evers, who is retiring after two terms. The race is open with no incumbent running for the first time since 2010.
Crowley, 39, is vying to become the state’s first Black governor, while Rodriguez would be the first woman elected to the post. There are two announced Republicans, with several others in both parties considering getting in.
The primary is 11 months away in August.
Crowley told The Associated Press in an interview Monday that he wants to be a “governor for all of us,” focusing on lowering costs for families, affordable health care and housing and fully funding public schools.
“I understand the experiences of what many families are going through,” Crowley said. “It’s really about showing up for people and that’s what people want.”
Crowley grew up in the 53206 ZIP code, which a 2013 University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee study found was the most incarcerated ZIP code in the country, with a majority of men who lived there having spent time behind bars. The area is also known for high rates of poverty, a high concentration of vacant lots and poor health care.
Crowley leans into his background in his launch video, highlighting how his family was once homeless in Milwaukee but he rose to become a community organizer and was elected to the state Assembly in 2016 at age 30. He served until the middle of 2020, when he was elected as executive of Milwaukee County, the state’s largest county. He was the first Black person to hold that job and also the youngest at age 33.
Three years ago, Crowley started pursuing a college degree at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and graduated in December, all while serving as county executive.
“My upbringing has really given me the guiding principles of how I govern,” Crowley said. “That’s why I stress being the governor for all of us. I know what it’s like to struggle. I know what it’s like to be poor.”
Rodriguez tried to contrast herself with Crowley in a statement reacting to his candidacy, saying that she brings “a proven record of delivering results across all 72 counties.” Rodriguez, unlike Crowley, has won a statewide election. She won the 2022 primary for lieutenant governor.
Both Crowley and Rodriguez have also targeted President Donald Trump early in the governor’s race. In his launch video, Crowley said that Trump’s “chaos and cruelty means that the Wisconsin that we cherish will perish unless we unite and fight back.”
Rodriguez called Trump a “maniac” in her launch video.
Democrats are hoping to hold on to the governor’s office as they also eye flipping majority control of the state Legislature, which Republicans have held since 2011.
Crowley is one of several younger Democratic candidates looking at replacing Evers, who is 73.
Rodriguez is 50, and another likely candidate, state Sen. Kelda Roys, is 46. Former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who is also mulling a bid, is 38. Attorney General Josh Kaul, 44, is also considering a run.
On the Republican side, Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann, 43, and suburban Milwaukee businessman Bill Berrien, 56, are the only announced candidates. Others, including U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany and state Senate President Mary Felzkowski, are considering running.
Tiffany has indicated that he will announce his decision later this month. Felzkowski said last week that she would not run if Tiffany gets into the race and she was undecided about a bid if he declined.
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.
Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley joins the race for Wisconsin governor 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.
This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.
The federal government’s demands that states turn over their voter rolls and related information highlights long-standing conflicts over how to ensure that only eligible voters are registered without endangering voting rights.
The U.S. Justice Department has sent letters to several states — and plans to send many more — asking them for copies of their voter lists and for detailed information about how they maintain them. The department has said it’s seeking to enforce requirements in federal law that President Donald Trump has ordered it to prioritize.
It has already sued North Carolina, alleging that the state has not been properly verifying voter identity, and sued Orange County, California, for refusing to provide full records for 17 people who have been removed from the rolls in connection with a probe of potential noncitizen voting. And it has threatened to sue or withhold federal funding from other states if they do not comply with their requests for information.
Everyone agrees that a “clean” voter list — cleared of people who have died or moved out of the jurisdiction, or who otherwise aren’t eligible to vote — is good practice. But they differ on how aggressively election officials should move to remove potentially ineligible voters, what exactly federal law requires election officials to do, and how to balance election security with the risk of wrongly removing and disenfranchising eligible voters.
Rhetoric and false claims can make the debate harder to follow. Here’s a guide to understanding the issues and arguments.
There are two key federal laws that govern the maintenance of voter rolls.
The National Voter Registration Act requires election officials to make a “reasonable effort” to remove voters who become ineligible to vote because they move or die, a process known as list maintenance. The Help America Vote Act, enacted about a decade later, requires states to use a computerized statewide list of every registered voter and assign them a unique identification number. It also requires them to remove duplicated names.
Beyond that, it’s up to state and local governments to set their own policies for how and when to perform list maintenance, and it’s up to federal courts to decide what is “reasonable.” That term isn’t defined in the law, and it’s often where voting rights groups and advocates for stricter list maintenance disagree.
