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This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

It took mere minutes for conspiracy theorists to seize on a Milwaukee election error after the August primary, when officials initially forgot to extract election results from five of the city’s nine absentee ballot tabulators. They lobbed baseless accusations that election officials had switched votes or otherwise tampered with the results.

But audit logs from those five tabulators show no evidence of tampering between the time officials initially left the facility and returned again to correctly extract results, experts told Votebeat.

“I don’t see a ‘there’ there,” said Duncan Buell, a chair emeritus of computer science and engineering at the University of South Carolina who has been analyzing election data and voting systems since 2010.

Ryan Macias, an election consultant who previously worked for the arm of the Election Assistance Commission that certifies voting machines, agreed there were “no signs or evidence that anything was done outside the norm” between the initial error and the successful extraction of the results.

More than three weeks after the primary election, city officials released audit logs from all nine tabulators to the Wisconsin Elections Commission and the public on Sept. 4. The files detail every action on the nine Milwaukee tabulators used to count absentee ballots for the Aug. 11 election.

On each of the five affected tabulators, the logs tell the same story: Officials mistakenly selected “export audit log” instead of “export files” during the initial extraction, which happened between 10:15 p.m. and about 10:40 p.m. Then, officials locked the machines.

Officials began turning the machines back on at around 11:30 p.m., after they realized they had made a mistake. They extracted the correct files shortly after midnight. The audit logs show no ballots being scanned, votes being deleted, or that the data contained on the tabulators was manipulated in any way.

The error didn’t change the vote count at all. It just delayed election results by a couple hours.

When Macias first learned of the issue, he assumed that the problem was human error and would be resolved.

“Now, looking at the audit log, I can tell you with a 100% fact that what I assumed happened (is what) happened,” he said.

Other experts agreed.

Jennifer Morrell, CEO of The Elections Group, said she reviewed the audit logs with her team of experienced election experts.

“From what I see, those logs match the public account exactly,” she said.

“In the roughly two hours between those two exports, there’s no scanning or counting activity recorded in the logs on any of those five machines,” she said. “And just as importantly, the ballot counts on every machine match the officially reported.”

Conspiracy theories percolated well before Milwaukee released audit logs

Conspiracy theories about what may have transpired in Milwaukee on Election Day began circulating almost immediately after Milwaukee officials announced the mistake. Popular social media accounts questioned the credibility of election officials, and others suggested that officials were directly involved in fraud.

Three days after the election, Votebeat requested the audit logs — the records that could show exactly what happened on the tabulators during the period conspiracy theorists were questioning. Milwaukee did not release them until Sept. 4, more than three weeks later, and after the Wisconsin Elections Commission also asked the city to make them public.

Experts said that delay was not unusual.

“Releasing audit logs — these machine logs — that’s not a typical part of the documentation that election offices normally produce,” Morrell said, adding that it’s likely that Milwaukee would have needed legal approval before releasing the logs. “The fact that they did make them public, I think that’s a responsible process — not a cover-up.”

More important, she said, is that the officials retained the records in the first place.

“The fact that the log is there, the fact that these things are recorded should be seen as a positive even though it was slow for them,” she said. “I think the more concerning thing would be if the log just didn’t exist at all.”

Milwaukee plans better documentation for the future

In response to the error, Milwaukee election chief Paulina Gutiérrez outlined several changes meant to prevent similar problems.

Written instructions for extracting results will now include images showing election officials which options to select on screen, Gutiérrez said in a letter to the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Those instructions will also be made available to observers at the city’s absentee ballot facility.

Before the results are downloaded, she said, the extraction teams will be briefed on the process. As workers move through the steps, they will verbally identify each selection they make so other members of the team can confirm they have followed the correct procedure.

“In this instance, an error occurred during the results-download process,” she told the commission. “At the same time, the safeguards surrounding the election worked as intended: The discrepancy was identified, the underlying election results remained intact, the correct files were retrieved, and Milwaukee’s accurate election results were ultimately reported.”

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.

Milwaukee audit logs show no evidence of election fraud, experts say 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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Wisconsin Watch has documented the deadly toll of Wisconsin’s drinking culture, from liver disease and alcohol poisoning to crashes involving impaired drivers. 

But one alcohol-related danger receives far less attention — and it doesn’t end when someone hands over the car keys: walking while intoxicated.

Police reported suspected alcohol use among nearly 1 in 5 pedestrians killed in Wisconsin crashes between 2017 and 2025. Because pedestrians are not routinely tested, researchers say the true share may be higher.

The pattern is not unique to Wisconsin. Nationwide in 2024, 27% of pedestrians killed in traffic crashes were alcohol-impaired, compared with 15% of drivers involved in fatal pedestrian crashes, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The figures do not make the danger of walking drunk comparable to driving drunk: An impaired driver controls a fast-moving vehicle and endangers others. But they underscore the risks intoxicated pedestrians face.

“We always hear somebody talking about having a safe plan home, have one sober driver. Maybe you should have a sober walker if you’re walking home,” said Vera Elle, a researcher at Wellbrook Recovery, a Brookfield-based alcohol and substance recovery rehabilitation center. She and her colleague Shimmy Stregosky wrote a series of reports on the topic and brought the issue to Wisconsin Watch’s attention.

Alcohol-related pedestrian crashes fall from 2019 peak

The number of annual crashes involving drunk pedestrians dropped from a 2019 peak of 126 to 101 in 2025. Annual deaths in those crashes plunged from 15 to five during the same period.

That trend coincided with lower reported binge drinking, defined as four or more drinks for women and five or more for men on a single occasion, said Maureen Busalacchi, director of the Wisconsin Alcohol Policy Project at the Medical College of Wisconsin. 

She cautioned that the data cannot establish that changing drinking habits caused fewer pedestrian crashes. Traffic volume, remote work and vehicle speeds also affect crash frequency. 

“The use of alcohol is going down, and then you start to see changes in perceived health effects. So more people are starting to see it as bad for health than they have in the past,” Busalacchi said.

Nationally, Gallup found that 54% of adults reported consuming alcohol in 2025, a record low in its polling. The share of adults ages 18 to 34 who considered moderate drinking harmful rose from 34% in 2018 to 66% in 2025.

In Wisconsin, the state’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System estimates a similar trend: The share of adults reporting binge drinking fell from 21.9% in 2019 to 19.1% in 2024.

Alcohol-related crashes span age groups

From 2017 through 2025, 16 pedestrians ages 35 to 39 were killed in Wisconsin crashes in which police suspected they consumed alcohol, according to a Wisconsin Watch analysis of Wisconsin Department of Transportation data. 

That was the highest death toll of any five-year age group. Pedestrians ages 30 to 34 had the second-highest total, with 11 deaths, followed by those ages 25 to 29 and 50 to 54, with 10 each. Overall, 78 of the 96 pedestrians killed were ages 20 to 59.

Across crashes of all injury severity, pedestrians in their 20s accounted for the most cases involving suspected alcohol use. The total was highest among those ages 20 to 24, followed by those ages 25 to 29. But the numbers remained relatively high across most age groups from 30 to 59. Most pedestrians in those crashes suffered injuries.

The data showed a stark difference in injury severity: 44.6% of pedestrians suspected of alcohol use were seriously or fatally injured, compared with 21.1% of those without suspected alcohol use. 

However, the connection does not establish that alcohol alone caused the difference. Nor can the data show how much more likely an intoxicated person is to be struck because no reliable count exists of how many intoxicated and sober people walk Wisconsin’s roads.

The figures are also likely to understate how many pedestrians involved in crashes had been drinking, said Richard Blomberg, vice president of the research firm Dunlap Research. 

His research found that police generally identified alcohol use reliably when they checked the “had been drinking” box on crash reports. But an unchecked box did not mean a pedestrian was sober because police were less likely to document alcohol use when signs were unclear.

Research shows alcohol’s role in pedestrian crashes

Adults who had been drinking, especially those doing so excessively, were heavily overrepresented among pedestrians struck by vehicles, Blomberg found in a study he designed in the 1970s. About half of the adult pedestrian victims had been drinking, and nearly one-quarter had a blood alcohol level of 0.20% or higher.

Blomberg also compared crash victims with a random sample of pedestrians walking on the street near the crash sites. The researchers assembled three control groups. Some pedestrians were sampled at the same locations, days and times as previous crashes, while others were sampled at 112 randomly selected locations across New Orleans. The comparisons allowed Blomberg to estimate the extent to which alcohol was overrepresented among crash victims.

Blomberg also found alcohol-involved victims were disproportionately middle-aged men and more likely to have arrest records. Their crashes clustered at night and on weekends. 

Blomberg cautioned that findings in one city did not represent the entire country, even if New Orleans was reasonably similar to other urban areas. Almost half a century later, he found the same demographic overrepresented in an analysis of crash data from five states from 2007 to 2017.

Later studies examined a related but different question: whether alcohol was associated with more severe injuries once a pedestrian was struck. In a study published in 1995, Dr. James Williams of Memorial Medical Center in Savannah, Georgia, reviewed autopsies of 223 pedestrian fatalities. He found that alcohol-involved pedestrians were more likely to suffer more severe injuries than sober pedestrians when struck by vehicles. Because the study included only fatalities, it did not measure whether intoxicated pedestrians were more likely to die after being struck.

A Florida analysis published a year later, however, found that pedestrians classified by police as under the influence had four to five times the adjusted odds of dying from a collision as pedestrians not classified as such. Rebecca Miles-Doan, the analysis’ author, cautioned that the finding might overestimate the association because police tend to conduct more intensive investigations into fatal cases. 

Using more recent data from 2011 to 2016, University of Tennessee researchers found that alcohol was identified in about 7% of Tennessee pedestrian crashes but in 22% of pedestrian fatalities. The researchers pointed to limitations of their study: Few crashes had BAC readings, and alcohol classifications relied heavily on police judgment.

Experts point to public health solutions

Unlike impaired driving, walking while intoxicated generally is not a crime in Wisconsin. The Legislature eliminated the crime of public intoxication in 1973, which critics said created a “revolving door” through the criminal justice system for lower-income people and did little to improve rehabilitation — and sometimes worsened it.

Experts interviewed for this story also do not view criminalization as a principal solution. 

Cities elsewhere have experimented with less punitive measures to improve safety. Baltimore launched the “Walk Smart Baltimore” campaign at the turn of the century. Blomberg participated as a researcher. 

The campaign tested measures that did not depend entirely on intoxicated pedestrians making safe decisions. The city distributed reflective hats and used television, radio, billboards and flyers to warn pedestrians of dangers.

The evaluation reported fewer pedestrian crashes in the target area, although Blomberg said the program required resources that made it difficult for other communities to replicate.

“We can wrap them in cotton and potentially keep them from being injured in a crash or in a fall, but the health effects of that excess alcohol use are still there,” Blomberg said. “If we solve the underlying alcohol problem, everything else goes away.”

Addressing excessive alcohol use is the long-term goal, Blomberg said, but communities should not wait to reduce immediate risks through other efforts including safer vehicle designs, separating pedestrians from traffic or other measures. 

If a street redesign, safer ride home or other intervention reduces alcohol-involved pedestrian crashes by even 5% or 10%, he said, “then of course we should do it.”

DataWatch: The overlooked risks of walking while intoxicated 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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The Wisconsin Supreme Court begins oral arguments in September under a new 5-2 liberal majority and faces a term that could feature politically charged cases, including those challenging the state’s congressional maps and seeking to restore collective bargaining rights for many public sector unions. 

The pending cases before the high court so far, and other legal issues that may arise over the course of the term, provide ample opportunity to observe how the justices operate under a new liberal supermajority, court watchers said. Will they accept more cases following a streak of fewer decisions in recent years than in prior terms? How will the justices respond in real time to election issues during the midterms? Will they change the long-standing approach the court uses to interpret state statutes?  

“Now that there is a clear majority, not just a one-vote majority, it’s entirely possible that the justices will start to differentiate themselves from one another more,” said Chad Oldfather, a professor at the Marquette University Law School. “Because there’s less of a pressure to act as a bloc.” 

The high court’s liberal majority grew to five after Chris Taylor’s dominant April victory in the 2026 Wisconsin Supreme Court race to replace conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley. Liberal justices have won five of the last six Wisconsin Supreme Court elections, shifting the court from a 5-2 conservative majority in 2018. 

The liberal wing includes Taylor, Chief Justice Jill Karofsky and justices Rebecca Dallet, Janet Protasiewicz and Susan Crawford. The conservatives include justices Annette Ziegler and Brian Hagedorn, who is often a swing vote.

“I’m guessing that it’s going to not seem like a 5-2 court this coming term,” said Alan Ball, a Marquette University professor who operates the SCOWstats blog that analyzes Wisconsin Supreme Court statistics. “Maybe like a 5-1-1: five liberals and then Ziegler is a conservative, and then Hagedorn, you know, who knows?” 

During the 2025 term, Hagedorn voted more often with the liberal wing of the court in split decisions than Crawford did in her first year as a justice, according to Ball’s review of the previous term. But Crawford aligned more with fellow liberals and Hagedorn with conservatives on more political issues, such as a case in the last term between Attorney General Josh Kaul and the Legislature over who controls settlement funds, Ball noted. 

Justices are scheduled to hear oral arguments in 16 cases across seven days between Sept. 8 and Oct. 13. More cases could rise to the high court over the course of the new term. 

What decisions will justices make about the congressional map?

Justices will hear oral arguments related to two lawsuits challenging Wisconsin’s congressional map on Sept. 16, but any decisions are not expected to impact the 2026 midterm elections, in which primary elections have already set up the candidates in races this November. 

The Wisconsin Supreme Court last November tapped two three-judge panels to hear the cases challenging the congressional maps as unconstitutional. One case, brought by a group of voters, argued the maps are a partisan gerrymander. The other case, brought by the Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy, argues the congressional maps are an anti-competitive gerrymander.

Both panels dismissed the challenges in separate rulings this spring, writing that only the high court could make decisions about the existing congressional maps. The voters and the business group appealed the decisions. 

The issues before the justices in September for the voter-brought case include whether Wisconsin’s constitution allows partisan gerrymandering and, for the Wisconsin Business Leaders case, whether the three-judge panel was wrong in considering “anti-competitive” and partisan gerrymandering as the same argument. 

Lucas Vebber, deputy counsel at the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, who is representing multiple intervenors in both maps cases, said their position remains that the Wisconsin constitution does not allow the groups in these cases to bring their gerrymandering claims. 

“This is a primary function of the Legislature,” Vebber explained. “Courts have a role to play, but they should stay within that role and not go beyond.” 

Jeff Mandell, general counsel for Law Forward, a progressive law firm representing the Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy in its case, said attorneys have asked the justices to issue a decision by the end of this year ahead of jury trial dates in April in that case.  

“If we’re able to hold that trial in April, that should provide time for the trial court to do its work, and for there to be an appeal if need be,” Mandell said. “And for there to be new districts that are constitutional for the 2028 congressional elections.” 

There would be no need for a trial if the high court affirms the three-judge panel’s dismissal, which would leave the existing maps in place. 

Will emergency election issues rise to the high court? 

While the court considers issues in the congressional maps case, legal experts say the stakes of the 2026 midterm elections make it likely that the justices could face potential fast-moving cases on voting and election-related issues. 

“We’ve had these fights over ballot boxes and whether you need to have a witness see your vote if you’re disabled. There was a whole issue of what has to be available for a disabled voter,” said Janine Geske, a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice and professor at the Marquette University Law School. “Those kinds of things people can go right to the court and say ‘We’re going to bypass everybody. This is an emergency. We need the court to issue a ruling.’ I suspect, especially with all the talk of voting integrity or voting fraud … that we’re going to see that.” 

Recently, the high court ordered an expedited process for briefings in an appeal filed by the Democratic National Committee about a 2024 case that sought answers to whether a circuit court has the authority to extend hours at a polling location past 8 p.m.

The Waukesha-based 2nd District Court of Appeals this summer reversed a Walworth County judge’s order from the 2024 presidential election that allowed polling locations at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater campus to stay open until 10:30 p.m. on Election Day. The 2nd District in July reversed the decision, arguing it is up to the Legislature to determine polling hours. 

The court has yet to accept the DNC’s petition for review, but Ziegler questioned the majority’s motives in her lone dissent against speeding up the briefing process. The majority did not offer an explanation for expediting that timeline.

“We know not why this matter races to the front of the line. One would think further explanation would be forthcoming,” wrote Ziegler, who is not seeking reelection and is in her final year on the court. “One would think the majority would be more cautious to not appear to favor the political party that spent seemingly endless amounts of money to get them elected.” 

Will justices accept a case to restore pre-Act 10 collective bargaining rights? 

In late July, the 2nd District Court of Appeals reversed a 2024 Dane County Circuit Court ruling that restored collective bargaining rights for many public sector unions and employees. The unions in the case appealed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court less than three weeks later. 

The issues in this case stem from whether portions of Act 10 — the 2011 law signed by former Republican Gov. Scott Walker that spurred massive protests at the Capitol — that separate public safety and general public employees violate equal protection guarantees in Wisconsin’s constitution.

Geske said she sees a stronger argument in this case than past legal challenges to Act 10. But the justices will have to determine whether the court is held to previous opinions it has made related to Act 10, she said.

“I think that most of the justices who felt that are gone or no longer in the majority,” Geske said. 

Mandell, who is among the attorneys representing the unions in the case, said he expects the high court to decide whether to take the case sometime this fall. 

