What are the odds the soon-to-retire Republican leaders of the state Legislature are seriously considering Gov. Tony Evers’ call to end partisan gerrymandering? 

Evers called the special session that began and ended with no action this week, asking legislators to take up a constitutional amendment to ban the practice of drawing voting maps that give a disproportionate advantage to one political party. 

Legislators didn’t exactly refuse — they’ve kicked the can down the road, adjourning temporarily until later this month. As Baylor Spears reports, Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu explained that legislators need to “gain public input in order to make an informed decision on how to proceed.” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Majority Leader Tyler August said they want to have more discussions with Evers to reach a “transparent and balanced solution that reflects the interests of all Wisconsinites.” 

Or maybe they just want to run out the clock, do nothing and then blame the governor for their failure to act. 

After all, President Donald Trump, the Republicans’ national leader, has been strong-arming GOP legislators in red states to hold extraordinary mid-decade redistricting sessions to draw him some extra seats to shore up an unpopular Republican House majority. Wisconsin Republicans would be swimming against the tide if they made their last act in office a good-government effort to lock in fair maps. 

Giving up power is not exactly on brand for Wisconsin Republicans. These are the same legislators who drew themselves into the most partisan gerrymandered districts in the country back in 2010. When it came time to draw another round of maps after the 2020 census, they gathered copious public input, holding hearings in which an overwhelming majority of voters told them that they wanted fair maps, and then ignored the public and gerrymandered the maps again. Only after the state Supreme Court declared those maps unconstitutional did they relent and accept 50/50 maps that lean slightly toward Republicans majorities.

Now they’re quitting in droves rather than work in a Legislature where they’ve lost the disproportionate power they conferred on themselves through gerrymandering.

Still, staring down the possibility of Democratic trifecta control of government, it’s possible Republicans could take the long view and try to protect their 50/50 stake before the other party has a shot at redrawing the districts. 

Then again, Republicans have shown very little appetite for that kind of sensible, good-government approach. As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported this week, Republican legislative leaders are paying private attorneys $550 per hour in taxpayer money to defend their practice of hiring private attorneys at the taxpayers’ expense.

This freewheeling expenditure of your tax dollars follows a lawsuit filed by the public interest law firm Law Forward in February challenging the use of expensive private attorneys by GOP leaders. That practice started in the lame duck session after Evers was first elected, when Republican legislative leaders began frantically grabbing powers from the new Democratic administration. 

“It’s all about an unwillingness to exist within the bounds of checks and balances,” says Jeff Mandell of Law Forward. “It smacks of a sense that the Legislature, and particularly its leadership, is beyond accountability.”

That kind of arrogance is on its way out, along with the legislative leaders who, for more than a decade, treated government as their private club, hoarding power and ignoring the will of the voters. The best way to make sure it never returns is to permanently guarantee fair maps.

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An attorney for the Republican Party of Wisconsin told local officials ahead of a key vote last week that Madison should not count 23 absentee ballots from last week’s Supreme Court election that arrived at polling places after they had closed — a dispute that could set up a legal challenge.

The GOP weighed in hours before the Madison Board of Canvassers voted unanimously on Friday to count the affected ballots. On Monday, the Dane County Board of Canvassers followed suit, voting 2-1 to count the ballots.

Election officials make these judgment calls all the time, and, historically, courts have allowed them. Officials are routinely called upon to address whether a witness address is complete, whether a damaged ballot can still be counted, or the like. These issues are usually resolved locally and without controversy. 

But disputes like this — over how to interpret the law and whether late-arriving ballots should count — are harder to contain. Experts say leaving those decisions to individual counties risks inconsistent outcomes across Wisconsin, especially in a high-stakes election season.

Rick Hasen, an election law professor at UCLA, said that kind of patchwork approach is a recipe for conflict.

“This is not tenable in the current political atmosphere,” Hasen said.

Dane County votes to count ballots despite GOP opposition

The kind of disagreement worrying Hasen was on full display at Monday’s meeting of the Dane County Board of Canvassers. Two canvassers said there was a clear answer about what to do with the ballots — but they arrived at different ones.

“I don’t think this is hard,” Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell said.

“I don’t either,” said canvasser Mike Willett, a former Dane County supervisor and a Republican appointee on the board.

McDonell voted to count the ballots, while Willett voted against it, saying the board had previously rejected late-arriving ballots and he didn’t want to create exceptions.

Erik Paulson, the other Democrat on the board, sided with McDonell to count the ballots.

Republican opposition was already taking shape before the vote.Emails obtained by Votebeat show that Nicholas Boerke, an outside attorney for the Wisconsin GOP, urged city and county officials on Friday not to count the ballots.

“We recognize this situation may have resulted from an unfortunate logistical failure. However, administrative error does not create statutory authority that otherwise does not exist,” he wrote.

“Voting absentee is a privilege granted by the Legislature that comes with inherent risks and the election day deadline for the receipt, processing, tabulation, and counting is mandatory,” he continued.