In a recent case in Michigan, for example, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the state’s actions to remove the names of thousands of dead voters from the rolls were sufficient, even though the plaintiff, the Public Interest Legal Foundation, claimed to have identified thousands more on the rolls.
Logan Churchwell, research director at the foundation, said in an interview that the court’s decision amounted to giving Michigan an “E for effort.” He said his organization believes there should be a higher standard that would reduce the risk of fraud and administrative error.
For her part, Lata Nott, director of voting rights policy for Campaign Legal Center, said the National Voter Registration Act’s requirement for a “reasonable effort” at maintaining lists is designed to set a floor, but it doesn’t prevent states from creating extreme policies that lead to eligible voters being mistakenly removed.
The main disagreement is over how aggressive list maintenance should be. A recent congressional hearing highlighted the differences between Democrats and Republicans on this question.
House Republicans claimed dirty voter rolls enable fraud and said ensuring that only eligible voters are on the list increases election security and voter confidence. They dismissed the idea that their efforts are meant to purge certain types of eligible voters from the rolls, such as people of color.
“This is not and should never be a partisan issue,” said Rep. Laurel Lee, a Florida Republican and former secretary of state. “Maintaining accurate voter rolls is fundamental to election security and public trust.”
House Democrats made it clear that they, too, don’t want ineligible voters, such as dead people or noncitizens, on the list. But they questioned why Republicans would want to take any actions that could potentially disenfranchise eligible people, citing recent incidents of state list maintenance actions that led to eligible voters being removed.
“What we do want is every eligible voter gets the chance to vote and their constitutional rights are not infringed upon,” said Rep. Julie Johnson, a Texas Democrat. “And that seems to be a huge distinction.”
It is difficult partly because of the decentralized nature of voting.
The U.S. doesn’t have a national database of eligible voters or citizens. Under federal law, states maintain their own lists. They assign voters the ID number that’s required under the Help America Vote Act, but that number doesn’t have to be connected to any existing federal identification, such as a Social Security number.
To remove voters who were eligible, but aren’t anymore, election officials must have ways to find out when a voter dies, moves to another state, is convicted of a felony, or otherwise becomes ineligible to cast a ballot.
Many election officials get data on address changes from their state’s motor vehicle department and the U.S. Postal Service and get death reports from state and federal agencies. Some states allow or mandate the use of other sources, such as obituaries and responses to jury duty summonses.
But there are potential gaps and time lags in these systems. When people move, for example, they don’t often tell the election office for their old address to remove them from the rolls.
It’s fairly easy for officials to track in-state moves because people carry the same state-assigned voter ID number when they go to register in a new location in the state. But it’s harder for officials to find out when someone moves out of state. That requires coordination between states, or more detailed searches through government records.
Many states are members of the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, a consortium that collects state voter roll data and alerts its members to potentially duplicate registrations across state lines. But two of the largest states, California and New York, are not members. And several Republican states have withdrawn from ERIC in recent years, citing concerns about the program, including about how the organization shares some of its data with researchers.
Statistics like this are often used to back up claims of voter fraud or poor state practices. But there’s a legitimate explanation for this that’s tied to federal and state laws.
In some instances, state laws allow election officials to remove voters from the rolls quickly, such as when they die, or if they respond to a jury duty summons by saying they are not a U.S. citizen.
But when a state finds out a voter may have moved, federal law requires election officials to send a confirmation mailing before removing that person from the rolls. If the voter doesn’t respond, they remain on the roll of registered voters, but are moved to the “inactive” list, and their names must stay there for two federal election cycles before they are removed, unless the state hears from them.
That four-year wait, and a large number of voters on the inactive list, can make the voter roll appear bloated at any given time.
But another reason for the disparity is that population estimates themselves are imprecise, said Chris Fowler, a professor of geography and demography at Penn State University who studies voter rolls and census data.
The U.S. Census Bureau’s American Communities Survey is currently our best measure of population changes from year to year, Fowler said. But the uncertainty in the national population count is about 10 million residents, he said — roughly equal to the population of Michigan.
Some use the disparities between the numbers to cast doubt on the accuracy of elections and raise alarm about voter fraud, such as Elon Musk with his misleading claim that Michigan had “more registered voters than eligible citizens.” His numbers included inactive voters as if they were eligible voters. But before those voters could cast a ballot, they would have to correct their voting record to prove eligibility, most commonly by showing documentation proving they still live in the jurisdiction.