“If the court takes the case in the fall, then there’s ample time for it to be briefed and argued this term,” Mandell said. “Which means that by around the Fourth of July, we should have a final answer in Wisconsin about Act 10.” 

If the petition is accepted, the case would move forward without Hagedorn, who in January 2025 said he would not participate in the case. Hagedorn was chief legal counsel for Walker when Act 10 was drafted. 

What should courts use to interpret state laws? 

In a seemingly minor case about whether a former salesperson for a window company was eligible for unemployment insurance, the high court is expected to determine if it should use a new framework to interpret state statutes. 

For years, the courts have relied on a 2004 case that placed limits on when to use outside evidence, such as legislative history, to understand state statutes. Justices and legal experts have described the case, Kalal v. Circuit Court for Dane County, as the most cited in Wisconsin Supreme Court history. 

The question before the high court is whether justices should take “a broader, holistic approach” to interpret state laws than what the Kalal case allows. 

“It’s really about how much we trust judges, or in this case, judges trust themselves to adequately or accurately assess things that legislators say,” Oldfather said. “Because the fear, of course, is that legislators will say self-serving things about what they pass into law.” 

The case has not been scheduled for oral arguments, but is among pending cases before the justices. Oldfather said it’s likely the majority will take the approach that Dallet wrote about in a 2021 case about conditions in a pollution discharge permit issued by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. 

In 2021, Dallet wrote that the court’s approach to statutory interpretation should be “more comprehensive,” although she acknowledged that some sources may be more reliable than others.

“Such a holistic methodology would lead to more transparent analyses in which the court is upfront and honest about considering relevant extrinsic sources to interpret a statute’s meaning,” Dallet wrote in 2021. “That includes being transparent about those sources’ actual analytical value when they support more than one reasonable inference.”

Dallet brought up that approach again in a 2025 concurring opinion for a case that determined employees of University of Wisconsin hospitals and clinics did not have the ability to collectively bargain under Act 10. 

Bradley, who left the court in July, in the same 2025 decision criticized Dallet’s effort and said a “holistic” approach “would remove any remaining constraints on judicial overreach.” 

“It’s an open appeal for judges in this state to legislate from the bench,” Bradley wrote. “This court should stay the course and reject Justice Dallet’s invitation to unmoor the judiciary from the rule of law.”

Elections, Act 10 top list of hot-button issues facing Wisconsin Supreme Court’s new liberal supermajority 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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Wisconsin’s prison population hit a record high this week, a new milestone for a system that has for decades held thousands more people than it was designed for. 

According to figures released Friday, the state’s Department of Corrections held 23,854 people in custody. That’s 28 above the record set in 2019 and nearly 6,000 beyond the prisons’ intended capacity. 

Wisconsin’s prisons have been severely over capacity for at least 20 years, prompting officials to add bunk beds and increase the number of people per cell. The three prisons that house only women are particularly overcrowded. There, staff have converted offices to dorms and, at times, set up beds in gyms.

Sarah Buckingham, who is incarcerated at Robert E. Ellsworth Correctional Center in Racine, told Wisconsin Watch in May that prison officials “just cram us in wherever they can.” That minimum-security women’s prison was designed to house 230 people. As of Friday, it held 495, more than twice its design capacity. The state’s other minimum-security women’s prison, the Milwaukee Women’s Center, was designed for 42 but now holds 104, making it Wisconsin’s  most crowded prison.

Contacted for comment, Department of Corrections spokesperson Kevin Hoffman said the department has “extremely limited statutory authority on its own to reduce the prison population.”

The new record comes years after Gov. Tony Evers vowed to ease prison crowding in a state that stands out nationally for disproportionately incarcerating Black residents. In a 2018 Democratic gubernatorial debate, Evers — who has spoken of “second chances” and “redemption” — called a goal by activists to cut Wisconsin’s prison population by half  “worth accomplishing.”

But the Republican-led Legislature has stymied such efforts, spokesperson Britt Cudaback said, pointing to the governor’s “eight years of budget requests to reform our state’s justice system.” 

The governor doesn’t choose who goes to prison or for how long, Cudaback added. In 1998, Wisconsin legislators adopted one of the country’s most punitive “truth-in-sentencing” laws, requiring most prisoners to spend their full sentence behind bars, without the possibility of parole. Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson signed the bipartisan legislation into law.

Policy changes such as reducing sentences or diverting more people to treatment would require action by judges or the Legislature, though the governor’s administration can singlehandedly address revocations, a common way people end up in prison. 

People on court-ordered supervision can end up back in prison if they allegedly violate the rules of their release, even without committing a new crime. In 2021, the Department of Corrections raised the threshold for revocations in certain circumstances, which corresponded with an initial dip in technical revocations.

Evers recently took another unilateral step that could reduce the prison population, though likely modestly. In April, he signed executive orders allowing eligible Wisconsin prisoners to apply to have their sentences shortened for the first time in 25 years. 

It’s unclear how many people might receive commutations or how much their sentences might be shortened. The Commutation Advisory Board heard testimony from a dozen applicants at its inaugural hearing on Aug. 21. A second hearing, featuring another dozen applicants, is scheduled for Sept. 18.

Not just tight quarters

Overcrowding stresses prisons in a variety of ways, increasing dangers and reducing quality of life for both prisoners and correctional officers. A higher prison population requires more officers, who can be tough to recruit and retain. In 2023, officials locked down Waupun Correctional Institution — canceling programs and confining prisoners to their cells for months — because they didn’t have enough officers to operate normally, Wisconsin Watch reporting revealed.

Today, the state’s adult prison system is short about 658 full-time correctional officers and sergeants, the latest DOC figures show. The system has 35 fewer people in those positions than it did in May, even as the prison population grew by about 250.

A higher prison population can increase competition for limited spots in treatment, education and work programs designed to prepare prisoners for release. 

Already, many prisoners wait months or years for those opportunities, and advocates say increased crowding could keep people in prison longer or contribute to their return — a cycle that could further pack prisons.

A prisoner at Taycheedah Correctional Institution in Fond du Lac told Wisconsin Watch that crowded conditions make it harder to offer a key type of counseling. Since 2019, the maximum-security women’s prison has allowed prisoners to meet with certified peer support specialists, fellow prisoners trained and paid by the Department of Corrections to share their own experiences and support others navigating challenges behind bars. 

Converting more spaces into dorms leaves fewer places for peer specialists to hold one-on-one meetings, said Natalie Murphy, who has worked as a peer specialist for seven years. Fewer than 10 peer specialists serve the 1,074-person facility, Murphy said. 

“There’s a huge waitlist, and we are trying to accommodate all of the people, because we want to help people,” Murphy said. “But one of the biggest problems is that we can’t hire anybody because we do not have physical space to work in.”

Solutions elusive

Policymakers and prisoner advocates disagree about how to ease crowding. In the major revamp he proposed last year, Evers called for, among other things:

• Closing the nearly 130-year-old Green Bay Correctional Institution.
• Transforming Waupun Correctional Institution into a “vocational village.” 
• Converting the troubled Lincoln Hills School from a juvenile prison to an adult prison.
• Converting John C. Burke Correctional Center in Waupun into a women’s prison.
• Expanding a program that allows some people incarcerated for nonviolent crimes to qualify for early release by completing substance use treatment. 

Together the changes would reduce the state’s prison capacity by 700, the governor’s office said. The plan drew criticism from Republican lawmakers, who pointed to the state’s crowded prisons as a sign that the state needs more space in its prisons, not less.

State Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, said the answer is “right-sizing” the population by “adding additional beds, reducing overcrowding and making facilities safer for not only our inmates, but for our staff,” WPR reported. 

Last October, the State of Wisconsin Building Commission released $15 million to plan for Evers’ proposed changes. 

“The governor’s corrections proposal would have paved the way for much-needed facilities upgrades and expanded programming to address many of the challenges we face today,” DOC spokesperson Hoffman said. “Unfortunately, the Legislature did not fully fund the plan and only provided $15 million for planning.”

Wisconsin spends about $1.06 billion a year on its prisons, or 5% of the state budget. State officials estimate it costs roughly $50,000 to incarcerate one person for a year in Wisconsin. By comparison, the state spends around $15,000 a year per student in the public K-12 school system. 

Meanwhile, some states have significantly reduced their prison populations in recent decades. New York has cut the number of people behind bars by half since 2008 as a result of various factors, including ending incarceration for most technical violations of supervision rules. Republican-led Texas has closed several prisons as a result of bipartisan criminal justice reforms, including a greater focus on substance abuse treatment and diversion. 

Brittany Carloni contributed reporting.

Wisconsin prisons hit record population as crowding strains staffing and programs 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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This story was produced in partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Investigative Journalism class taught in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Click here to read highlights from the story

• Recent wildfires in Canada and northern Minnesota brought a wave of smoke to Wisconsin in July, raising concerns in Rock County similar to those in 2023, when Beloit was ranked the city with the worst air quality in the nation.
• Rock County faces above average asthma rates, and air pollution from wildfire smoke combined with emissions from existing polluters can worsen these health risks. 
• The county relies on a particulate matter monitor in Rockford, Illinois, to track PM2.5 levels. Local advocates and community members are pushing for a regulatory monitor in Rock County, especially as industrial emissions increase.

Pablo Toral expected another successful summer field program at the Boundary Waters, continuing a tradition that has lasted close to 70 years. Instead, he found himself evacuating by canoe after wildfires forced his team to abandon the trip. 

Students had already started arriving at the research station for the program’s mid-summer session. They were supposed to spend the next month doing hands-on field research, canoeing and camping. Then came the evacuation alert giving everyone 20 minutes to pack up and leave. Toral, the chair of environmental studies and political science at Beloit College, said it was clear conditions were unlikely to improve, leading organizers to cancel the rest of the program.

After driving through the night, Toral returned to Beloit, only to find that the wildfires had followed him in the form of thick smoke and unhealthy air quality. 

Poor air quality is a serious concern for Beloit residents who worry about the emissions from nearby power plants and now wildfire smoke. Just three years ago, under similar wildfire concerns as this summer, the city was named the worst for air pollution in the United States.

Rock County also has above average asthma rates, making the poor air quality even more troubling for residents. 

Cristine Rameker, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services’ asthma program manager, told Wisconsin Watch that the most recent estimate of asthma-related hospitalizations per 10,000 people in Rock County — between 2022 and 2024 — was 39% higher than the statewide average, with a rate of 3.2 per 10,000 people compared to 2.3.

During those years, asthma-related emergency department visits per capita in the county were 23% higher than the statewide average at 34.2 visits per 10,000 people compared with 27.8 statewide. For children ages zero through 17, the average asthma-related emergency department visit is about 9% higher than the state average. 

The county ranked sixth-highest in the state for asthma hospitalizations and eighth-highest for emergency department visit rates between 2022 and 2024. Rock County is the ninth-largest county in the state in terms of population. 

In 2024 alone, data shows there were 138 asthma-related emergency visits among children in Rock County, or one every two-and-a-half days. 

Beloit School District data shows about 11% of students — 436 children — have asthma. Of those students, 110 have inhalers at school, while 326 do not have ready access to medication. 

Brittany Keyes, clean air policy manager with Healthy Climate Wisconsin and former vice president of the Beloit City Council, recalled a moment last fall when she was riding on a bus in Waunakee with a group of third grade girls from Beloit, including her daughter, after the girls finished their first 5K for a “Girls on the Run” event.

She described how the third graders had been training for months together, and now they were laughing, exhausted and proud of their achievement on the ride home. Until one girl began struggling to breathe. 

Keyes said a teacher was frantically searching through a bag for the girl’s inhaler — pulling one out, and then another. 

“She takes out a bag — nope, it’s not hers. She takes another bag — nope, not hers, not hers, nope, not hers,” Keyes said. “There were six inhalers for a group of 22 girls. … That’s not normal, and it doesn’t have to be that way, right?”

No particulate sensors in Beloit

Fine particulate matter (PM2.5), a type of pollution that is a combination of solid and liquid particles in the air, is a key concern for residents worried about air quality and asthma rates. 

Nick Mailloux, a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment, said a major reason why PM2.5 raises so much concern is its extremely small size — about 1/30th of the width of a human hair. 

Particulate pollution comes from a range of different sources, including power plants, vehicle emissions and industrial facilities — which Keyes and Toral both noted can all be found in Beloit. Additionally, Mailloux noted that wildfires are increasingly becoming a source of PM2.5 across the United States.

“A particle of that size is small enough that it bypasses a lot of our natural defenses,” Mailloux said. “These are particles that are small enough where they can pass through your airways and into your lungs, where then they can get into your bloodstream and cause inflammation that leads to lots of different respiratory, cardiovascular and neurological health harms.”

PM2.5 can cause new or worsened heart and lung diseases, along with a list of health effects like coughing, shortness of breath, fatigue, asthma attacks and more. 

While Keyes was still vice president of the Beloit City Council, she had read a 2021 report from Toral that found Rock County’s CO2 emissions increased by 325% between 2010 and 2019. After discovering that the emissions in her county were much higher than in counties like Dane and Winnebago, she contacted the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. 

She learned the agency operated one monitor for ozone on the west side of Beloit, and only for six months out of the year. She said DNR officials recommended community sensors, such as PurpleAir monitors, if she wanted to start monitoring for herself. 

PurpleAir makes sensors that actively monitor PM2.5, temperature, humidity and pressure, collecting air quality data and making it publicly accessible. 

Keyes said different nonprofits across Beloit participated in a community project to install PurpleAir monitors in the city in late 2022, using a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency community sensor loan program. Early data raised concerns, but the DNR told her that only five months of data had been collected, which is far less than the three years needed to establish an annual standard, Keyes said. However, that’s all the EPA could lend them for their study.

The group had secured funding during their time with the EPA’s loan to install three monitors in Rock County, allowing for continuous monitoring with data collected every 10 minutes. Now, Keyes said they have been able to expand their monitoring network to more than 20 PurpleAir monitors in the county.

“Our effort has really built awareness, and even the Rock County Health Department went after a mini grant … and they were awarded it, and they got 10 sensors, and were able to put them up at schools around the county, so now it’s not just urban centers,” Keyes said. “It’s super cool if you look at PurpleAir now, how we have a better distributed geographical monitoring system.”

Then in early 2024, technology company and global leader in air quality monitoring IQAir contacted Healthy Climate Wisconsin with alarming news — Beloit was ranked the most polluted city in the United States in 2023. The company had pulled data from the PurpleAir monitors through 2023 to draw that conclusion. 

What makes Beloit ‘pollution central’

Toral pointed to numerous factors — including an unusual amount of wildfire smoke from Canada that year, regional pollution from nearby cities such as Madison, Chicago and Milwaukee, as well as transportation emissions, nearby power plants and industrial activity — that all make Beloit “pollution central.”

He said bigger cities surrounding Beloit like Chicago, Milwaukee and Madison reported very high rates of pollution that summer exacerbated by the smoke. Toral noted all of those cities closely track their air pollution data. He pointed to the sensors Beloit has compared to other surrounding areas, saying through the sensors, Beloit was able to document where the smoke from the 2023 wildfires converged. 

“Unusually, we got winds coming out of the northeast, and that brought back the smoke from the fires in Quebec,” Toral said. “Those are what led to the perfect storm — very active fire season, dry winter, slow snow precipitation in the winter, low precipitation in the spring, leading up to the fires lasting longer, being more aggressive.”

He said that while Beloit is small, its monitoring is on par with bigger cities like Chicago and Madison. So, while Beloit was ranked as most polluted, he said there’s also a lack of data from other cities in that area of the state and northern Illinois to officially confirm if it’s Beloit specifically. 

“You don’t know how polluted you are until you test, and Beloit is very unusual in the sense that it’s a very small town that actually has very good air pollution sensors,” Toral said.

Keyes said the organizations involved in Healthy Climate Wisconsin’s air monitoring effort recognized the need for more coordinated action, so they formed the Stateline Clean Air Coalition — a group of organizations and community members who meet monthly to advocate for cleaner air and healthier communities. 

She highlighted that for more than two years one of the coalition’s primary concerns had been to install a regulatory PM2.5 monitor in Rock County — specifically in Beloit. While Beloit has an ozone monitor, Keyes said it’s not ideally located and only operates for part of the year. 

“(Ozone) is a harmful air pollutant, but not the most toxic. And what we’re really concerned about is particulate matter,” Keyes said.

Community members, health care professionals and advocacy groups also have shared their concerns with the DNR, urging a regulatory PM2.5 monitor in the area. Some argued that Beloit may have some of the highest PM2.5 in the state, with some estimates from advocacy groups and community sensors exceeding standards.

The DNR relies on data from a regulatory monitor in Rockford, Illinois, rather than direct measurements from Beloit. An agency spokesperson emphasized that Wisconsin meets the current PM2.5 standard of 9.0 micrograms per cubic meter, based on 2022-24 regulatory monitor data. 

The DNR spokesperson cited the EPA, saying the three-year PM2.5 design value for Rockford from 2022 to 2024 was 8.3 micrograms per cubic meter, with an annual mean of 7.3 in 2024 — below the requirement for a regulatory-grade PM2.5 sensor.

Craig Czarnecki, the outreach coordinator of air management at the DNR, emphasized that regulatory monitors are used for official decision-making and produce the most reliable data, while community sensors like the PurpleAir monitors are better suited for general awareness.

“Data produced using low-cost sensors do not undergo the same rigorous quality assurance and are known to be biased high when compared with data produced by regulatory monitors. These limitations make low-cost sensors best suited for qualitative purposes such as making decisions on daily activities considering the current air quality,” Czarnecki said.