The canvass, Boerke told officials, was a “ministerial process, not a vehicle for processing absentee ballots” that weren’t received by the time dictated in law, “nor a mechanism to conduct an unauthorized recount.” 

Amber McReynolds, an assistant attorney for Madison, responded that counting the ballots was in line with court decisions and past Wisconsin Elections Commission recommendations.

Boerke responded, telling officials the GOP maintains “that the statutory language is clear — absentee ballots that are not timely delivered to polling locations before 8 p.m. may not be counted.”

Boerke didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about whether the GOP would sue Madison.

Error led to 23 Madison absentee ballots arriving late

The ballots at issue arrived at the city clerk’s office on Monday, April 6. The absentee ballot courier carrying the ballots left a city facility at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 7, to deliver ballots to 17 polling places, but the courier did not make it to the last few polling places until after the 8 p.m. deadline.  

Officials said these 23 ballots were correctly, legally cast and checked into the pollbooks just like any other absentee ballot — the only problem was that that happened after polls formally closed.

Madison Clerk Lydia McComas said it was a critical error to put just one person in charge of delivering ballots to so many polling places. Madison is the largest city in Wisconsin that still chooses to count absentee ballots at individual precincts rather than at a central location — a decision that requires ballots to be transported across the city on Election Day.

It remains unclear, however, why the ballots departed from the city’s facility so late in the day. Across the state, clerks design their Election Day logistics to ensure ballots are delivered by that cutoff. McComas said it was her and her staff’s understanding that the law required ballots to be delivered to polling places by 8 p.m.

There appears to be little appetite among clerks to formally extend that deadline. 

“I do not plan to take advantage of whatever ruling comes here tonight,” McComas said ahead of the county vote, implying that she wouldn’t take advantage of the canvassing board’s leniency and plan for future late deliveries accordingly. 

McDonell said rejecting the ballots would penalize voters for something outside their control. “And I think that’s very problematic,” he said.  

Disagreement over Wisconsin election law is ripe for legal challenges

The statute at issue in this situation says ballots must be returned so that they’re delivered to polling places “no later than 8 p.m. on election day.” 

“If the municipal clerk receives an absentee ballot on election day,” the law continues, “the clerk shall secure the ballot and cause the ballot to be delivered to the polling place serving the elector’s residence before 8 p.m. Any ballot not mailed or delivered as provided in this subsection may not be counted.”

At the county-level meeting on Monday, county attorney David Gault, arguing that the ballots should be counted, took the position that the law does not apply here because the ballots were received before Election Day.

“The clear intent of everything in the statutes,” he said, is not to punish the voter for mistakes made by election officials.

“That’s certainly an interpretation,” said Willett, the conservative member of the county canvassing board. “When we start making these exceptions, these exceptions just grow.”

What’s clear to Bryna Godar — a staff attorney at the University of Wisconsin Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative — is that the statute is “ambiguous about this type of situation.” She said one part of the law appears to govern voters returning ballots on time, while another addresses ballots received on Election Day — leaving situations like this unclear.

“Because there is no voter fault here from what we know so far, there would be good reason to still count those ballots,” she said, adding that rejecting them could raise constitutional concerns.

At the city meeting on Friday, McReynolds noted that courts ruled in the 1970s and 1980s that ballots should be counted as long as there’s “substantial compliance” with election laws and no evidence of “connivance, fraud, or undue influence.”

In 1985, however, the Legislature passed a law emphasizing that absentee voting is a privilege exercised outside the usual safeguards of the polling place and that ballots not meeting legal requirements “may not be counted.”

Boerke cited that law in his exchange with the city and county, as conservatives have done repeatedly in issues of absentee ballot missteps and controversies.

Still, the courts have continued to show flexibility. In a 2004 dispute, the Wisconsin Supreme Court held that “the failure on the part of the election officials to perform their duties should not deprive the voters of their constitutional right to vote.”

Lawyers often say that it’s more important for a law to be certain than for it to be right, said Hasen, the UCLA professor. Uncertainty — especially when there are good-faith arguments on either side — is one of the most dangerous situations in election law.

“That just creates all kinds of issues of equal protection and due process and election fairness,” he said. “So the more that these issues can be resolved one way or the other, not in the heat of a very close election, the better it is.”

If an election hinges on ballots like these, he said, a lawsuit is all but inevitable. 

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

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

Wisconsin GOP advised officials not to count late-arriving ballots, raising possibility of legal challenge 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 legal brief filed late last week seeks to have a Dane County judge declare that an 1897 law banning the practice of fusion voting is unconstitutional because it restricts the rights to a “free government,” equal protection and freedom of speech through a law that was passed to explicitly create a partisan electoral advantage. 

The motion was filed on Friday in a lawsuit brought last year by United Wisconsin, a nascent centrist political party hoping to offer voters an alternative to the “duopoly” of the Democratic and Republican parties. The group is represented by the voting rights focused firm Law Forward. 