Some of the most cited data available on this comes from more than a decade ago and has helped inspire efforts at improvement since then. But those efforts have run into challenges.
In 2012, a research study by the Pew Center on the States found that more than 2.75 million people were registered to vote in more than one state, and there were more than 1.8 million dead people whose names were still on the voter rolls. These and other findings “underscore the need for states to improve accuracy, cost-effectiveness, and efficiency,” Pew said.
There have been multiple attempts to create systems allowing states to share data to help with voter list maintenance. That’s a difficult task because any such effort must comply with state and federal laws governing data use and privacy. Officials must also cross-check data from various sources, using enough different data points to ensure that the matches are accurate and that a person with the same name as another isn’t mistakenly removed as a duplicate.
One prior program, the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program, was ultimately shut down under a court settlement because it did not do enough to protect sensitive voter data. It was also found to be highly inaccurate, often incorrectly identifying registrations as duplicates because of poor matching techniques.
After Pew’s study, the nonprofit provided funding to help launch ERIC, to try to screen out duplicate voter registrations across state lines. Since then, ERIC has helped states identify hundreds of thousands of voters each year who have moved across state lines, and tens of thousands of voters who died. But in part because some Republican states have left the program, only half of states now participate, leaving a lot of gaps.
Some states use more data sources and perform checks more frequently than others. In the latest federal survey of election officials, for example, about 30% of states said they do not use National Change of Address reports from the U.S. Postal Service or data from motor vehicle agencies to identify potentially ineligible voters.
Generally speaking, removing voters who have moved prevents them from wrongly voting in their old voting jurisdiction, and removing a voter who has died prevents another person from fraudulently casting a ballot in their name.
That said, prosecutions for double voting and voting for others are rare, and Votebeat could not find any studies showing that states that do a better job of cleaning voter rolls have less voter fraud.
The Heritage Foundation’s database of voter fraud across all states since 1982 includes 174 convictions for duplicate voting, 99 cases of noncitizen voting, and two cases of someone voting under a dead person’s name.
But Churchwell, of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, said the number of prosecutions does not properly measure how much fraud occurs. Rather, he said, it indicates the state’s propensity to prosecute. “I doubt you’ll find research showing where a state is simultaneously terrible at list maintenance yet zealous with prosecutions,” he said.
Yes, but states that have looked have not found them in large numbers.
Audits in multiple states have found small numbers of noncitizens on the rolls, few of whom had actually cast ballots, and there are no known instances of noncitizens voting in large enough numbers to influence the outcome of an election.
The threat of noncitizen voting has become a prominent talking point for Republicans, driving their efforts to pass proof-of-citizenship requirements for voters. But even in Republican-led states, officials who have recently tried to find noncitizens on the rolls have reported only small numbers.
In an audit last year, for example, the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office found 20 noncitizens out of 8.2 million registered voters. Nine of them had voted in prior elections, the office found. In Ohio, only one of the 641 cases of noncitizen voting that Secretary of State Frank LaRose referred for prosecution resulted in a voter fraud charge.
In Texas, which has more than 18.6 million registered voters, the Secretary of State’s Office identified 581 noncitizens from 2021 to August of 2024. The state referred 33 potential noncitizens who voted in the 2024 election to the attorney general for investigation. The state also is investigating potential cases from the 2020 and 2022 election cycles.
In Michigan, where activists are working to get a proof-of-citizenship requirement enacted, a review this year by Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s office found 15 noncitizens who voted in the November 2024 election.
In Arizona, which requires proof of citizenship to vote in state and local elections, Jesse Richman, a political science professor at Old Dominion University, identified at least 2,331 registered voters who he believes are highly likely to be noncitizens. He studied the state’s voter rolls as an expert defense witness for a case challenging the state’s proof of citizenship laws. Richman said those people could have become naturalized citizens since last updating their license, but the ID they used when registering to vote or updating their registration was a noncitizen ID.
On Aug. 28, the U.S. Justice Department announced the indictment of a Canadian citizen charged with registering to vote and voting in federal elections in North Carolina in 2022 and 2024.
Yes, there are voters who have died but whose names are still on the rolls.
But claims about the number of such voters often turn out to be inaccurate.
In 2012, for example, South Carolina’s State Election Commission reviewed 207 cases that the South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles had referred to as potential cases of ballots being cast in the names of dead voters. Of those, the commission was able to conclude that 197 did not involve dead voters — instead, they were either clerical errors or identified through bad matches. There wasn’t enough information on the remaining 10 cases to make any determination.