Despite ongoing requests from residents and advocates to install a regulatory-grade PM2.5 monitor in Beloit, particularly near known pollution sources and in heavily affected neighborhoods, the DNR has not committed to expanding its monitoring. The agency stated that the existing network meets federal requirements. 

Czarnecki also noted the department lacks funding to expand monitoring beyond federally mandated levels.

Residents also raised concerns about the estimated 2.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emitted in Rock County in 2022, with about 2.1 million coming from power plants. The DNR spokesperson noted that CO2 is not regulated in the same way as pollutants such as ozone or particulate matter. 

Keyes said concern over emissions increased as Beloit’s energy infrastructure began to expand. She pointed to Alliant Energy’s Riverside Energy Center and the additions of the West Riverside Energy Center, a 730 MW natural gas plant. 

Toral said emissions data showed the Riverside Energy Center produced about 2.8 million tons of CO2 emissions the last year it was required to report in 2023, surpassing plants in higher-populated areas, which Toral said shows a “disproportionate concentration of pollutants in one single point.” 

Although multiple coal plants used to be in the Rock County area, and burning coal was worse, Keyes noted that natural gas, primarily the burning of methane gas, is still very harmful for the environment and the health of communities. 

“The fossil fuel industry has marketed very hard to make us feel like natural gas isn’t harmful. But it is. It is still a fossil fuel,” she said. 

Alliant Energy has since proposed and been approved to build a liquified natural gas storage and processing facility in Rock County to meet growing demand. Taylor Adams, the senior communications specialist for Alliant Energy, said in a statement that the location was chosen for its proximity to infrastructure and customers and that the project will comply with environmental regulation. 

“Rock County serves our largest concentration of natural gas customers in Wisconsin and is located near established pipeline corridors, making it a logical location for this type of infrastructure,” Adams said. “The proposed facility would incorporate multiple design features intended to control and minimize emissions.”

Adams said air quality impacts are currently under review by the DNR and will be available for public comment. 

Who’s affected

Toral called the situation in Beloit, a low-income community of immigrants and people of color,  “a case of environmental injustice.”

Toral noted the effects of pollution often fall most heavily on vulnerable populations, including children, older adults and people with preexisting conditions. He added that noise pollution can worsen health outcomes by increasing stress, disrupting sleep and weakening the immune system. 

“If you basically are living close to traffic, a power plant, a factory, anything that generates noise — that really exacerbates people’s conditions,” Toral said. “That makes the body more vulnerable to then have to cope with the pollutants.”

Keyes highlighted that Beloit previously had lower emissions than Dane County, but as Madison was able to retire some of its natural gas and coal plants, the regional demand for electricity resulted in power plants — and emissions — expanding in Rock County. 

Keyes’ daughter was one of 15 youth plaintiffs who filed a lawsuit against the Public Service Commission and state Legislature last summer over laws that prohibit the PSC from considering air pollution when reviewing permits for new power plants, along with a failure to protect the youth from climate change.

“Dane County has made progress, but the celebration of progress is really greenwashing the fact that we are suffering,” Keyes said.

New record, new norm

Air quality records were broken across Wisconsin July 16 as wildfire smoke from northern Minnesota and Canada was carried into the Great Lakes region by winds. Much of the state experienced hazardous air conditions, with Air Quality Index levels reaching their highest points in at least 16 years. 

The smoke brought back memories of the 2023 wildfire season, when similar conditions covered much of the Midwest. 

Toral said this year’s fires are following a similar pattern to 2023. He said because the Great Lakes form a basin, smoke tends to converge there, making Wisconsin “ground zero” for this contamination. He added that the current fire season is already very active, and while the fires were more severe three years ago, this year’s fires are closer to Wisconsin. However, he said it’s still too early to know whether this year’s fire season is going to be worse than 2023. 

“We thought that the fire season we saw two years ago was one of a kind — was very unusual — and here it is again, two years later,” Toral said. “This is a very unusual pattern.”

Wildfire smoke raises air pollution concerns in Rock County, where asthma rates are among the highest in Wisconsin is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Reading Time: 5 minutes

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

Systems used to transmit unofficial election night results broke down in Green and Winnebago counties during Wisconsin’s August primary, causing problems processing and posting results.

The issues had no bearing on the official results that counties across the state are still certifying. But those breakdowns come as national experts have encouraged a move away from transmitting results over modems and toward physically delivering them. Many other states and election jurisdictions have shifted away from transmitting results by modem, but it remains common in Wisconsin.

Much of the concern about sending results over modems has related to cybersecurity. But experts say there are additional reasons to avoid the use of modems, and the recent issues in Wisconsin are one example. There’s no indication that the Election Day issues in Green and Winnebago counties, which both use Liberty Vote election technology, had anything to do with a hack.

Pam Smith, the president and CEO of Verified Voting, an elections technology organization, said election security is not only about preventing incorrect results or cyberattacks. It also means making sure the systems that election officials rely on are available and functioning when they need them.

A breakdown in transmitting unofficial results may not change the outcome of an election, she said, but it can still disrupt election night operations and consume significant staff time.

“It matters because it’s a time suck for the county and everybody trying to deal with it,” she said.

In a statement, a Liberty Vote spokesperson said the company has “every confidence these isolated issues will not occur in future elections.”

Green County changing results reporting process for November

The results transmission failure caused the most significant delay in Green County, where officials did not fully shift to a backup method for collecting results from municipalities until the next morning.

Officials there and their vendor, Liberty Vote, are still trying to understand what went wrong after county staff were unable to process the results that municipalities sent over via fax modems, Green County Clerk Arianna Voegeli told Votebeat.

When municipalities in Green County send their unofficial results to the county clerk’s office, they appear as encrypted files on a so-called listener server set up to receive the transmissions, said Voegeli, a Democrat. Normally, a different software called a results workstation pulls those files and uploads the results to the county’s unofficial results reporting system, but that process broke down on Election Day, she said.

County staff tried to troubleshoot the issue with Liberty Vote after discovering the issue at 9 p.m. on election night but couldn’t find a solution. That meant they had to turn to alternative methods to get the results from municipalities and didn’t have them all until the next morning — far later than most counties.

Voegeli said she consulted with the Wisconsin Elections Commission at the time to discuss what to do. The commission, she said, encouraged her to get municipal results as quickly as possible.

“Their recommendation was, at that point, to do my due diligence and do the best I can with trying to contact people (that) night to get those results in,” she said.

She opted not to use sheriff’s deputies to wake clerks that night, she said. Instead, she called all 24 of them; most didn’t return her call until early the following morning, but the few who responded delivered results over the phone. She got back to work at 6:30 a.m. on Wednesday to finish processing results as municipal officials either came in person to deliver the unofficial results or told Voegeli the results over the phone. All the results were uploaded by 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday.

Had it been November, she said, she would have employed sheriff’s deputies to wake up clerks. She opted not to do it this time around, Voegeli said, in part because the Wisconsin Elections Commission didn’t give hard guidance, and she didn’t feel she’d save meaningful time by waking them.

As of Monday, she said, officials still had not determined what caused the failure. But Green County is changing its approach for the November election.

Voegeli said nearby municipalities will drive to the county office to physically deliver unofficial results, and the faraway ones will verbally transmit results via telephone.

“Even if we determine what the cause of this issue is, I think we’re still going to plan on that for the general election,” she said. “We really want to make sure that we’re getting those results out in a timely manner.”

Winnebago County shifted gears on Election Day

Winnebago County, which also uses Liberty Vote systems, also had trouble transmitting unofficial results by modem, but officials there shifted to a backup plan that same night.

After polls closed, municipal clerks were initially unable to send unofficial election results over a cellular modem. County officials and Liberty Vote are still trying to understand what went wrong, County Clerk Julie Barthels said. After noticing the error, Barthels instructed municipal clerks in the county to drive in the results and hand them over physically. The last one arrived around 10:30 p.m. on Election Day.

The city resolved the results-reporting issue by 9 p.m., said Barthels, a Republican. But by then, municipal officials were already on their way to the county and Barthels said she didn’t want to turn the municipal officials around again to deliver them via modem.

Winnebago County isn’t planning for any shift in results reporting for November. But she said she’ll work with Liberty Vote to understand what went wrong.

“They’ve promised me this will not happen in November,” Barthels said about Liberty Vote. “We’re going to get to the bottom of what happened. I so trust our system. But it’s like any other computer. One day it works, and the next day it doesn’t.”

Some election security experts warn against modeming results

Smith, the Verified Voting CEO, said any method that requires election equipment to communicate with other devices — whether that’s through a secure cellular network or a physical phone line — introduces additional vulnerabilities.

“It’d be great if they would move towards a safer operation of not not having that connectivity,” she said

But Geoff Hale, a visiting fellow for election security at the Center for Democracy & Technology, said transmitting unofficial results via modem does not pose a major technical risk as long as the official results are protected through testing and audits of paper ballots. Every method for transmitting results has trade-offs, he said: Driving a USB stick for an hour may have fewer vulnerabilities than an internet-connected method, but it also takes far longer.

The more important safeguard, Hale said, is for election officials to stay involved throughout the process, validating results and checking for errors — especially when verifying the official count. Hale previously worked for a decade at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

In this case, he said, Winnebago and Green counties responded appropriately by having backup plans in case their initial systems failed.

“This one doesn’t concern me quite as much as some other things I’ve seen,” he said.

Noah Praetz, president of Ready For Tuesday and a longtime election administration and security consultant, said jurisdictions embraced reporting results via modems in the 2000s and 2010s.

That momentum stalled around 2016, he said, amid Russian attempts to interfere with U.S. elections and after Ukraine’s results reporting system in 2014 was successfully hacked. After that, Praetz said, following responses from the FBI and CISA, and the designation of elections as critical infrastructure by the secretary of Homeland Security, election officials began recognizing that results in transit over modems posed a risk, even if the results were unofficial.

But a major benefit of using modems is speed, and Praetz emphasized the downsides of slower alternatives, as delays in reporting results can create openings for bad actors — including foreign governments — to sow distrust.

“People want to get results out of their hands,” he said. “They want to satisfy their voters.”

That was evident in Milwaukee on Aug. 11, when a human error in exporting results caused a 90-minute delay that exasperated election watchers and prompted widespread conspiracy theories about what had gone wrong.

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.

Issues with election systems delayed primary results in two Wisconsin counties is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

A voting rights focused law firm and a Milwaukee-based civil rights group filed a brief Wednesday urging the Wisconsin Supreme Court to take a case seeking to overturn a July appeals court decision that said circuit courts in Wisconsin don’t have the authority to extend poll location hours due to unforeseen circumstances. 

The case stems from the Democratic National Committee filing a lawsuit to extend the hours of two polling places at UW-Whitewater during the 2024 presidential election after long lines stretched for hours, partially for voters to update their voter registration through Wisconsin’s same day registration process. A Walworth County judge agreed with the DNC at the time and extended the hours. 

The Republican National Committee appealed the ruling and in July the District 2 Court of Appeals ruled that circuit courts extending voting hours could undermine confidence in elections and that circuit courts don’t even have the authority to do so. The majority opinion came from conservative judges Mark Gundrum and Shelley Grogan. Judge Lisa Neubauer, a liberal, issued a concurring opinion that separately said courts should maintain the authority to extend voting hours. 

“It is critical that we also clarify that, while the legislature is entrusted with setting the time, place, and manner of elections, the applicable polling hours statutes are not immutable: extraordinary or emergency circumstances can support extension of polling hours when these statutes are applied in violation of the electors’ constitutional right to vote,” Neubauer wrote. 

The brief filed Wednesday by Black Leaders Organizing for Communities and Law Forward argued it is “unmistakable” that Wisconsin’s courts have a long history of asserting that a person’s right to vote should win out. 

In the brief, the two organizations point to “150 years of precedent — in at least 12 separate cases” that the Wisconsin Supreme Court has upheld the right to vote when election officials make mistakes. Those precedents include an 1875 case in which the Court found “it would be a fraud on the constitution” to disenfranchise voters by discounting votes due to the errors of election officials. 

“This line of precedent teaches that Wisconsin courts have always intervened, where necessary, to uphold the constitutional right to vote in the face of circumstances beyond the voter’s control,” the brief states. “But the decision below suggests otherwise. It holds that, regardless of what facts might have been adduced, “the circuit court still would not have had equitable authority for its order” extending poll hours. Such a blanket limitation is incompatible with the Wisconsin Constitution’s guarantee of the right to vote. It cannot stand.”

The brief also argues that by ruling that circuit courts can’t extend poll hours due to extenuating circumstances, the appeals court made the state’s court system subordinate to the Legislature and its election statutes — violating the state Constitution’s requirement that the three branches of government be co-equal. 

“The right to vote is fundamental. The Wisconsin Constitution shields it from erosion by legislative enactments and restrictive applications of the law alike,” the brief states. “And Wisconsin courts exist, in part, to effectuate and implement the protections afforded to voters by the Wisconsin Constitution. Yet, the Court of Appeals decision calls this into doubt, and even portends to close the courthouse doors from voters and from organizations who advocate on behalf of voters, on election day in Wisconsin. These substantial legal errors necessitate this Court’s prompt review.”

Three Wisconsin legal organizations are advising the Sheboygan County Sheriff’s office to take steps to avoid intimidating voters after the sheriff posted it was dispatching deputies to polling locations on primary Election Day last week. 

The issue arose against a backdrop of increasing worries over potential election interference in a key swing state during President Donald Trump’s second term including voter intimidation and threats to election workers.

Just seven minutes after polls opened in Wisconsin last week, the Sheboygan County Sheriff’s Office posted on Facebook that it planned to send deputies to polling locations “periodically throughout the day to meet with the public, provide a visible law enforcement presence, and help ensure a safe, secure and orderly election.”

The office presented it as an opportunity for members of the community to connect with officers.

“If you see an Officer at one of the sites and have the time, please feel free to stop and chat with them for a bit!” the post stated. “We appreciate the important work of our election clerks and staff, and we encourage everyone to exercise their right to vote and have a safe Election Day.” 

The post immediately got pushback from members of the public, who questioned why law enforcement needed to be at polls.

The Wisconsin Democracy Defense Coalition, an umbrella organization consisting of pro-democracy groups, wrote in a statement posted online that it was “unclear exactly who or what prompted the Sheboygan County Sheriff’s Department announcement…” but it was “apparent that the decision was made without clear communication with, or consent from officials across the county.”

“We do know that what happened was inconsistent with our values in Wisconsin and dangerous to our civil rights at a time when we must be fiercely protective of them,” the coalition stated. 

All In Wisconsin, a member of the coalition, submitted open records requests seeking additional information. Executive Director Cass Bowers told the Wisconsin Examiner in an interview that the coalition wanted to support the community members who opposed the presence of law enforcement. 

“It’s not a normal thing for a sheriff’s department to do that in Wisconsin. It’s not something that we see,” Cass Bowers, executive director of All In Wisconsin, told the Examiner in an interview. “In Wisconsin at least, we don’t need to have a police presence at the polling locations because we have other safeguards in place. There are people there to ensure that things are going the way they should be on both sides.”

The ACLU of Wisconsin, Campaign Legal Center and Law Forward sent a letter to Sheriff Matthew Spence on Wednesday saying that they wanted to raise awareness about the concerns and “to provide you with information and resources to help ensure that all eligible voters feel safe and secure when participating in our elections.”

The Sheboygan County Democratic Party said in a post Tuesday that the law enforcement presence was a waste of resources and also raises ethical concerns, since the sheriff was on the ballot in the primary. Spence is running for reelection this year. While his name appeared on ballots, he faced no opponent in the primary. He was first appointed to the position by Gov. Tony Evers in 2024 due to the retirement of the previous sheriff.

“Municipal clerks, chief election inspectors and poll workers throughout the county have experience in conducting safe and secure elections. They are fully competent to contact law enforcement, if necessary. The integrity of our elections in Sheboygan County is not in question,” the county party said in a statement. “Law enforcement presence is a waste of resources, and it creates an atmosphere of intimidation, distrust and erodes public trust in our election process.” 

Spence said in a statement last week that the practice of sending deputies to polls is not new for the county. He noted in the statement that he did not personally visit any polling sites, though he has in the past.

“Deputies have been stopping at polling locations for many years, and we have historically received positive feedback from municipal clerks and election workers regarding their presence,” Spence said. “Our deputies understand that they are not permitted to engage in political activity while on duty.” He added in the statement that deputies are expected to follow office policies and applicable laws and regulations. 

Election workers in the U.S. have expressed concerns about safety in recent years, including in Wisconsin.

In an April 2026 poll conducted by the Brennan Center 32% of election officials said they had been threatened, harassed, or abused, nearly 25% said they were concerned about being assaulted at home or at work and over 50% said they worried that threats, harassment and intimidation would make it more difficult to retain or recruit election workers in the future.

Spence said that deputies were stopping by polls if they had time available during their regular patrol duties and visits were brief, lasting between five and ten minutes. He said the stops were “intended simply to provide an opportunity for a deputy to check in with the clerk and election workers, ensure there are no public safety concerns” and were not “assigned specifically for the purpose of influencing or monitoring voters.” 

Jon Dolson, the Sheboygan County clerk, has not responded to requests for comment from the Examiner by the time of publication.

Dolson told the Examiner in an email on Wednesday that he was made aware that something was posted on social media, though to the best of his knowledge no deputy was dispatched. He said the brief visits by officers with the sheriff’s department and a handful of police departments around the county predates his 14-year tenure as county clerk.

“Sometimes it fits into an officer’s schedule, sometimes it doesn’t.  And municipal clerks welcome the short visit. Most of the time, officers do not have time on Election Day to make such stops. This is the first time anyone has posted about this traditional activity on social media,” Dolson said. “I suspect no one will repeat that action anytime soon.”

“The purpose of these brief visits is straightforward: to ensure election workers feel safe, to address any public safety concerns that may arise, and to maintain the positive relationship between our Sheriff’s Office and the communities we serve,” Spence said. “We have no interest in interfering with the electoral process, and our deputies’ role at polling locations is not to influence voters or the outcome of an election.”

However, the legal groups and Bowers said the mere presence of officers could be intimidating to voters.

“We understand that law enforcement agencies like the Sheboygan County Sheriff’s Office play a critical role in keeping both voters and election officials and workers safe by responding to genuine emergencies,” the legal groups stated. “However, the visible presence of armed law enforcement at or near polling places (or other locations like drop boxes or in-person absentee voting locations) is likely to intimidate voters, thereby preventing them from casting their ballots. Voter intimidation is prohibited under both Wisconsin and Federal law.”

Wisconsin state law requires that in cities of more than 500,000, the chief of police stations a police officer at any polling place designated by the municipal board of election commissioners. That currently only includes Milwaukee. 

The ACLU’s letter noted that voter intimidation laws apply to law enforcement officers and that patrolling in militarized gear with weapons near a ballot drop box has previously been found intimidating to voters.

The groups noted in the letter that the Wisconsin Elections Commission advises that polling locations near or in police stations or other public buildings could lead to the perception of electioneering or make voters uncomfortable and that should be considered when designating polling places.

“While the presence of law enforcement may be necessary if voting is occurring at or near a public safety building or in the event of an emergency to preserve the voting process, steps can and should be taken to mitigate the intimidating effects of such presence. For instance, officers stationed at voting,” the letter states citing state statutes. 

The groups provide some recommendations for how law enforcement should navigate the issue, citing information from the National Policing Institute, 21st Century Policing Solutions and States United Democracy Center.

“For instance, officers stationed at voting locations at public safety buildings should be dressed in plain clothes, uniformed personnel should remain out of sight of voters whenever possible, and law enforcement should refrain from parking police vehicles in front of polling locations or alternatively, should use unmarked cars. Finally, if a police officer must be stationed within an electioneering perimeter, they should take directions from and follow the lead of the chief inspector, limit their interactions with voters, and respond only to emergency incidents.”

Stationing federal officers at polls is prohibited by law but concerns about federal officials including Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) patrolling polling locations ignited across the country after Trump said in May in response to a question that he would “do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections; we have to have honest elections.” The Sheboygan County sheriff’s office is one of several law enforcement units across Wisconsin that maintain an active 287(g) agreement with ICE.

Trump administration officials have recently said that law federal agents will not be deployed to the polls for the midterm elections.

“Because of this administration and how they stoke fear in folks…[people] see police presence, they’re not going to go,” Bowers said. “You see a police officer at a polling location… It just gives people a fear that they don’t need to have when they’re going to vote.”

Bowers said that while elections officials should be trusted to carry out elections, transparency is part of the issue that needs to be addressed. 

“Having a Facebook post saying that you’re going to do this on Election Day is kind of what was jarring to the public,” Bowers said. “I think having a plan previously would have helped to say, ‘OK, these folks may feel like they need added protection, how do we do that in a way that doesn’t feel like voter intimidation?’… I think that’s like the biggest thing on Election Day is access to voting, and so I feel like if they were to have those concerns addressed prior to the election, that would have helped in this situation.” 

This message was echoed in the letter from the ACLU and other legal groups. 

“We recognize that the security of our elections and election officials is of paramount importance and believe a balance can be struck to accomplish these security objectives without unintentionally impeding voters,” the groups stated. “Thus, we suggest that your office issue guidance to your officers reflecting these recommendations and to coordinate directly with local election officials regarding ways to simultaneously protect the security of our elections and respond to emergency incidents without deterring voters.”

UPDATE: This story has been updated to include comment from Jon Dolson, the Sheboygan County clerk. 

Reading Time: 9 minutes

As TV monitors at a primary night watch party showed state Rep. Francesca Hong leading the Democratic race for governor in Dane County, the crowd erupted in cheers.

But this wasn’t Hong’s event in Madison. It was the party for Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany at the Rustic Manor wedding barn in Hartland.

Attendees saw a Hong victory as a path to take back the governor’s office, where Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has blocked conservative bills for nearly eight years. In recent weeks, Tiffany and fellow Republicans attacked Hong over past social media posts, including calls to abolish the U.S. Senate, defund police and cancel Thanksgiving. They saw the posts as signs Hong would be a weak general election opponent. 

“We’re hoping that Hong will win the primaries because what she says is just outright insanity,” 19-year-old Tiffany campaign worker Ellie Guida said. 

Instead, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley eked out a comeback victory to win the Democratic nomination. 

And now a new poll shows why Republicans have reason to worry.

Crowley led Tiffany 48% to 44% in a new Badger Battleground Poll conducted Aug. 12 and 13 by Platform Communications. Crowley also led 42% to 30% among independents and 54% to 35% in competitive Assembly districts. 

Tiffany was viewed unfavorably by 43% of poll respondents, compared with 26% with an unfavorable view of Crowley, with 31% lacking a solid opinion of Crowley. The margin of error was 4.4 percentage points, and the poll was conducted via landline and cellphone interviews.

Still, even attendees at Crowley’s watch party in Milwaukee raised concerns about whether he can persuade Hong voters to support him in the general election. 

Keith Schmitz, leader of the suburban Milwaukee progressive group Grassroots North Shore, said Hong’s supporters are more likely to back Crowley if Hong strongly endorses him. He expects Democrats to unify around beating Tiffany. 

Crowley’s win reshapes the race for Wisconsin Democrats and Republicans. The three gubernatorial candidates who lost the primary joined top Democrats, including U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan and Attorney General Josh Kaul at a breakfast Wednesday in Middleton with Crowley and Democratic lieutenant governor nominee Sarah Godlewski in a show of unity. 

Tiffany began a “Common-Sense Leadership Tour” in Green Bay Wednesday with Republican lieutenant governor nominee David Varnam and Attorney General nominee Eric Toney. 

Brandon Scholz, former chair of the Republican Party of Wisconsin and now an independent political analyst, highlighted how facing Crowley instead of Hong changes the challenge for Tiffany. He pointed to Crowley being “more measured in his responses and comments,” along with his more moderate positions.

“It will be hard, I think, for Tiffany to do the damage to Crowley that he could have done to Hong,” Scholz said.

Anthony Chergosky, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, said he expects Tiffany to portray Crowley as a “far-left liberal who has demonstrated shortcomings in his position in Milwaukee.” 

Right on cue, Tiffany released a statement and ad Wednesday responding to Crowley’s primary win. Tiffany claimed there was no difference between Crowley and “a socialist.” The ad highlighted Milwaukee County budget deficits under Crowley and suggested that portended mismanagement, higher prices and increased taxes if he became governor. 

In response, a Crowley spokesperson said Tiffany was in “meltdown mode” as he prepared to face Crowley. The spokesperson called the attack “a desperate effort to distract from his own extreme record of voting 100% of the time to advance Donald Trump’s extreme MAGA agenda.”

The statement said Crowley lowered property taxes and created new jobs, and criticized Tiffany’s support for Trump’s tariffs and his missed votes on a bipartisan bill aiming to lower housing costs. 

Here is what else we learned from Wisconsin’s partisan primary and how it sets up the road to the Nov. 3 election. 

Undecided voters broke for Crowley

As Crowley looks to unify Democrats, the 40-year-old may need to shore up support among younger voters.

The Marquette Law School Poll showed 66% of voters ages 18 to 29 supported Hong, while election results showed she led in 10 of the 13 counties with University of Wisconsin campuses.

Polling showed Crowley with more support among older voters and people living in rural counties. Crowley led Hong by half a percentage point statewide, but his margin widened to 4 percentage points in rural counties, according to a New York Times analysis. Hong’s lack of spending on broadcast TV ads may have contributed to her weaker performance among older and rural voters. 

The last Marquette Poll before the primary found 34% of Democratic primary voters were undecided — a dynamic Marquette Law School Poll director Charles Franklin said benefited Crowley.

“The fact that so many undecideds apparently coalesce on Crowley is an important lesson that undecideds really can make up their mind in a lopsided way,” Franklin said. 

Older people and moderates likely fueled Crowley’s late surge, according to Franklin. 

Franklin said older voters don’t usually wait to decide, but this year they did, potentially helping Crowley. Older people also vote more than younger people. He also noted how moderate voters were initially undecided, helping Crowley.  

Many people don’t tune in to primaries until a few weeks before voting, Franklin added. He pointed to Evers’ endorsement late in the race. In the last Marquette Poll before the election. 36% of Democratic primary voters said Evers’ endorsement mattered to them. 

“It’s obvious that a lot of those late deciders did go to Crowley, overwhelmingly. It just took them till the last week or so of the campaign to decide to do that, or even on Election Day,” Franklin said. 

The next Marquette Poll is scheduled for release by the end of August. The first Marquette Poll after the 2018 primary showed Evers and incumbent Gov. Scott Walker tied, but Evers went on to win by 1 percentage point. That election came during Trump’s first midterm cycle.

Evers’ job approval rating stood at 51% in a July 22 Marquette Poll, and Franklin said the poll showed Evers remained popular with Democratic primary voters. 

This was the first time in more than 50 years that a sitting Wisconsin governor endorsed a candidate. 

“Governor Evers’ endorsement proved to be the key factor in this election,” Chergosky said. “It’s a great reminder that endorsements can make a huge difference in primary elections.”

Two GOP-endorsed candidates lose statewide races 

The state Republican Party suffered two more setbacks Tuesday as party-endorsed candidates lost statewide races. 

The party endorsed consultant Will Martin — a staffer under former Govs. Tommy Thompson and Scott Walker — for lieutenant governor, but stay-at-home dad and former Lancaster mayor David Varnam secured the Republican nomination by 11 percentage points. 

The party also backed beef farmer and auctioneer Nate Pollnow for secretary of state. He lost to real estate investor Jay Schroeder by more than 20 percentage points. Schroeder said he would make the secretary of state Wisconsin’s chief election official and abolish the Wisconsin Elections Commission — something that would require legislative action. Republicans skeptical of the 2020 election results have rallied against the WEC in recent years, which may explain Schroeder’s appeal among primary voters.

The secretary of state keeps track of enrolled laws, resolutions, official acts, fees, positions and appointments, but generally attracts little notice. 

While both secretary of state candidates aligned with Trump, Schroeder more heavily emphasized his support for Trump’s movement. 

Martin’s lieutenant governor campaign website focused largely on developing energy resources and protecting public safety. Varnam focused on immigration and cutting taxes — issues that ranked as more important among Republican voters surveyed in the Marquette poll earlier this year.

Scholz said the endorsed candidates’ losses raise questions about the state party’s role in elections. 

“Does Wisconsin have a viable state party organization that can contribute?” Scholz asked. “And I’m not talking about getting $9 million of contributions from (billionaire GOP megadonors Richard and Liz) Uihlein and (Diane) Hendricks and then pushing them through to campaigns. That’s not a state party.” 

The state GOP didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Congressional races set

U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden and 2024 Democratic nominee Rebecca Cooke face each other again in the 3rd Congressional District. 

Cooke lost to Van Orden in 2024 by 3 percentage points. She ran in the Democratic primary for the district in 2022 but lost to state Sen. Brad Pfaff, D-Onalaska. 

Van Orden beat Pfaff to flip the seat in 2022 and has held it for two terms. This year marks the first time Van Orden will run for reelection with a Republican president in office. 

Van Orden first ran for the seat in 2020 and lost by just under 3 percentage points as Democrat Joe Biden carried Wisconsin. In 2022, when Republicans took back the House, Van Orden won by nearly 4 percentage points.

Chergosky said Van Orden, a close Trump ally, must rally MAGA supporters, who can be more difficult to turn out during a midterm election.

“There are many voters who eagerly show up to vote for Trump, but aren’t as excited to vote when he’s not on the ballot,” Chergosky said.

Cooke enters the rematch with higher name recognition and national endorsements from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin. She also has outraised Van Orden by $1 million.

The 7th Congressional District, which Tiffany is vacating, will likely stay Republican, Chergosky said. Michael Alfonso, son-in-law of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, won the Republican nomination.

Backed by Trump, Alfonso defeated runner-up Kevin Hermening, by 22 percentage points.

“His victory shows the power of the Trump endorsement in Republican primaries,” Chergosky said.

Alfonso will face Democratic Rep. Fred Clark.

Republicans have held onto the northern Wisconsin district since 2011 when Duffy was elected. 

Emergency room nurse Mitchell Berman won the Democratic nomination in the 1st Congressional District and will face Republican U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil. Berman defeated the runner up Peter Burgelis by nearly 23 percentage points after Burgelis ended his campaign to endorse Berman in July. 

National Democrats are targeting this seat as they seek to win control of the House. But Steil had more than 35 times the cash on hand as the Democratic primary challengers combined as of July. Chergosky also said Steil has a well-developed brand in his southeastern Wisconsin district, giving him the advantage.

For Berman to defeat Steil, Chergosky said he’ll need to raise money quickly and increase his name recognition. 

Legislative Democrats play it safe

Democrats have a shot at winning control of the Legislature for the first time in 16 years. Doing so would require flipping two Senate seats and five Assembly seats. In three districts Wisconsin Watch monitored, Democratic voters chose familiar faces in the primary.

In the 17th Senate District, Rep. Jenna Jacobson, D-Oregon, will face incumbent Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green. 

Jacobson, endorsed by the State Senate Democratic Committee, won the primary by nearly 30 percentage points over former New Glarus School Board member Corrine Hendrickson, who focused on funding public schools and child care. Jacobson has served in the Assembly since 2022.

Kamala Harris won the district in the 2024 presidential race when Marklein, a co-chair of the powerful Joint Finance Committee, was not up for reelection. 

In the 21st Assembly District, Oak Creek Mayor Dan Bukiewicz defeated David Liners for the Democratic nomination.

Bukiewicz has served as mayor of Oak Creek, which the district encompasses, since 2017. But Republicans have held the seat since 2003. 

Liners ran as a democratic socialist, but he hadn’t previously held office. Bukiewicz benefited from strong name recognition and high-profile endorsements like U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin. 

Democratic strategist and former Evers staffer Melissa Baldauff said Democrats want candidates they can trust, rather than unknowns.

“There’s definitely something to be said for voting for a known entity,” Baldauff said. 

Another democratic socialist, Rep. Ryan Clancy, D-Milwaukee, will likely keep his 19th Assembly District seat after defeating the more moderate Bridget Maniaci in the Democratic primary.

Maniaci criticized Clancy for what she said was failed legislation and unleveraged resources. She outraised him by $2,000.

While other democratic socialists, including Liners and Hong, lost their elections, Clancy won by nearly 9 percentage points. Chergosky said it’s because his constituents know his record. 

“In Clancy’s heavily Democratic district, voters may be comfortable supporting an outspoken democratic socialist whose record they already know,” Chergosky said. “In a statewide race for governor, voters may place much greater emphasis on who they believe can defeat the Republican nominee in November.”

Chergosky said each Assembly district is unique, and many are “ideologically homogeneous.” He said voters in an urban, heavily Democratic Assembly district may be more receptive to a candidate like Clancy than voters in a statewide race, where candidates must appeal to urban, suburban and rural voters.

‘A referendum on President Trump’

Democrats cast substantially more primary votes than Republicans, a trend that could shape the outcomes in November, especially as Trump’s approval ratings decline. 

Democrats cast nearly 800,000 votes, compared with nearly 500,000 votes from Republicans. 

Meanwhile, nine Republicans are retiring from the Legislature this election cycle, including Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, and Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg.

Political science experts have said these retirements come during an expected Democratic surge. Wisconsin’s legislative maps were redrawn in February 2024 after experts described the previous maps as some of the most gerrymandered in the country. In November 2024, Democrats flipped 14 legislative seats.

In 2024, Vice President Kamala Harris won Assembly Districts 61, 21 and 51 — three districts Democrats aim to flip this November.

Republicans have held each seat for more than a decade, but the incumbents won by just 3 percentage points in 2024. 

While Assembly Districts 51 and 61 still have incumbents, Rep. Jessie Rodriguez, R-Oak Creek, is retiring from her 21st Assembly District seat. Republican nominee Dylan Pfaffenbach, a Carroll University student, will face Bukiewicz, the more experienced Democrat. 

The party controlling the White House, Chergosky said, notoriously faces headwinds in midterm elections. Tracking Trump’s approval rate will be key to predicting outcomes. The new Platform Communications poll found 30% of respondents had a favorable view and 66% had an unfavorable view of Trump.

“For Democrats, the playbook is clear: Frame this election as a referendum on President Trump,” Chergosky said.

Tom Kertscher and Brittany Carloni contributed reporting.

Poll: Democrat David Crowley opens fall gubernatorial campaign with slight edge over Republican Tom Tiffany  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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In the final days before Tuesday’s primary, Wisconsin Democrats are still grappling with who will be their party’s gubernatorial nominee. The stakes couldn’t be higher — the party has a chance to take full control of state government for the first time in 16 years.

The struggle is real: Should they go with a more moderate, establishment-backed candidate with executive experience or a rising progressive popular among young grassroots activists?