States that are members of ERIC receive reports about voters who may have died while out of state, and the service has identified about 644,000 voters who died over the last 13 years and whose names needed to be removed from the list. But some state laws may limit how states use that information.
Pennsylvania, for example, is an ERIC member, but state law allows officials to remove the names of dead voters only if they learn of it through the state’s health agency or an obituary. Election officials in the state, including Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, have advocated for that to change.
Yes. In Texas, some of the people removed from the rolls last year were eligible citizens who did not respond to a mailed notice seeking more information about their status, an investigation by Votebeat, The Texas Tribune and ProPublica found.
And that’s the concern that voting rights advocates have about states that take aggressive steps to clean their lists, especially close to an election. Two of the most recent cases were in Alabama and Virginia, just before the November 2024 election.
Alabama inactivated the registrations of 2,074 eligible voters whom it had flagged as noncitizens based on whether they had been issued federal immigration ID numbers. And Virginia also removed eligible voters from its rolls as it attempted to purge noncitizens based on information from its motor vehicle department, CNN and NPR found.
This is why federal law has safeguards on when states can remove potentially ineligible voters, such as the rule that election officials cannot conduct systematic voter removals within 90 days of an election, Nott with Campaign Legal Center said.
“The more aggressive your list maintenance laws are,” she said, “the more likely you are probably going to be purging people who are eligible to vote.”
Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.
Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.
Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for Votebeat‘s newsletters here.
A guide to understanding the debate over keeping voter rolls ‘clean’ 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.
This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.
President Donald Trump returned to social media Monday with another barrage of unsubstantiated statements about the integrity of elections, following a meeting in which Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly claimed that U.S. elections were “rigged” because of mail‑in voting.
Seizing on that assertion — despite there being no credible evidence to support it — Trump promised on Truth Social to “lead a movement” to phase out mail‑in ballots and voting machines and promote “watermark paper.” He suggested he would implement these changes with an executive order ahead of the 2026 midterms.
The post contains many other false, misleading or unsubstantiated statements about the use of mail ballots, including claims Trump and his allies have made before — even as more Republican officials have tried to encourage voting by mail.
His claims notwithstanding, courts have repeatedly rejected allegations of widespread fraud tied to mail ballots, and many democracies around the world use them. And under the Constitution, he has no explicit authority over the “time, place and manner” of elections. Experts say that an executive order like the one Trump describes in his post would be immediately challenged in court and unlikely to take effect.
Beyond that, any major change to voting by mail before the 2026 midterms would be a logistical nightmare for election administrators, and it would disproportionately affect voters who rely on it most, including overseas service members, veterans and people with disabilities.
Here’s a fact check of some of the key claims in his post.
“States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes. They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them.”
Trump’s claim that states are “merely an agent” of the federal government in elections is false, and contrary to decades of Republican orthodoxy on this point.
The Constitution gives power to Congress and the states — not the president — to the states to regulate the time, manner and place of elections.
Meanwhile, Republicans for decades have framed states’ rights as a fundamental principle. This stretches back to Barry Goldwater in the 1960s, through Ronald Reagan’s emphasis on “federalism,” and into recent decades where GOP leaders have framed decentralization of power as protection against “big government.”
Voting has been a primary example for that very point.
For example, after the contentious 2000 presidential election, Republicans fiercely defended Florida’s right to set its own recount rules. GOP leaders and state attorneys general argued in the Supreme Court case Shelby County v. Holder (2013) that federal oversight of state election laws was unconstitutional. Over the last decade, Republicans in Congress have opposed Democratic efforts to pass federal voting-rights legislation like the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, arguing they represented “federal takeovers” of elections. Then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in 2019 called the legislation “a one-size-fits-all partisan rewrite by one side here in Washington.”
In 2020, when Democrats proposed federal requirements to expand mail voting due to COVID-19, Republicans fought them off. And when Trump floated the idea of delaying the November election, Republican senators like McConnell, Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio reminded him that Congress and the states control election timing and procedures.
“We are now the only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting. All others gave it up because of the MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD ENCOUNTERED”
Many democracies use mail voting, including Germany, Switzerland, Canada, and Australia. Some use it more extensively than the U.S. No country has “given it up” because of widespread fraud. Fraud is rare in countries that use vote by mail, as it is here.