Wisconsin Watch traveled to different polling locations and coffee shops around the state to talk with Wisconsin voters about how they’re feeling about the upcoming election.

Kathleen O’Laughlin, a 69-year-old former Milwaukee public school teacher and Souls to the Polls volunteer, said she will likely vote for Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley because she thinks he has the best chance at winning in November. 

While O’Laughlin said she supports democratic socialism, she’s not impressed with Madison Rep. Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist who has steadily grown her lead in polling over the past eight months. 

“I don’t feel like she has the personality,” O’Laughlin said. “I don’t think she has what it takes to represent the party.”

Steven Daw, a 24-year-old retail worker and Milwaukee chapter member of the Democratic Socialists of America, sees Hong as someone who engages people who may not be as in tune with politics.

“She’s made it tangible for people to feel that she can actually improve things,” Daw said. “She has to follow through on that, which comes with the Democrats winning a legislative majority too.”

Democratic primary voters will decide Tuesday on a gubernatorial nominee among four candidates: Hong, Crowley, state Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, and former Department of Administration Secretary Joel Brennan. Roys and Brennan have lagged in polling, while Crowley received a rare endorsement from Gov. Tony Evers, who has been stumping with Crowley for the past week.

Republicans have held a majority in the state Legislature since 2011. The GOP enacted an aggressive conservative agenda, including gerrymandered legislative maps that protected their majority against a Democratic wave election in 2018, when Evers was first elected. Over two terms, Evers mostly moderated the legislative Republican agenda and notched few major Democratic wins. Democrats need to keep all of their current seats as well as flip two Senate and five Assembly seats to gain a majority and then hold on to the governor’s office to enact progressive policies.

Whoever wins the Democratic primary will likely face Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who is endorsed by the state party and President Donald Trump. Tiffany was elected to the Legislature as part of the 2010 Republican tea party wave and advocated for overturning the 2020 presidential election results.

Crowley leads fundraising among Democratic candidates in recent campaign finance reports with about $463,000 cash on hand. Hong trailed closely with $406,000, while Brennan had about $284,000 and Roys had about $81,000. Tiffany had nearly $5 million on hand, with $4 million coming from the state GOP in July. 

A July 29 Marquette University Law School poll found that 34% of Democratic primary voters were undecided. Hong has grown her polling lead over her opponents throughout the race with strong support among young voters. 

The final Marquette Poll before the primary showed Hong with 38% support among all Democratic primary voters and 66% among ages 18 to 29.

Sophie Cleveland, a 2026 University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate from East Troy, said she aligns more with Hong’s views, and she liked the approach Hong took after a Madison police officer fatally shot Corey Ruiz in July in the legislative district she represents. Hong called the incident an “execution.”

“I appreciate the … working with community members to find a source, not being afraid to speak out about certain issues that matter, but also acting in partnership with the community and not shying away from the ugly,” Cleveland said. 

Alyssa Wisneski, 29, a public school teacher and small business owner from Bay View, said she feels frustrated with the Democratic Party as leaders push for a candidate other than Hong.

“The majority of voters want Francesca Hong,” Wisneski said. “The party itself is trying to get people around a candidate that’s not her. I feel like that’s very frustrating.”

In the last Marquette Poll before the election, Hong held a strong lead with voters 30 to 59 years old. But among voters over 60 she was behind former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who dropped out two weeks ago.

Hong has received backlash from Republicans as old social media posts have resurfaced in which she voiced support for canceling Thanksgiving and abolishing the U.S. Senate. In the final weeks of the primary campaign she has made multiple national media appearances on CNN, Fox News and Politico defending herself for those comments. 

Some Democrats have criticized Hong’s response, with Evers saying during recent campaign stops with Crowley that Hong has spent more time dealing with what she posted on social media than focusing on issues. 

Crowley’s support is stronger among older voters. He polled at 4% among 18 to 29 year olds, but 9% with voters 45 and older.

Gary, in his mid-70s, who declined to give his last name, said he wished the Democratic primary hadn’t been as “congested” with all the seven original candidates still on the ballot. He said Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez was his first choice before she dropped out. 

He said while Hong “talks about some good things,” he doesn’t think she can win over northern Wisconsin. 

“I’m sure the Republicans are gonna be happy if she gets it,” Gary said.

The Marquette Poll shows Tiffany leading Hong in the general election by 3 percentage points, though among those who say they are certain to vote in November, the two are tied.

While several Democratic voters said they were upset Evers endorsed Crowley, Gary said it didn’t bother him because he believes Crowley can beat Tiffany in November. He hopes the next governor can work across the aisle, but he’s skeptical Tiffany would do that.

“You need somebody that’s got to compromise,” Gary said. “I think the guy from Milwaukee has a good shot at doing that.”

Michelle Novak, who’s in her late 50s from Delafield, said she’s “not jazzed about the candidates,” but likes that the Democrats have been given more options and can have a “real primary.” She said she doesn’t define herself within a party, but does look into people’s positions and voting records. 

She noted her pro-life stance, which typically aligns with the Republican Party, but she said she’s not happy with there being so few options in the Republican primary.

“We’re in a place right now where I just feel like we have to hear people, and the more people that enter into a debate or into a conversation, politically, is better,” Novak said. “I feel like it’s the party’s responsibility to bring people into more of a discussion.”

While Roys and Brennan have trailed behind their primary opponents in polling, their supporters are bucking Evers’ call to rally behind one alternative to Hong. 

Jill Kessenich, a 63-year-old artist from Fort Atkinson, said she feels “discombobulated” with the state of the Democratic primary. 

Crowley had originally caught Kessenich’s eye, but after watching the July 28 debate hosted by WISN, she said she will likely vote for Roys. She said Crowley didn’t do as well in the debate, while Roys’ performance, on the other hand, impressed her, and she said Roys has the right experience to be governor.

Robert Schroeder, 67, doesn’t know if Brennan stands a chance in the primary, but said he will likely vote for him. He did note that his vote was still “up for grabs,” but also said he thinks Brennan stands out to him and is a “common sense, get things done kind of guy.”

He mentioned that he likes Crowley, but it might be difficult for a Milwaukee Democrat to win. He also said Hong’s stance as a democratic socialist likely won’t win over Wisconsin.

“(Hong) is in her moment,” Schroeder said. “Here in Wisconsin, I don’t think it’s gonna sell.”

In the final days of Wisconsin’s gubernatorial primary, Democratic voters are still split 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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Wisconsin: It’s time to winnow the field. 

Tuesday is the state’s partisan primary election, where voters will choose the candidates to represent the major political parties during the general election this November. 

There are important races up and down the ballot on Tuesday, but the top contest is Wisconsin’s Democratic gubernatorial primary. Seven names will appear on the ballot, but only four are still running for the party’s nomination after a chaotic summer that saw multiple candidates drop out of the race, a historically rare endorsement from Gov. Tony Evers of Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley and increased momentum for Madison state Rep. Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist.

Depending on which party voters choose as they cast ballots on Tuesday, there are also competitive primaries for the state’s congressional districts and legislative seats. The stakes of those races are high as Democrats and Republicans battle for majorities both in Washington, D.C., and at the Capitol in Madison this November. 

Under Wisconsin’s open primary system, primary voters must select a party and then may only vote for candidates running from that party. So if a voter chooses “Republican Party,” that person can’t vote in the Democratic primary for governor, and if a voter chooses “Democratic Party,” that person can’t vote in the Republican primary for the 7th Congressional District. A voter doesn’t need to be a member of the party to vote in that primary, and a selection does not commit a person to joining that party or voting for that candidate in the November general election. Ballots are secret so which party a voter chooses is not publicly disclosed.

As of Friday, the Wisconsin Elections Commission reported more than 234,000 people voted early in person or by mail. In 2022, about 295,000 people voted early when the top races were the Democratic U.S. Senate primary and the Republican gubernatorial primary. Remember: If you already voted, you are not able to spoil your ballot and cast a new one.

Polls are open from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m. on Tuesday. You can find out what’s on your ballot, the location of your polling place and more at myvote.wi.gov. Voters must show a valid photo ID and can register at the polls on Election Day with proof of residency. 

Wisconsin gubernatorial primaries 

At the start of the year, the Democratic gubernatorial primary was a sleepy seven-candidate contest. That rapidly changed over the past month.

Former Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez dropped out of the race in mid-July following revelations of issues with her campaign finance reports. Rodriguez’s exit led Crowley to restart his campaign with Evers’ endorsement and an effort to position himself as the moderate alternative to Hong. Former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who was Hong’s closest competition in multiple polls, left the race in late July. 

The remaining Democrats include former Department of Administration Secretary Joel Brennan, Crowley, Hong and Madison state Sen. Kelda Roys. Brennan and Roys have struggled to garner more than single-digit support in the polls despite Brennan pitching himself as a continuation of the moderate Evers era and Roys’ endorsement from the state’s largest teachers union.

The winner of the Democratic primary will take on the GOP nominee. The Republican primary features U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany and 27-year-old medical service technician Andy Manske. Tiffany, who is endorsed by President Donald Trump and the Republican Party of Wisconsin, is expected to cruise to a win Tuesday. Tiffany has nearly $5 million cash on hand, as of late July, far exceeding Manske’s $1,600. 

Congressional primaries

Republicans took control of the U.S. House in 2022 and currently hold six of Wisconsin’s eight seats. Democrats, as they try to take back the chamber, are targeting Wisconsin’s 1st and 3rd congressional districts.

Republican U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil has held the 1st District since 2018. The three Democrats vying to unseat Steil are ER nurse Mitchell Berman, Navy veteran Lorenzo Santos and Whitewater Unified School Board Vice President Miguel Aranda. Milwaukee Ald. Peter Burgelis will be on the ballot Tuesday, but ended his campaign in July. 

In the 3rd District in western Wisconsin, Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden is running for a third term. 2024 Democratic nominee Rebecca Cooke and former Eau Claire City Council President Emily Berge are competing in the Democratic primary. Political science experts rate the district a toss-up.

The 7th District in northern Wisconsin features a heavily contested Republican primary as U.S Rep. Tom Tiffany leaves the seat to run for governor. The Republican candidates include Wausau financial adviser Kevin Hermening, Chippewa County factory worker Jessi Ebben, Crescent business owner Niina Baum, Superior contractor Don Raihala, and Michael Alfonso, son-in-law of former congressman and current U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. Alfonso is endorsed by Trump.

Legislative primaries

Democrats are seeking to take control of both chambers of the Legislature this midterm cycle, needing to flip two Senate seats and five Assembly seats to secure majorities. The party is using momentum from new legislative maps two years ago that officially ended a decade-plus Republican gerrymander and allowed them to flip 14 legislative seats in 2024. 

There are three Senate district primaries we’re watching Tuesday. 

The 1st Senate District, covering the Door County peninsula, features four Republicans competing to succeed Sen. André Jacque, R-New Franken, who is not seeking reelection. Barbara Bittner, Jacob VandenPlas, Katie Baney and Nic Cravillion will compete for a place on the November ballot against independent candidate Mark Becker. 

The 17th Senate District has long been a target for Senate Democrats. Sen. Howard Marklein, a co-chair of the Joint Finance Committee, is running for a fourth four-year term. Rep. Jenna Jacobson, D-Oregon, Lisa White and Corrine Hendrickson will face off in the Democratic primary. The Senate Democratic Campaign Committee, which is supporting Jacobson, considers the seat a flip opportunity in 2026. 

Two former state representatives, Erik Severson and Angie Sapik, are competing in the Republican primary for the 25th Senate District to determine who will face Democrat Charly Ray in the general election for an open seat left vacant by redistricting. 

In the Assembly on Tuesday, David Liners and Daniel J. Bukiewicz will face off in the Democratic primary for the 21st Assembly District to replace Rep. Jessie Rodriguez, R-Oak Creek, who is not seeking reelection. The primary winner will face Republican Dylan Pfaffenbach. 

Three Republicans — Tyler Schneekloth, John Belanger and James Brotz — will compete in the Republican primary to unseat freshman Rep. Joe Sheehan, D-Sheboygan, who flipped the 26th District back in 2024. 

Democrats Brian Bock, Ben Brist and Lawanda Chambers will face off in the August primary to challenge two-term incumbent Rep. Bob Donovan, R-Greenfield, in the 61st District — a district targeted by Democrats for control of the Assembly. 

There is also competition for safe Democratic seats in Milwaukee and Madison. Rep. Ryan Clancy, D-Milwaukee, and Bridget Maniaci will compete for a place on the November ballot in the 19th Assembly District. Clancy hails from the socialist wing of the party, and Maniaci is a former Madison City Council member. The winner faces Republican Yasmine Outlaw. 

Assembly District 76 features five Democrats — Isaia Ben-Ami, Dina Nina Martinez-Rutherford, Juliana Bennett, Zoe Sullivan and Tony Castañeda — after Hong opted to run for governor. The winner faces Republican Nina Chat in the general election.

State office primaries

Depending on which party they select, voters will have the opportunity to pick candidates for certain statewide offices. 

Republican primary voters can choose between Will Martin, a Racine consultant, and David Varnam, a Lancaster stay-at-home dad, in the race for lieutenant governor. Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski is the only Democrat running for lieutenant governor. The winning candidates will form a joint ticket with the party’s gubernatorial nominee this November. 

They can also choose their nominee in the four-person GOP primary for secretary of state. The candidates include Braden Myer, Jay Schroeder, Nate Pollnow and Cindy Werner. The winner will face Milwaukee Ald. JoCasta Zamarripa, who is running unopposed for the Democratic nomination.

Democratic primary voters will determine whether Dylan Helmenstine, of Black Earth, or Yee Leng Xiong, of Wausau, will be the party’s nominee for state treasurer in November. The winner will take on first-term Republican incumbent Treasurer John Leiber in November.

Republican attorney general candidate Eric Toney and two-term Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul are both unopposed in the primary.

Other local elections

Voters on Tuesday can also make decisions in local races, including sheriff and clerk of court contests in counties across the state. 

For more information about specific local races on your ballot, visit myvote.wi.gov.

For more information on statewide and legislative candidates, check out the Wisconsin Watch voter guide.

Wisconsin’s partisan primary election is Tuesday. Learn more about who’s on your ballot. 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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This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

Green Bay Clerk Celestine Jeffreys has resigned amid a state investigation into how her office sent duplicate ballots to voters two elections in a row, the city announced Friday.

Jeffreys had been on administrative leave since July 9. Her resignation came shortly after the first stage of a Wisconsin Elections Commission investigation showed just how central Jeffreys was to the city sending out 152 duplicate ballots in the April election and an undisclosed number ahead of the August primary.

“We wish her the best in her future endeavors,” the city said in a brief, two-sentence statement, declining to comment further on the matter.

Stacy Menke, previously the city’s deputy clerk, is serving as interim clerk for the August primary election. The job of picking a permanent replacement will fall to Mayor Eric Genrich, although his nominee must be confirmed by the city council.

Like all municipal clerk positions in Wisconsin, the Green Bay clerk’s office is nonpartisan.

Previously the mayor’s chief of staff, Jeffreys became city clerk in January 2021. Her tenure was marked by extensive scrutiny, and it followed a turbulent year for the city’s elections.

When she entered the role, the city was under fire, especially from Republicans, for allegedly giving an election consultant too much authority over its operations during the November 2020 election. The Wisconsin Elections Commission found no wrongdoing. But that incident, in part, led to a statewide ban on outside election assistance and a particular focus from conservatives on Green Bay’s election operations.

Jeffreys’ practices repeatedly drew criticism even before the duplicate ballot incidents.

The commission in late 2023 said Jeffreys’ policy of letting a third party return absentee ballots for someone who’s sick but not disabled likely broke state law.

The following year, she admitted that for several elections, she hadn’t followed the state law requiring clerks to deactivate certain voter registrations. The law applies when postcards sent to Election Day registrants at their stated mailing addresses are returned as undeliverable. She didn’t follow that law because she wasn’t aware of it, a city attorney said on her behalf.

As officials began to probe her recent duplicate ballot mistakes, former Brown County Clerk Sandy Juno, a Republican, told the city to consider moving on from Jeffreys.

“I would hope that when you go through this process, you really evaluate how things are done, because you may not have the right person in that job,” she said.

Sam Liebert, the Wisconsin state director of All Voting is Local and a former municipal clerk, said voters need not worry about the transition coming amid the midterm elections.

“Green Bay has experienced leadership transitions before, and the systems in place are designed to ensure continuity regardless of personnel changes,” he said. “Voters in Green Bay can still vote with confidence, knowing election workers across the city remain committed to conducting free and democratic elections.”

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.

Green Bay clerk resigns amid investigations into duplicate ballot incidents is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

A Dane County judge found that Wisconsin’s absentee voting system discriminates against voters with print disabilities by forcing them to have someone else assist them with filling out their ballots — undermining the secrecy of their vote. 

In a ruling issued Tuesday, Judge Everett Mitchell sided with Disability Rights Wisconsin and the League of Women Voters who had brought the lawsuit against the state Elections Commission to ensure that voters who have trouble seeing, reading or filling out their ballot can request, receive, vote and return an absentee ballot on their own. 

The groups, and four voters with disabilities, brought the lawsuit in April 2024 and were represented by the voting rights focused firm Law Forward, arguing that the state’s existing system violates the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act. 

In his decision, Mitchell wrote that WEC must follow the ADA’s requirement to accommodate voters with disabilities and that the current system allowing people with print disabilities to have someone else fill out their ballots denies the voters “the equal opportunity to vote absentee privately and independently.” 