Germany has been using vote by mail since the 1950s; in its 2021 federal election, about half of German voters cast their ballots through the mail. In Switzerland, nearly all voters receive their ballots by mail, and more than 70% of voters return them in the same way. The United Kingdom allows any voters to request a mailed ballot, and about 20% of voters take advantage of the policy. The vast majority of European countries allow at least some form of mail voting, especially for citizens living abroad or for those with disabilities.
Voting machines are “Highly ‘Inaccurate,’ Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial” and “cost Ten Times more than accurate and sophisticated Watermark Paper, which is faster, and leaves NO DOUBT, at the end of the evening, as to who WON, and who LOST, the Election.”
Paper ballots still have to be counted — either by hand (which is slow and error-prone) or by machine. That’s why nearly every state that uses paper ballots still relies on scanners to tally them quickly and accurately.
Existing federal law also requires the use of at least one voting machine in every single precinct in the country, for use by voters who have disabilities that make casting a paper ballot difficult. Trump cannot invalidate federal law through an executive order, so voting machines aren’t going anywhere.
Watermarks are not a standard or proven safeguard, though some states do have them (or something like them). The places that use them still use machines to count these ballots.
“Democrats are virtually Unelectable without using this completely disproven Mail-In SCAM. ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST WITH MAIL IN BALLOTS/VOTING, and everybody, IN PARTICULAR THE DEMOCRATS, KNOWS THIS.”
There is no evidence that one party “cheats” with mail ballots. Voting by mail is used by Republicans and Democrats alike, and in jurisdictions led by Republicans and Democrats. In fact, Republican voters are often more likely to use mail voting, especially in states like Arizona and Florida, where Republicans championed the practice until recently. In fact, there’s no evidence that vote by mail benefits either party over the other — multiple academic studies have reached this conclusion.
“ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST WITH MAIL IN BALLOTS/VOTING.”
Mail‑in voting has consistently been shown to operate extremely securely due to robust safeguards. In states like Pennsylvania, counties that offer ballot curing — the ability to correct errors like missing signatures — report significantly lower rejection rates, demonstrating that the system isn’t rigged, but rather is responsive and adaptable.
Votebeat’s coverage highlights what research studies have shown repeatedly: Instances of fraud in mail-in voting remain exceedingly rare. Even when ballots get rejected, that’s typically due to procedural mistakes — not attempts at manipulation or deceit. Election administrators across the country work under strict, bipartisan protocols, including signature checks and secure handling procedures, to protect integrity. Courts and election officials routinely affirm the reliability of mail ballots when these protocols are followed. In both routine practice and under close scrutiny, mail-in voting stands out as both secure and trustworthy.
“I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS…by signing an EXECUTIVE ORDER to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections.”
Courts have ruled that Trump does not have the authority to unilaterally change federal election rules, as they consider several lawsuits challenging his March executive order.
In halting some provisions of that executive order, for example, a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia wrote in April that “our Constitution entrusts Congress and the States — not the President — with the authority to regulate federal elections.” That ruling blocked Trump’s direction to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to take steps to require voters to prove citizenship when registering to vote.
A federal judge in Massachusetts later blocked the same provision of the order, writing that Trump exceeded his authority. That judge also blocked parts of the order telling the U.S. Justice Department to enforce a ballot receipt deadline of Election Day.
Nothing stops Trump from leading an informal movement, however. He’s arguably been doing that for years already, and while it has had some impact on policy, voters haven’t really changed their habits much.
Jen Fifield contributed reporting.
Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.
Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for Votebeat‘s newsletters here.
Fact-checking Trump’s latest claims about mail ballots and voting machines is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission ordered Madison election officials to follow several specific election procedures to ensure that ballots don’t go missing again in the capital city, rejecting arguments by the interim clerk that the orders may exceed the agency’s legal authority.
The commission’s 5-1 vote Friday came a month after it withheld a first set of proposed orders amid pushback from Madison and Dane County officials and asked the city to propose its own remedies. Madison interim Clerk Mike Haas said the specificity of the commission’s original proposed orders “would set a troubling precedent.”
The city did submit its proposals, but the commission rejected them as overly broad and finalized orders that were largely similar to the ones it proposed in July, with some minor revisions, including citations of the legal basis for each order.
The orders require Madison officials to create an internal plan detailing which election task is assigned to which employee; print pollbooks no earlier than the Tuesday before each election; develop a detailed record to track absentee ballots; and search through election materials for missing ballots before the city’s election canvassing board meets to finalize results.
The WEC action responds to lapses by the Madison clerk’s office, then headed by Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl, after the November 2024 presidential election, when staffers lost track of 193 ballots and did not report finding them until well past the state deadline for counting. The commission launched its investigation into the matter in January.
During discussions ahead of the vote, Commissioner Don Millis, a Republican, cited Votebeat’s reporting that Witzel-Behl spent a long post-election vacation at home — not on an out-of-state trip, as he had believed — baking thousands of cookies when some lost ballots were discovered. That, he said, factored into his vote for stricter orders.
“She couldn’t be bothered to turn off the oven, to come to the office to figure out if the Ward 65 ballots could be counted,” he said. “The failure to mention that the clerk was readily available to address this issue, along with the fact that none of the city officials we depose felt it was their job to get the ballots counted, makes me even more determined that the Commission must impose the directions in our order.”
Similarly, commission Chair Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, said it was “peculiar” that clerk’s office staff never told commissioners during their monthslong investigation that they rented cars on city time to deliver cookies after the ballot discovery.
Those deposed “were all part of the cookie crew,” she said ahead of her vote. “Why didn’t they tell us about that? Why didn’t the city of Madison ever mention this? Why did nobody bring this up?”
In a memo circulated ahead of the meeting, commission staff said the scope of the error “warrants a detailed order from the Commission correcting (Witzel-Behl’s) office’s policies and procedures, and ensuring those issues are actually fixed before the next statewide election.”
Haas, who was formerly the commission administrator, disagreed with the original proposed orders. He said the commission’s authority “does not extend to requiring the future implementation of specific procedures in excess of those required in the statutes.”
But commission staff pushed back, calling it “unreasonable and absurd” to read state law as barring the commission from ordering specific remedies.
In some cases, the commissioners made the requirements more stringent than what Madison proposed, but more lenient than the commission’s originally proposed orders.
For example, one order the commission initially proposed would have required Madison to print pollbooks no sooner than the Thursday before Election Day, despite state law calling on officials only to have the “most current official registration list.” Haas requested an order more in line with what state law outlines, printing the ballots as close to Election Day as possible.
The final order sets the deadline for printing pollbooks on the Tuesday before Election Day — two days earlier than first proposed — and requires that they be delivered no later than the Friday before the election.
Witzel-Behl’s office printed pollbooks for the two wards that lost ballots on Oct. 23, nearly two weeks before Election Day. The commission said printing that early made it harder for officials to track absentee ballots returned before Election Day and harder for poll workers to see how many ballots went uncounted.
Haas, who took over as interim clerk after Witzel-Behl was suspended in March, told Votebeat on the Tuesday ahead of the meeting that it was “way too early” to think about whether Madison would appeal the commission’s orders in court. In a statement after Friday’s vote, he said he was grateful that the commission altered some orders after the city’s feedback.
“The question is which level of government is best suited and authorized to determine specific procedures that work for the municipality in going above and beyond what the statutes require,” he told Votebeat. “We look forward to working with the Commission to ensure compliance with state law.”
Mark Thomsen, a Democratic commissioner, said he wasn’t comfortable with the agency beating up on Madison over mistakes made under a former clerk when a new permanent clerk hasn’t yet been hired.
At the meeting, Thomsen said he was uncomfortable imposing burdens on a new clerk that “no one else has to follow.”
“This order seems spiteful, and I don’t want to go there,” he said, before casting the lone dissent. Republicans Millis, Bob Spindell and Marge Bostelmann joined Democrats Carrie Riepl and Jacobs in approving the orders.
State law allows the commission to “require any election official to conform his or her conduct to the law, restrain an official from taking any action inconsistent with the law or require an official to correct any action or decision inconsistent with the law.”
Many of the orders, such as assigning specific staff to each election task, are not explicitly mentioned in statute.
Addressing claims that the orders were too detailed, commission staff attorney Angela O’Brien Sharpe said, “If the Legislature intended for the commission to only be able to issue general orders, they would have written a law to say just that.”
In a statement following the vote, Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said the city is reorganizing the office to improve efficiency and accountability.
“We appreciate the Wisconsin Elections Commission considering our input and amending its orders to reflect that feedback,” she said. “I hope the WEC’s investigation can help inform best practices for election clerks around the state.”
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.
Wisconsin Elections Commission finalizes specific orders for Madison to follow to avoid ballot errors is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
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