While he agreed that the current system is discriminatory, Mitchell did not grant the request that disabled voters be allowed to cast their absentee ballots electronically, writing that “there remains a genuine dispute of material fact with respect to whether their proposed accommodation is reasonable.” 

Further hearings will be held in the case to determine the best solution.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

Ahead of the 2026 midterms, Wisconsin election officials are planning for the potential of mail ballot delivery delays by encouraging voters to mail back absentee ballots as soon as possible or return them some other way.

And on Friday, the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin sued the Wisconsin Elections Commission, arguing voters should be able to cast provisional ballots on Election Day if they don’t think their mail ballot will arrive on time.

Unlike many other states, which allow ballots to be counted if they arrive after Election Day as long as they’re postmarked by that day and arrive by a set cutoff time, Wisconsin requires mail ballots to arrive by 8 p.m. on Election Day to be counted.

Historically, the USPS and Wisconsin Elections Commission advised voters that mailing back a ballot a week ahead of Election Day would suffice. Now, the commission and municipal clerks are calling on voters to allow more time.

Milwaukee election chief Paulina Gutiérrez reported receiving only 20 mail ballots on Election Day in April’s Wisconsin Supreme Court election — a low number even for a small election — but more than 269 late ballots on the day after, which Gutiérrez said was a high number for an election of that size. Seeking to avoid such a high number of late-arriving ballots in the future, Gutiérrez told Votebeat that for the upcoming August election, the city opened its ballot drop boxes four weeks sooner than it would have in the past.

“We are encouraging voters to use our drop boxes or drop off their absentee ballot at (early in-person voting sites),” she said.

If they’re unable to do either, Gutiérrez said voters should mail back their ballots at least two weeks ahead of Election Day.

In Madison, which received more than 100 late ballots in April — also more than what’s typical — City Clerk Lydia McComas told Votebeat that drop boxes open three weeks ahead of the August election.

“We emphasize this is a convenient and far faster option than returning an absentee ballot via USPS,” she said.

Many election officials observe mail delays

These concerns are shared by election officials across the state.

In a recent survey, two-thirds of Wisconsin election officials said they observed problems with absentee ballot mail delivery in the April election. About one-third of officials said voters had complained to them about mail delays.

Nearly 40% said that mail performance in the election was somewhat or much worse than mail performance in past elections.

That experience isn’t universal. Vernon County Clerk Jerry Pedretti, who’s also clerk of the separate town and village of Genoa, told Votebeat that rural USPS workers recognize absentee ballots from the envelopes and make “every effort to make sure that they’re getting them delivered.”

Similarly, Buffalo County Clerk Lisa Schmitt said a couple of ballots arrived after Election Day in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election but problems weren’t major. That was likely a result of postmasters keeping the mail local rather than sending it out via Minnesota for processing, which she said is the typical procedure for non-election mail.

Nonetheless, commissioners at the Wisconsin Elections Commission are concerned about the delays. On MyVote, a website for voters to request ballots, the commission still includes the USPS recommendation for voters to return mail ballots at least seven days before Election Day. But in June, the commission’s new election manual and guidance to voters went further, suggesting at least 10 days before Election Day.

At a meeting in early July, commissioners discussed this updated guidance. “I’m concerned about us just saying 10 days is enough,” Democratic commissioner Mark Thomsen said at the meeting.

USPS spokesperson Desai Abdul-Razzaaq said that he is confident the Postal Service will perform well in the upcoming elections. While he said the USPS takes officials’ concerns from the April election seriously, he said “the overwhelming majority of Election Mail was processed and delivered within established service standards.”

Voters sue for ability to cast provisional ballots

Amid these delays, voters are challenging commission guidance prohibiting voters from casting in-person ballots on Election Day if they think their mail ballot might arrive too late to be counted.

The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin said the commission’s guidance violates the right to vote enshrined in the Wisconsin Constitution and is calling on a Dane County Circuit Court judge to allow voters to cast provisional ballots if they think their ballots might arrive late.

Unlike standard in-person ballots, which generally go directly from the person casting them to a tabulator, provisional ballots are segregated and verified and counted later on, once election officials determine they are validly cast. The league is asking for mail voters to be able to cast provisional ballots and only have them counted if their mail ballots don’t arrive on time.

State law says that a voter who mails or delivers an absentee ballot to a clerk isn’t permitted to vote in person in the same election on Election Day. But the league said the commission is too narrowly interpreting that law in its rule prohibiting voters from casting ballots if they suspect their ballot will arrive late.

“This rule risks denying Impacted Voters their right to vote — the right most preservative of all others,” the lawsuit states.

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.

Amid USPS delays, Wisconsin officials tell voters to mail their ballots ASAP as voters sue for more options is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Reading Time: 13 minutes

The Democratic primary for governor of Wisconsin has changed both dramatically and barely at all since the start of this year.

The size of the field, which remained stagnant at seven major candidates for months, shifted rapidly in the span of 10 days in July that included both the exit of Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez from the race after she revealed problems with her campaign finance reports and the reentry of Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who secured a historically rare endorsement from Gov. Tony Evers. 

As of Sunday, the race includes former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, former Department of Administration Secretary Joel Brennan, Crowley, Madison state Rep. Francesca Hong and Madison state Sen. Kelda Roys. 

Here is what hasn’t changed: Hong, a self-described democratic socialist, led her opponents in the third consecutive Marquette University Law School poll released last week, which was conducted prior to Rodriguez’s exit from the race. Internal polling released by Barnes and Crowley’s campaigns also showed Hong in front. 

A fractured field means support continues to be spread out across the remaining five candidates and could result in a winner on primary Election Day with far less than 50% of the vote. Meanwhile, Republicans have coalesced around likely nominee U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany for months.

“Hong could certainly win the nomination with 35 to 40% of the vote,” said Anthony Chergosky, an associate professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. “All available evidence indicates that Hong is below 50% of the vote, but she doesn’t even need 50% of the vote if the field remains so fragmented and divided.” 

At the same time, the percentage of undecided voters continues to be higher than those who have selected any specific candidate. The Marquette poll found nearly half of registered voters surveyed in mid-July were undecided. 

Wisconsin Watch traveled to forums, farm tours and meet-and-greets around the state as the five remaining candidates have continued to lay out their vision to voters and explain why they are best suited to lead Wisconsin. 

The stakes of the race are high. Democrats see 2026 as an opportunity to win control of the Capitol for the first time since 2010, which could result in dramatic new progressive legislation. After Republicans won the governor’s office and majorities in the Senate and the Assembly in 2010, they used that power to dismantle public sector unions, increase pension and health insurance contributions for public employees, cut taxes, freeze UW tuition, restrict abortion, permit concealed carry of firearms, end the state’s land conservation program and enact gerrymandered legislative maps that protected their majority from a Democratic wave in 2018. 

It leaves a lot for voters to digest as in-person early voting begins Tuesday and two weeks remain before the partisan primary on Aug. 11. Two key moments this week could reshape the race — a debate hosted by WISN on Tuesday evening and a new Marquette Law School Poll of the current field expected to be released on Wednesday. 

Barnes takes aim at political establishment

The same day the Wisconsin Elections Commission determined tech businessman Elon Musk likely broke state election laws during the 2025 state Supreme Court race, former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes slammed the influence of money in politics at a town hall with End Citizens United, a political group that quickly endorsed him upon his entry in the governor’s race in December.  

Wisconsinites rejected Musk’s financial influence last year and must continue to fight against a “rigged system” that doesn’t support policies for working people, like raising the minimum wage, Barnes told the small group gathered at the Goodman Community Center in Madison. 

“These are the same industries that are making money hand over fist, the same people in industries that continue to make it hard for folks to get paid,” Barnes said. “You talk about people working harder and harder but life also getting harder and harder. It’s more difficult to get into the middle class. It’s more difficult to be able to purchase that first home. It’s more difficult to be able to even think about the American Dream now.” 

Barnes grew up in Milwaukee with a mother as a public school teacher and a father who belonged to the United Auto Workers union. He is a former organizer who served two terms in the state Assembly, ran for and lost a state Senate seat and was elected lieutenant governor during the 2018 blue wave. He has led a voter turnout organization and a clean energy advocacy group, but hasn’t run any large organizations, which opponents have highlighted as a weakness for someone seeking to be the state’s chief executive.

In 2022 he won the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate after opponents dropped out ahead of the primary, but narrowly lost to Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson. While the race has driven his name recognition in the gubernatorial primary, that 26,000-vote defeat still eats at him, he told guests at the Wisconsin Democratic Convention in June. 

The loss has opened him to criticism from other Democrats who have questioned whether he can win in a year when the party is striving for a trifecta in the governor’s office and the Legislature. 

While he trails in the polls behind Hong, Barnes insists he remains the most battle-tested candidate to take on obstacles for Democrats after the primary. The recent Marquette poll shows only Barnes leading in head-to-head matchups against Tiffany among the remaining candidates in the race, although last week’s poll did not include Crowley.

Barnes has campaigned on what he calls “The Wisconsin Way,” a policy agenda that includes raising taxes on the rich, expanding BadgerCare, passing universal child care and freezing utility rates, though some experts question whether Barnes would have the legal authority to freeze rates as governor. 

At a Democratic forum in Belmont, Barnes criticized the political moves that led Crowley to reenter the governor’s race with Evers’ endorsement. It’s another example of a system that leaves people frustrated with politics, he said in a clip shared on social media. 

“The only people who win when we continue to play these insider politics games are corporations and special interests,” he said. “We deserve so much more.” 

Brennan brings state government experience

Joel Brennan arrived at an East Troy farm ready to listen. 

Brennan nodded as Jim Stute, a research agronomist, explained how precipitation levels have changed on the property he has lived on for nearly three decades. Brennan leaned against a headless scarecrow in a white lab suit among the neat rows of research crops as Stute described his tactics to scare away sandhill cranes.

It’s a window into how Brennan, a longtime city dweller who grew up in Brookfield and lives in Milwaukee, has approached his campaign for governor. 

“It’s got to be about learning and listening. If we’re going to get stuff done, it has to be around … data-driven decisions and personal stories,” Brennan explained. “For me it is about how do I get out here and do this, how do I learn from people who have been doing it, what are the successes, what are the ways the state’s been involved, and what’s the opportunity for us?” 

Brennan is unabashedly running as a moderate Democrat, often aligning himself with the Evers administration that he helped lead as the secretary of the Department of Administration. He highlights his willingness to continue working across the aisle to get things done for Wisconsinites.

Like many of Brennan’s primary opponents, his campaign has focused on ways to make life more affordable in Wisconsin, such as expanding Medicaid and providing a public option for BadgerCare. But his ideas have often differed from some of the large-scale policies of his primary opponents. While the other Democrats have backed universal child care, Brennan has instead favored tax credits for child care businesses, caps on out-of-pocket costs for families and expanding eligibility for the existing Wisconsin Shares program. 

He entered the race in mid-December and has leaned on his career experience holding executive-level roles in businesses and nonprofits, including serving as CEO of Discovery World and president of the Greater Milwaukee Committee. In 2018, Evers tapped Brennan to lead the DOA, the top state executive agency tasked with overseeing financial management of state agencies and helping the governor draft the biennial budget. Brennan left that position in 2022. 

Brennan is the only one of the remaining candidates who has not held elected office before, which has limited his name recognition. Though he was the first Democratic candidate to launch a campaign ad in June, he only mustered 5% support in last week’s Marquette poll. 

Still, he has tried to find ways to push through the crowd, including questioning the electability of front-runners or his primary opponents’ leadership decisions. He was the first to attack Rodriguez with pointed questions after she fired her campaign manager over inaccuracies in her financial reports and released an ad last week criticizing Hong, Barnes and Crowley as unelectable in a general election. The ad, however, received pushback from Black Democrats, who called the spot racist for specifically highlighting candidates of color. It left out mention of Roys, who is white like Brennan. 

Brennan insists his executive experience gives him an edge over the candidates with legislative experience who “don’t have defined duties.” 

“That’s what I’m going to keep leaning into,” Brennan said. “That, plus listening and learning, I think, gets you to a point where people can see me doing the job, know that I could win and could be effective as governor. Those are the ingredients that get me to where I need to get to.” 

Crowley returns with Evers’ endorsement

The first question for Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley from a smattering of people gathered at the Concordia Ballroom in La Crosse was about why he dropped out of the governor’s race in early July. 

“It’s a long story,” Crowley said. He explained he initially chose to leave the race based on the numbers and campaign ad buy announcements that seemed to show Rodriguez with the best path forward, but more information came out about Rodriguez’s financial position that showed it was not the case. 

Crowley restarted his campaign on July 18. While Crowley acknowledged he may be the “double Dutch candidate” in the race, he told the group in La Crosse he feels a momentum propelling his campaign that was not there before. 

The most significant boost came from Evers, who endorsed Crowley on July 18 over the remaining candidates who served in his administration. Evers in a statement described Crowley as “the right candidate for the people of Wisconsin.” 

“He’s not just a candidate who can win in November,” Evers said. “But he’s the kind of person who cares about doing the job right, he has the experience to make tough decisions, and he’s proven he can work together with others to get good things done.” 

Crowley, at 40, is both the youngest and first Black person to serve as Milwaukee County executive, the job that oversees the most populous county in Wisconsin. It’s a role previously held by former Republican Gov. Scott Walker. “I’m not like him, though,” Crowley said with a chuckle to a guest in La Crosse.

Crowley grew up in Milwaukee and navigated challenging early years as his parents struggled with mental health and addiction and his family faced evictions. He credits public schools with his path to success and eventually became a community organizer. 

His entry into politics first began with work on former U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold’s campaign. Crowley was first elected to office in 2016 when he ran for state Assembly. He served two terms and left the Legislature in 2020 to run for Milwaukee County executive. 

Crowley tells audiences at campaign events how, as county executive, he has not shied away from working with anyone, including lawmakers across the aisle, to improve the lives of people in Milwaukee County. In La Crosse, he told the group about his efforts in passing the 2023 shared revenue law that has helped Milwaukee County pay off debts incurred from the pension scandal in the early 2000s, although Crowley acknowledged the law did not solve all municipal funding problems across the state.

Crowley has focused his campaign on an affordability plan referred to as the “Badger Basics,” which includes proposals such as building more housing, creating a public option for BadgerCare and easing child care costs for families with a child under age 5 by capping their costs at 7% of their household income. 

The key question for Crowley’s campaign is whether any momentum following his reentry into the race can actually push Crowley to the front of the field with just two weeks left to go. 

The new Marquette poll this week will provide a window into if his support has grown among registered voters, but in recent days, Crowley has also had to field questions about profane social media posts on an account he said he once shared with others. Crowley’s campaign told news outlets that although he had access to the account, he did not write any of the posts. 

Crowley said Evers’ endorsement shows the governor, whose job performance remains favorable among Wisconsin voters, believes in Crowley’s judgment.

“I think indirectly, people are wondering, ‘OK, who the hell is this dude, and why did Governor Evers pick him?’” Crowley said. “So, people are showing up. They’re paying attention to our social media posts, and they’re coming out to volunteer and donating their hard-earned money to support this campaign because they trust his judgment.” 

Hong rides momentum into final weeks of primary campaign 

Francesca Hong diced tomatoes for pico de gallo as she told guests at Dan Wegmueller’s farm in Monroe about the top question she hears on the campaign trail. 

Why is she a democratic socialist? 

“It’s less about the labels and more about the solutions,” Hong explained as her knife hit the cutting board, a familiar task for the chef and former restaurant owner. “When we are focusing on local, on the means of taking care of people and lowering costs, that has to mean being less reliant on industry. Right now, our community is being dominated by billionaires and mega corporations not paying their fair share, and then deciding a lot of the pricing and the way that we live our lives.”

Hong, a 37-year-old state representative from deep-blue Madison, has emerged as a top contender in Wisconsin’s Democratic gubernatorial primary. Her surprising rise comes as democratic socialists are winning primaries across the country and rejecting establishment policies. Hong has led in three Marquette polls since October and finished second behind Rodriguez in the WisPolitics straw poll at the Wisconsin Democratic Convention in June. 

If Hong wins the nomination, the key question for Democrats in swing-state Wisconsin is whether her policies appeal to voters across the state. The Marquette poll last week showed more registered voters have an unfavorable view of the democratic socialist label than a favorable one.

Republicans appear to be rooting for her nomination. A recent ad from the Republican Governors Association ominously casts her as being too liberal, opposed to President Donald Trump and supportive of abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement — all statements that could entice Democrats to vote for her in the primary.

Hong has had to answer questions about controversial democratic socialist views, such as her past social media posts in support of defunding and abolishing the police. She told radio station WTMJ in July that she does not believe police funding should go away. At the same time, Hong has faced backlash from Republicans for her statement that described the fatal shooting of Corey Ruiz in Madison as “an execution.” 

Hong also has had to fend off questions about appearing on a fundraising live stream with Hasan Piker, the controversial political commentator and streamer, who has been criticized for antisemitic comments. Hong told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that she disagrees with some of Piker’s comments, but said candidates should not give up opportunities to address large audiences. 

Hong, a single mother who was elected to the Assembly in 2020, has leaned on her service industry background and economic policy proposals, including universal child care and a moratorium on data center construction, to connect with voters.

In the final weeks, Hong said she plans to continue to show up in communities not expecting to see a candidate and engage in one-to-one conversations to drive curiosity about her vision and policies. People underestimate the extent that policy matters more than labels and existing political boundaries, Hong said. 

“I’m lucky that I get to say and show up as a chef, a mom, a renter, a service industry worker,” Hong said. “That from worker to worker we’ve got to talk about how we’ve got to fix this.”  

Roys has teachers union endorsement, campaign experience

Kelda Roys, sitting center stage in Evansville High School’s auditorium, eagerly chose a bucket brimming with education questions as the first category of the night during a forum on rural issues in early July. Just three candidates — Roys, Hong and Republican Andy Manske — participated. 

It was an obvious move for the Madison state senator, who won the endorsement of Wisconsin’s largest teachers union and bills herself as the “education candidate” in this year’s Democratic primary. 

Roys used the question — explain your position on separation of church and state regarding public schools in Wisconsin — to share her broader vision for public education in the state. 

“What my kids are getting in our public schools is not the same as what my sisters and I got, and it’s not OK with me,” Roys told the crowd. “A huge part of that reason is because we are diverting public resources into private unaccountable vouchers, many of them religious in nature. So, as governor, I will fully fund our public schools.” 

Gubernatorial forums are familiar spaces for Roys. She ran for governor in 2018, when 10 candidates competed in the Democratic primary for the chance to unseat then-Republican Gov. Scott Walker. Roys finished third far behind Evers, who defeated Walker that November. 

Before that, she served two terms in the Assembly from 2009 through 2013, which overlapped with the early years of the Republican trifecta control of state government and the passage of Act 10. Roys led protests against the law that dismantled collective bargaining rights for most public employees while serving as the Assembly’s Democratic caucus chair. 

In 2012, she ran for Congress and lost the Democratic primary to now-U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan. Roys returned to the Legislature when she was elected to the state Senate in 2020 after winning a seven-candidate Democratic primary on Madison’s west side and ran unopposed in 2024. She is also an attorney and a real estate agent. 

Roys has focused her campaign on funding public schools, but also lowering costs and raising wages. Her policies include plans to open the state’s insurance plan to all Wisconsinites to decrease the cost of health insurance. She also proposes universal access to Wisconsin Shares, the state’s child care subsidy program for low-income families, with costs capped at 7% of parents’ income per child. The state would fund its portion of the costs through legalizing marijuana. “You’re going to be able to get baked for babies,” she said to laughs in Evansville. 

She is quick at campaign events to describe the Trump administration as a “dangerous authoritarian regime,” while promising to safeguard Wisconsinites and their rights from attacks by the federal government.

Roys, though, has not made inroads in polling over the course of the primary, and last week’s Marquette poll shows her at the bottom of the pack among registered voters with support at just 2%. 

Still, Wisconsin needs an experienced leader in this moment when Democratic control is on the line, and her experience in the Legislature makes her best suited for the job, she said. 

“For over 20 years I have been turning progressive ideas into law in the toughest of political environments, and that is the kind of experience and deliverables that we should expect from our next governor,” Roys said. “Not just somebody with good ideas, because we’ve got six (now five) great Democrats running … but you’ve got to be able to turn them into law.”

Editor’s note: This story corrects that Joel Brennan was president of the Greater Milwaukee Committee.

Wisconsin’s Democratic primary for governor has changed a lot since January — and not much at all 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 League of Women Voters of Wisconsin filed a lawsuit Thursday against Wisconsin Elections Commission guidance that bars people who request an absentee ballot from casting an in-person ballot if the mail ballot will not arrive by the time polls close on Election Day. 

The lawsuit was filed as officials in Wisconsin, and the commission itself, have warned voters about potential delays in the mail system ahead of this year’s August and November elections. 

But commission guidance states that once voters mail their absentee ballots back to the clerk, they cannot be issued new ballots at the polls on Election Day. This means that if voters realize their ballots will not arrive in time after early in-person voting closes the Sunday before an election, they will not be able to vote. 

“Once a voter has placed their ballot in the mail, it is considered mailed,” the WEC guidance states. “They cannot be issued a new ballot at the polling place on Election Day, even if their absentee ballot will not be returned to the clerk’s office in time to be counted.”

The lawsuit seeks to allow voters who believe their ballots will not arrive to the clerk in time to go in person to cast a provisional ballot that would be set aside and only be counted if the initial ballot does not arrive by the deadline. 

Hundreds of voters did not have their votes counted during the state’s April elections because their ballots did not arrive in time. A WEC survey of clerks following the April election reported that hundreds of the state’s election officials believed delays in the mail had caused problems in the spring election. 

“Every voter in Wisconsin that puts an accurately requested absentee ballot in the mail on time expects their vote will be counted. Delays in mail delivery prevent that. It is time to have a remedy for these eligible voters,” Debra Cronmiller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, said. 

The League is represented in the lawsuit by Law Forward and the Fair Elections Center. The lawsuit argues that the commission understands the problem but is not taking advantage of an obvious solution to the potential mail delays. 

“The right to vote protects Wisconsinites from baseless disenfranchisement on Election Day. But WEC wants to turn these voters away. That’s just wrong,” Law Forward attorney Scott Thompson said. “We shouldn’t punish Wisconsin voters just because the mail is late. They must have the opportunity to vote on Election Day.”

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Wisconsin election officials have reignited a legal battle over absentee voting with July guidance stating that voters cannot void a returned absentee ballot and cast a new one, even if Election Day is weeks away or the candidate they supported has dropped out. 

Three Democratic residents in Dane County on Thursday sued the Wisconsin Elections Commission over the guidance, which was adopted by the commission on July 9, calling it an unconstitutional violation of the state’s absentee voting laws. All three plaintiffs voted for a gubernatorial candidate who has since dropped out of the primary, and under the commission guidance they cannot change their votes, even though those votes have not yet been counted. The legality of spoiling ballots just to change a vote has long been disputed.

The lawsuit says WEC’s guidance means the plaintiffs “will all be disenfranchised from meaningfully participating in this August election unless this Court steps in.”

Thursday’s lawsuit is the latest development in a legal dispute that began in 2022 and was reopened by an appeals court decision earlier this year. It was filed two days after the Democratic Party of Wisconsin sent the commission a letter urging it to rescind the guidance. The letter raised many of the same concerns later cited in the suit, including that the policy could disenfranchise voters and was adopted after early voting in the primary had already begun.

The July 9 guideline for clerks reverses the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s previous position and Attorney General Josh Kaul’s legal arguments on the agency’s behalf that voters should be allowed to replace absentee ballots they have already returned as long as they comply with statutory deadlines.

The WEC spent years arguing in court in favor of that broader definition of ballot spoiling, but its latest guidance effectively restores the rule imposed by a 2022 court ruling that banned the practice.

The commission adopted the guidance after clerks had already mailed ballots for the Aug. 11 primary and, notably, after multiple candidates in the crowded Democratic gubernatorial race dropped their bids. 

“It seems to me exceedingly likely that this is something that people are going to keep fighting about,” Jeff Mandell, founder of the liberal law firm Law Forward, said ahead of the lawsuit.

He added that the timing of the guidance was unusual: Typically courts are skeptical of efforts to change rules close to an election. Some absentee voters in this election cycle probably cast their ballots under the assumption that they could spoil their ballot and cast a new one if their preferred candidate dropped out or they just wanted to change their vote, Mandell said.

Even if the commission’s guidance is in line with Wisconsin law, it creates a clear discrepancy between in-person Election Day and absentee voters, said Sam Liebert, the Wisconsin state director of All Voting is Local and a former municipal clerk. 

Election Day voters can receive up to three ballots at the polls if they make a mistake, he pointed out. On the other hand, he said, absentee voters now get no second chance once they return their ballots, even if Election Day hasn’t arrived yet.

“The inconsistency is hard to ignore,” he said, and it presents a policy question for the Legislature — or maybe the courts.

Spoiling controversy blew up amid similar political dynamics in the 2022 primary

The WEC’s more permissive August 2022 guidance on ballot spoiling was prompted by similar dynamics as that of the present: highly contested primaries with candidates dropping out throughout the race and at the last minute. 

In September 2022, GOP voter Nancy Kormanik sued over that guidance allowing absentee ballot spoiling, arguing that clerks can only reissue an absentee ballot if a voter returns an absentee ballot in a “spoiled or damaged” condition. Voiding a ballot that’s already been submitted and getting a new one over a voter’s own mistake or a candidate dropping out didn’t fall under that category, she argued.

Kaul, the state’s Democratic attorney general, saw the issue differently. A few different laws allow ballot spoiling, he said in a court filing, and “none requires the elector to explain how or why the ballot is ‘spoiled.’”

Siding with Kormanik, a lower court banned the practice of spoiling absentee ballots in October.

The ban stood until February of this year, when an appeals court vacated the lower court ruling. But the new ruling wasn’t on the merits of the case. Rather, it came because the court said Kormanik didn’t properly serve documents to a legislative committee at the start of the suit.

After the February ruling, clerks sought the commission’s updated guidance about how to deal with spoiling. They didn’t receive it in time for the Wisconsin Supreme Court election in April, and some municipalities offered instructions on how to spoil ballots. But with midterm primaries coming up — and particularly as rumors of gubernatorial candidates dropping out swirled — clerks were especially eager to know if the commission planned to stand by its earlier interpretation of the law and allow absentee ballot spoiling again.

On July 9, the commission provided an answer: It voted 4-2 that absentee ballot spoiling is prohibited after a voter returns an absentee ballot. Democratic commissioner Carrie Riepl, a former clerk, voted with the three Republicans in favor of the guidance. Democratic commissioners Mark Thomsen and Ann Jacobs voted against it.

The guidance came just one day after Democratic gubernatorial candidate David Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive, dropped out of the race and endorsed Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez for governor. Just over a week later, Rodriguez dropped out of the race and Crowley reentered. 

Over 36,000 Wisconsin voters had already returned ballots by the day the commission issued its guidance, commission data shows. Voters had returned nearly 68,000 ballots by the time Rodriguez dropped out.

At the July meeting, commission chair Don Millis, a Republican, argued that voters should only be able to void — or spoil — ballots before they return them to the clerk.

“Once you’ve turned your ballot in, that’s it,” he said.

Meanwhile, Thomsen noted that in-person voters on Election Day can mark a ballot and receive a replacement ballot if they make an error, as long as the first ballot isn’t tabulated yet. But under the new guidance, an absentee voter couldn’t spoil a returned ballot even if it’s weeks from being tabulated.

“Why are we treating people that use mail differently than me if I show up?” he said.

On one hand, voters can argue that the inability to spoil ballots effectively disenfranchises them if they vote for a candidate that has since dropped out, said Bryna Godar, a staff attorney at the University of Wisconsin Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative. 

On the other hand, she said, others can cite the Wisconsin law calling absentee voting a privilege, not a right, and argue that voters who exercise that right accept some risk in casting an absentee vote that can’t be taken back.

“The issue of whether ballot spoiling is or is not allowed under Wisconsin statutes hasn’t been definitively resolved,” she 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.

Can Wisconsin voters void a returned absentee ballot? New lawsuit sends issue back to court is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Reading Time: 5 minutes

As early voting starts next week in the Aug. 11 primary to determine who will be on the November ballot, Democrats hope to flip two U.S. House seats in Wisconsin.

Republicans took control of the House in 2022 and currently hold six of Wisconsin’s eight seats. The primaries feature several political newcomers and could offer insight into which wings of each party are exerting the most influence.

Here are the four House primaries we are watching in August:

Congressional District 1

Democrats are targeting this district to unseat four-term U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, who defeated Democratic challenger Peter Barca in 2024 by 10 percentage points. Barca wasn’t new to Wisconsin politics, having served in Congress and the state Assembly as minority leader. He also served as secretary of the state Department of Revenue before his 2024 run.

“On paper, it’s a competitive district,” said Barry Burden, University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor and director of the Elections Research Center. “The trouble is Steil is a really formidable incumbent.”

Because Steil, who succeeded former House Speaker Paul Ryan in 2019, has a fundraising advantage and is not a controversial figure, Burden said this district is much harder to flip regardless of national Democratic efforts. Since the start of his latest term, Steil has raised $3 million, received more than $2 million from other committees and has $6.1 million cash on hand.

ER nurse Mitchell Berman has established a clear edge in the primary. He has received multiple lawmaker endorsements, including Reps. Ann Roe, D-Janesville; Ben DeSmidt, D-Kenosha; and Tip McGuire, D-Kenosha. He recently launched a six-figure ad buy, highlighting his experience as a nurse working with veterans and his campaign on protecting health care and lowering costs. He has raised over $650,000 and has about $220,000 cash on hand.

Milwaukee Ald. Peter Burgelis suspended his campaign after the July 15 campaign finance filing deadline and offered to support Berman. Burgelis’ report showed he had raised just over $54,000 in the most recent quarter. He had been campaigning on lowering costs, making communities safer and defending voting rights.

Lorenzo Santos, a Navy veteran and the former Young Democrats of Wisconsin chair, previously ran for the seat in 2024, but suspended his campaign before the primary. His top priorities include raising the federal minimum wage to $26 by 2030, universal Medicare and supporting veteran mental health services. He has about $10,000. 

Miguel Aranda is the Whitewater Unified School District Board vice president and the associate director of PreCollege Programs at UW-Whitewater. His campaign emphasizes that he is the only Spanish speaker in the race, and his priorities include criminal justice and immigration reform, supporting unions and protecting Medicare. He has more than $13,000 cash on hand.

What we’re watching: In what’s supposed to be a good year for Democrats and a bad year for incumbents, will a relatively unknown Democratic nominee give Steil any trouble?

Congressional District 3

The top Democratic target in Wisconsin is U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden. The 2024 Democratic nominee Rebecca Cooke and former Eau Claire City Council President Emily Berge are running in the Democratic primary.

Burden said this is the only congressional district in the state seriously in play for Democrats. 

Van Orden has had a controversial political career after succeeding longtime Democratic moderate Ron Kind. He is known for his incendiary tweets and past clashes such as scolding teenage Senate pages in 2023 and confronting a La Crosse library worker over an LGBTQ+ book display in 2021. He also closely aligns with President Donald Trump, who won Wisconsin in 2024 but has since seen his approval ratings crater.

“He’s in real jeopardy,” Burden said. “This could be a district that Republicans lose.”

Cooke lost to Van Orden in 2024 by less than 3 percentage points. Burden said her high-profile endorsements, including U.S. Sens. Tammy Baldwin and Bernie Sanders and state Sen. Brad Pfaff, D-Onalaska, give her a leg up in the Aug. 11 primary. Cooke leads in fundraising at nearly $7.5 million in the latest quarter with $2.5 million cash on hand while Van Orden raised $5.2 million with $4.7 million in the bank.

Cooke has faced criticism for portraying herself as a political outsider while working as a Democratic fundraiser and as a political consultant for controversy-courting Minocqua Brewing Company owner Kirk Bangstad. She has more recently worked with the center-left think tank Third Way.

Her biggest campaign priorities include expanding Medicare, supporting farmers and lowering costs for working families. 

Berge is running for the seat for the first time. She has received endorsements from legislators including state Sen. Jeff Smith, D-Brunswick, and state Rep. Tara Johnson, D-town of Shelby. She touts her prior elected experience and supports universal health care and affordable housing. Berge has raised $686,000.

What we’re watching: What will Democratic turnout in the August primary tell us about Van Orden’s chances compared with 2024?

Congressional District 7

This far northern Wisconsin district has two loaded primaries as U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany wraps up three terms in Congress to run for governor. Five Republicans are vying to keep the seat red while three Democrats make their bids in what will likely remain a safe Republican district.

Wausau financial adviser Kevin Hermening, Chippewa County factory worker Jessi Ebben, Crescent business owner Niina Baum, Superior contractor Don Raihala, and Michael Alfonso, son-in-law of former congressman and current Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, are competing in the Republican primary. 

Alfonso leads the fundraising race at $1.25 million, with Ebben trailing behind with just over $460,000.

Hermening, a Marine veteran, has raised $103,000 for his campaign but also gave himself a $1 million loan. He is endorsed by lawmakers including state Sen. Romaine Quinn, R-Birchwood, and state Rep. Pat Snyder, R-Schofield. His top campaign issues include protecting Social Security and Medicare and supporting veterans.

Raihala said some of the biggest issues constituents have in the district are illegal immigration and the Jeffrey Epstein files, and he said he would continue to support deportations of immigrants lacking permanent legal status and the full release of the files.

Baum holds a more moderate view of immigration, saying that while she supports border security, she says immigrants are essential in Wisconsin and wants to create a “functional legal pathway” for workers. She also supports a data center moratorium and wants to uplift Wisconsin farmers. Baum has raised about $6,000.

Similar to Raihala, Ebben holds border security high on her priority list, as well as pro-life values, Second Amendment rights and strengthening rural communities. She also emphasizes her intense support for Trump, though she did not receive his endorsement for her campaign.

Trump’s endorsement went early in the race to Alfonso, 26, who also received endorsements from House Speaker Mike Johnson and four of the six Wisconsin Republican congressional incumbents. His top priorities include states’ rights, pro-life values and supporting school choice.

Burden said the Trump endorsement might not be enough to pull Alfonso through.

“Alfonso has these other liabilities,” Burden said. “His youth and inexperience are serious. He’s just old enough to serve in Congress and really has not had any experience being employed or working in party politics in any meaningful way.” 

The wealthy Republican Uihlein family split their donations in this district. Richard Uihlein donated to Alfonso’s campaign and gave $1 million to a PAC supporting him. But his wife, Elizabeth Uihlein, donated to Ebben’s campaign and gave $1 million to a PAC supporting her. Burden said this highlights the divide among party insiders whether to follow Trump’s lead or not.

What we’re watching: Is Trump’s endorsement enough to override concerns about inexperience and nepotism in northern Wisconsin?

Congressional District 8

Three Democratic newcomers are competing to unseat freshman U.S. Rep. Tony Wied, who won by about 15 percentage points against obstetrician-gynecologist Kristin Lyerly in 2024, in this solid Republican Green Bay area district. 

Mark Scheffler, a retired business owner, heavily campaigns on the idea of a “sustainable society,” which includes affordable health care, privacy rights and economic prosperity. He also prioritizes conservation and protecting the environment. Scheffler has raised just over $107,000, compared to Wied’s $1 million haul.

Rick Crosson is an Army veteran from Green Bay. His campaign says he wants to reform the Department of Veterans Affairs for more timely and quality treatment, fighting agriculture corporations to support small farmers and supporting rural reproductive health care. He has raised just over $63,000.

Democratic Socialist Katrina deVille, a transgender woman, advocates for a $22 federal minimum wage, universal health care and free child care. She also says she wants to file articles of impeachment against Trump on her first day if elected. She has raised just under $3,000.

What we’re watching: Can Democrats mount a credible challenge in northeast Wisconsin in what could be a blue wave year?

Here are four congressional races to watch in Wisconsin’s Aug. 11 primary 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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The upcoming Wisconsin midterms could shift the balance of power in the state Legislature, and the August primaries will determine which candidates voters want to see on the November general election ballot. 

Democrats are aiming to flip both the Assembly and Senate in hopes of securing a trifecta in the state government. The party must flip two of the four competitive Senate seats to win a majority. The Assembly is a larger challenge as Democrats must flip five seats to claim a majority for the first time in 16 years.

The 2024 election was the first election under new legislative maps, which ended a Republican gerrymander that had been in place since 2011. Democrats flipped 14 legislative seats. 

Those results provide some insight for the upcoming elections. Barry Burden, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor and director of the Elections Research Center, said Democrats have an advantage in the 2026 Senate races, which are the first contested since the new maps took effect. Senate terms are for four years, and the even-numbered Senate districts on the ballot in 2024 were more favorable to Republicans, yet Democrats still flipped four seats. 

“This year is different because Trump is not on the ballot, the national environment is helping their party more and the odd-numbered districts — which are up this year — are just gonna be tougher for Republicans,” Burden said.

Winning the Assembly will likely be more difficult for Democrats. Burden said the Assembly has a lot of Republican incumbents and not many competitive districts. However, he pointed to the nine Republican retirements in this election cycle, including Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, none of whom are running for another office. 

“It looks like some Republican officeholders have realized this is going to be a tough year for them and they would prefer not to go through a difficult campaign and potentially lose their own seat and maybe lose the majority in the Assembly,” Burden said. 

Three Assembly Democrats are also not seeking reelection, though all are running for higher office. 

While Burden said the Assembly is “genuinely up for grabs,” he concluded Republicans still hold a slight advantage. 

He also said most of the primaries themselves “are not especially consequential” because most incumbents are not facing primary challengers and contested primaries tend to be in districts that heavily favor a specific party with no chance of flipping. Still, he said these elections remain important because they often determine the eventual winner in these safe Democratic or Republican districts. 

Here are some primaries that we’re watching:

Senate District 1

Four Republicans face off to replace Sen. André Jacque, R-New Franken, after his two terms in the Senate. 

The candidates all campaign on similar issues: affordability, defending constitutional freedoms and supporting agriculture and veterans. But there are some differences.

Current Jacque staffer Nic Cravillion puts protecting the state’s outdoor spaces as a priority. His campaign emphasizes Wisconsin’s hunting, fishing and other outdoor activities, and he says he will support public access and conservation efforts. 

Katie Baney, a director at Delta Defense, prides herself as the only mother in the race. She also highlights her support for school choice and the ‘Make America Healthy Again’ movement, popularized by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 

Barbara Bittner, a farmer from Stockbridge, chairs the Republican Party of Calumet County. She emphasizes what she describes as traditional family values and defending the sanctity of life. But she also supports the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program, largely seen as a more Democratic issue after the Republican-controlled Legislature removed funding for the land conservation program from the 2025-27 state budget and it expired last month. 

While each candidate campaigns on veteran support, Jacob VandenPlas, a Sturgeon Bay farmer, marks veteran mental health as one of his key campaign issues. As a veteran who experienced brain trauma and PTSD himself, he founded a program to aid veterans’ recovery and suicide prevention, using farming as a form of therapy.

Cravillion leads in fundraising for this race having collected more than $75,000 since January. Baney raised about $47,000, Bittner raised about $17,000, and VandenPlas raised $1,900.

The winner of the Republican primary will face independent Mark Becker, the former chair of the Republican Party of Brown County. 

What we’re watching: What will this primary tell us about how Republican voters feel about the future of state land conservation efforts?

Senate District 17

Three Democrats are looking to unseat three-term Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, a co-chair of the powerful Joint Finance Committee. 

Rep. Jenna Jacobson, D-Oregon, who has served in the Assembly since 2022, has received the State Senate Democratic Committee’s endorsement. She serves on the Assembly’s agriculture committee and has authored numerous bills on farming, one of her top campaign issues. She had about $200,000 on hand as of June 30, compared to Marklein’s $1 million.

Corrine Hendrickson, a child care consultant and former New Glarus School Board member, is advocating for increased public school funding and affordable child care. Hendrickson had about $12,000 on hand.

Lisa White, a small business owner, holds similar policy stances as both Jacobson and Hendrickson. Her campaign emphasizes changing the public school funding system, particularly how heavy funding relies on property taxes. She also says she is a strong advocate for rural health care, conservation and small businesses. White was down to about $800 on hand as of June 30.

What we’re watching: Will the preferred Democratic candidate win the primary as Democrats look to flip a district that Kamala Harris won in 2024?

Senate District 25

Former state Reps. Erik Severson and Angie Sapik will face off in the Republican primary to determine who will replace Sen. Romaine Quinn, who is running in the redrawn 23rd Senate District. The winner faces Democratic Bayfield County Board member Charly Ray in the November election. Democrats are targeting this district to flip the Senate.

Severson, a family medical doctor, served in the Assembly from 2011 to 2015. He describes himself as a strong pro-life, pro-family advocate, and his campaign emphasizes using his medical background to help improve health care in Wisconsin. He is endorsed by Pro-Life Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Family Action PAC, an advocacy group for conservative family values.

Sapik serves on the Douglas County Board and served in the Assembly from 2023 to 2025. She supports the Second Amendment and says less government involvement will give Wisconsinites “more autonomy.” She also wants to lower taxes and repeal a provision Gov. Tony Evers created in state law that increases funding limits for public schools every year for the next 400 years. Sapik has been endorsed by 10 current Republican state representatives, Sen. Cory Tomczyk and a handful of former state representatives.

Burden pointed to this district as an interesting primary to keep an eye on. 

“You’ve got a Republican primary with two candidates who are duking it out to be the nominee there, but also a very credible Democratic candidate who has no primary opposition,” Burden said. “It’s possible the Republicans will sort of go at one another during the primary, and the Democrat will continue to raise money and build his campaign to get ready for whoever he faces.”

Ray has raised about $119,000. Sapik trails close behind having raised about $117,000. Severson raised about $39,000 in the first half of the year.

Burden pointed to how the area, which is in U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany’s 7th Congressional District, has gotten more Republican under President Donald Trump. However, he said it’s likely to be a competitive race in November. He added that if Democrats win this district, it could indicate that they’re doing well at “the top of the ticket” and the success has “trickled down” the ballot. 

What we’re watching: How much will the Republican candidates spend to get nominated and where will that leave the nominee in comparison to the Democratic candidate?

Assembly District 21

David Liners, former state director of WISDOM, and Oak Creek Mayor Dan Bukiewicz are running in the Democratic primary to replace Joint Finance Committee member Rep. Jessie Rodriguez, R-Oak Creek, who won in 2024 by 3 percentage points and is not seeking reelection. 

Liners is more progressive than Bukiewicz and is endorsed by multiple Democratic Socialist lawmakers, including gubernatorial candidate Rep. Francesca Hong, D-Madison, and Rep. Ryan Clancy, D-Milwaukee, as well as the Wisconsin Electoral Socialists. He has advocated for data center moratoriums and allowing immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses. He also says he wants to change how public schools are funded by initially freezing property taxes and using Wisconsin’s surplus budget instead.

Bukiewicz has been the Oak Creek mayor since 2017 and is endorsed by U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, as well as state lawmakers including Sen. Dora Drake, D-Milwaukee, and Rep. Christine Sinicki, D-Milwaukee. He has said he would advocate for a $20 state minimum wage, public school funding and lowering the cost of living. 

Bukiewicz leads the fundraising effort with about $62,000 cash on hand as of June 30 while Liners trails with about $12,000 in the bank.

The winner of the primary will face Republican Carroll University student Dylan Pfaffenbach, who has about $7,400 on hand, in November. 

What we’re watching: In a clash between establishment Democrats and Democratic Socialists, who wins?

Assembly District 26

Three Republicans will compete in the primary to determine who will face Rep. Joe Sheehan, D-Sheboygan, in the general election. Sheehan, an Assembly freshman who has raised more than $32,000 this year for his campaign, flipped the 26th District in 2024 when he unseated former state Rep. Amy Binsfield by 3 percentage points. Binsfeld had a falling out with the Sheboygan County Republican Party when she clashed on some core GOP issues.

Tyler Schneekloth, a self-employed 25-year-old from Wilson who has raised $756, said he wants to eliminate the state income tax for families making under $125,000 a year, give interest-free mortgages to families and first-time buyers and put a moratorium on data centers. 

Former Sheboygan Ald. John Belanger prioritizes affordability, growth of small businesses and government transparency in his campaign. In April he lost the city council race as an incumbent. He said he will be an independent voice for Sheboygan. He has raised $1,250.

James Brotz of Sheboygan says he wants to end Evers’ 400-year veto, end emissions testing and implement a tick eradication program. He also campaigns for election security and reduced government. He has raised no money for his campaign. 

What we’re watching: Which Republican will emerge to try and retake this Sheboygan-focused seat?

Assembly District 61

Brian Bock, Ben Brist and Lawanda Chambers will face off in the Democratic primary to determine who will challenge Rep. Bob Donovan, R-Greenfield, in the general election. Donovan won in 2024 by 3 percentage points. Democrats are targeting this race to flip control of the Assembly. 

Bock, a pharmacist, was elected to the Greendale School Board in 2024 and serves as its treasurer. He said he’s running to “deliver practical, results-driven leadership” and is largely focused on improving access to affordable health care through lowering the price of prescription drugs and expanding Medicaid. He is backed by 3.14 Action, a national group dedicated to electing Democrats with STEM backgrounds to public offices. The group also supported Evers, a former science teacher, in his gubernatorial reelection campaigns. 

Brist, an Army veteran who served as a paratrooper and infantry officer, said he’s running as a candidate who understands the strain of rising prices while wages “struggle to keep up.” He is campaigning to lower property taxes by fixing the state’s funding formula for public schools, aiming to have more funds go to schools to allow them to rely less on property taxes for funding. 

Chambers is the founder and CEO of LIFE Wellness & Counseling, which provides mental health services to individuals in need. She said she will be “focused on solutions, not political drama.” Her campaign emphasizes public safety, and she plans to give first responders and law enforcement more resources to feel supported and be properly trained to do their jobs. She is endorsed by Democratic representatives Darrin Madison, Supreme Moore Omokunde and Margaret Arney. 

Brist has raised nearly $24,000. Chambers has raised more than $21,000. Donovan raised $20,000 this year, but has $70,000 cash on hand. Bock has raised $3,800.

What we’re watching: What kind of candidate will Democrats nominate in a key race for control of the Assembly? 

Assembly District 76

Five Democrats are competing in a primary to replace Rep. Francesca Hong, who ran unopposed in 2024 and is running for governor. The winner will face Republican Nina Chat in this solidly Democratic district.

Dina Nina Martinez-Rutherford was elected to the Madison City Council in 2023, making her the first openly transgender woman to be on the council. She highlights her time being paid $2.33 as a food service worker, her experience with homelessness and her lack of health care for much of her life. Her campaign focuses on raising the minimum wage to $20 an hour and lowering property taxes. She has been endorsed by nearly 70 current and former elected officials, more than 60 community leaders and about a dozen political organizations. She has raised the most money in this race at $56,000.

Juliana Bennett, a swim instructor and bartender, is a member of the Madison Area Democratic Socialists of America and was previously elected to the Madison City Council. Some of her priorities include raising the minimum wage to $23 an hour, legalizing rent control and passing a tenant bill of rights. With nearly $35,000 raised for her campaign, she has been endorsed by the national Democratic Socialists of America and current Democratic Reps. Angelito Tenorio, Maureen McCarville and Margaret Arney.

Isaia Ben-Ami has been a policy director for Rep. Kalan Haywood, D-Milwaukee. He was also the chief of staff and research assistant for Rep. Shelia Stubbs, D-Madison. He prioritizes affordable housing, saying the state needs to relieve property taxes, pass a tenant bill of rights and build more housing. Ben-Ami has raised $32,000 and has been endorsed by Democratic representatives, including Haywood, Renuka Mayadev, Maureen McCarville and Priscilla Prado.

Zoe Sullivan, an audio producer and writer, said she wants to create legislation to roll back the private school voucher program to help with public school and university system funding. She has raised $13,200 for her campaign. She also said she wants to work to close prisons to decrease the population of incarcerated individuals to free up funding for the university system. 

Tony Castañeda, an artist and musician, is prioritizing keeping Immigration and Customs Enforcement out of Wisconsin and providing more funding to teachers and the public school system. He has raised $6,600.

What we’re watching: In a safe Democratic district, will voters elect another Democratic Socialist or will experience or endorsements drive the result?

As Democrats aim to retake the Wisconsin Legislature, here are the races we’re watching in the Aug. 11 primary 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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• Just eight local governments had spent more than half of their opioid settlement funds by the end of 2025, while 16 hadn’t spent any.
• Even with millions still available and more payments on the way, local officials are already worried about what happens when the money runs out.
• At least 17 local governments used some settlement dollars to support law enforcement.
• About a dozen counties are using funds for foster care or services aimed at preventing family separations.
• A dozen local governments identified transportation as a major barrier to accessing opioid-related services.
• Local governments reported spending more than $2 million on treatment for incarcerated people.

Local Wisconsin governments have received more than $160 million in settlement payments from drug makers, distributors and pharmacies that were sued for their role in the country’s opioid epidemic.

Wisconsin and 87 local governments are expected to receive more than $874 million by 2038, up from projections Wisconsin Watch reported in 2025. 

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services gets 30% of the state’s settlement payments and documents its spending online while updating the Legislature quarterly. 

The rest flows to 71 Wisconsin counties (all but Polk, whose board declined to join Wisconsin’s lawsuit) and 16 municipalities, which started receiving it in 2022. Each tracks and spends the funds a little differently. 

As Wisconsin Watch previously reported, it’s not always easy to follow the money. But all local governments must provide the Legislature and the Wisconsin Department of Justice annual reports that include basic accounting. Many also answer optional questions from the Wisconsin Counties Association.

Wisconsin Watch created a database with the most recently reported local government settlement spending information. Here are some trends and notable findings:

1. Money stayed in the bank. Just eight local governments had spent more than half of their opioid settlement funds by the end of 2025, while 16 hadn’t spent any.

2. Officials wonder: What happens after the money runs out? Even with millions still available and more payments on the way, local officials are already worried about what happens when the money runs out. Several local governments said the eventual end of disbursements could put staff positions and programs in jeopardy.

3. At least 17 local governments used some settlement dollars to support law enforcement. Multiple counties and municipalities hired specially trained co-responders who accompany officers on calls involving mental health or substance use issues. Other governments bought surveillance cameras, drug-checking equipment or vehicles or hired drug task force investigators.

4. Funds flowed to foster care. Counties oversee foster care and have long cited parental substance use as a driver of family separation. About a dozen counties are using funds for foster care or services aimed at preventing family separations.

5. Transportation barriers. A dozen local governments identified transportation as a major barrier to accessing opioid-related services. Several counties used settlement dollars last year to help residents travel to treatment and other services.

6. Prevention prevails. The Wisconsin Counties Association asked local governments to break their settlement spending into 10 categories. Counties reported spending the most, nearly $6 million, on prevention — defined as efforts to prevent opioid use disorder and to screen for the condition. More than a dozen local governments funded school-based prevention programs, including youth peer support and DARE. 

7. Counties spend on jail treatment. People leaving jails and prisons face a high risk of  overdose. Local governments reported spending more than $2 million on treatment for incarcerated people. The number of county jails providing medications for opioid use disorder doubled between 2021 and 2024, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum. More than 20 governments described spending settlement dollars for jail-based programming, including several that provided medications for opioid use disorder. 

8. Early signs of progress. Many local governments cited plunging overdose rates as  success. Statewide overdoses fell by more than 42% between 2023 and 2024. More work is needed, multiple officials acknowledged, considering that opioid overdoses remain far  higher than a decade ago. Still, they see expanded access to opioid reversal medications and treatment services as something to celebrate. 

What stands out to you? Explore the database and tell us what you notice or want us to investigate — or if you have any questions. Submit a tip or email editor@wisconsinwatch.org.

Wisconsin governments have received $160 million in opioid settlement funds. Here’s where it’s going. 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.