Fusion voting is a practice through which multiple political parties can nominate the same candidate to the ticket. Under the system, a minor party such as United could choose to nominate its own candidate, but more often the party would endorse one of the major party candidates. Voters would be able to cast their votes for the same preferred candidate under either party line. 

At a conference on fusion voting hosted at UW-Madison last year, political scientists and proponents of the system said that in theory it can give minor parties more influence. A third party candidate under the current system is unlikely to win, but a minor party’s policy preferences are harder to ignore if the party has just enough sway to swing an election result in either direction.

The brief describes a hypothetical congressional race in which United cross-endorses the Democratic candidate, given the name Olson. After the hypothetical votes are counted, the Republican candidate has earned 48.2% of the vote on the Republican ticket while Olson has earned 45.9% of the vote on the Democratic ticket and 4.9% on the United line. When added together, this gives Olson the win with 50.8% of the total vote. 

In Wisconsin, where elections are often decided by single digit margins, this could result in meaningful considerations of the desires of the minor party voters — rather than the current system under which third party candidates, such as Ralph Nader in the 2000 presidential election, are seen as spoilers who can pull enough support away from the closest ideological major party candidate to help the other side win. 

“That is fusion voting in action. United Wisconsin will claim, with merit, to have helped her over the finish line,” the brief states. “No doubt Olson will be more attentive to her ‘home’ party, but if she’s a competent politician, she won’t ignore the priorities of the moderates and centrists in the United Wisconsin Party. If she does, United Wisconsin, and its key bloc of voters, might cross-nominate her opponent in the next election.”

Fusion voting is often considered alongside ideas such as ranked choice voting and multi-member congressional districts as a reform proposal that could help prevent the country from sliding into an authoritarian government. 

“Fusion offers the opportunity to create meaningful new political identities,” the legal brief states. “It allows voters of all ideological stripes to vote for their values without having to support a rival or opposing party with a mostly intolerable program.”

In the 19th century, fusion voting was used across the country. The practice was phased out in most of the country but exists currently in New York and Connecticut. The brief, which includes as many examples from history and political science as it does legal citations, states that Wisconsin’s fusion voting ban was enacted by the Republican Party in 1897 as it surged to become the state’s dominant political force in a direct effort to limit the ability of the Democratic Party and other minor parties to win. 

“History shows the ban was enacted as a form of invidious political discrimination,” the brief states.

The lawsuit argues the state has no direct interest in maintaining the power of the Democratic and Republican parties, so the law must be put under “strict scrutiny” for fundamentally restricting the speech of Wisconsinites. 

“When political parties cannot nominate their candidates of choice, they cannot effectively organize, campaign, advance priorities, or exercise political power,” the brief states. “They are relegated for perpetuity to a spoiler role, whereby any electoral effort they make is not only futile in advancing their own candidate and platform, but also seriously risks helping their least-favored major-party candidate win the race and get to govern. While the ban still allows political parties to nominate most candidates, it prohibits them from nominating the only candidates who can win; and while it allows political parties some degree of speech, it constrains their speech in the context for which political parties exist — the ballot.”

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Voters approved more than 60% of school district referendums last week as schools face declining enrollment, rising inflation and stagnant state funding.

Over $1 billion in referendums from 73 school districts were on the ballot Tuesday. Wisconsin voters passed 46 out of 75 school referendums, totaling over $564 million in increased property taxes.

The resulting 61% passage rate is below the 70% average from 2020 to 2025 but slightly above last year’s 56%.

Wisconsin school districts are increasingly patching holes in their budgets with referendums, which ask voters whether school districts can increase property taxes beyond the limits set by state law to generate more revenue. 

Two kinds of referendums were on the ballot this year. Operational referendums ask to raise taxes to fund the cost of running schools, such as educational programs, salaries and transportation services. Only 37 of the 63 operational referendums passed.Capital referendums ask for increased taxes to fund capital construction projects, like building upgrades. Voters passed nine of the 12 capital referendums this year.

Polling shows voters are growing weary of property tax increases. A February Marquette University Law School poll warned that a record high 60% of registered voters said they would rather reduce property taxes than increase spending on public schools.

Two districts — Howard-Suamico and Sauk Prairie — asked voters to approve both capital and operational referendums. Both of Sauk Prairie’s failed while both of Howard-Suamico’s passed. The northeast Wisconsin district will use the capital referendum funds to upgrade six of its eight schools. 

Of the 20 districts where voters rejected a referendum in 2025 and they tried again this year, 16 passed a new referendum.

After rejecting referendums in 2024 and 2025, voters in the Oakfield School District approved a $4 million operational referendum this year by a margin of 41 votes. Sarah Poquette, the district’s administrator, said the referendum will help to offset operational costs from inflation and also expand math and literacy support programs and staff professional development. 

“I want our voters to know that we’re still going to remain fiscally responsible and know that we want to spend our funds continuing to offer the great services to our students,” Poquette said. “We know the decision wasn’t made lightly to vote yes, and we want to make sure that we’re continuing to provide high-quality education to all of our students.”

Poquette said better communications about the school district’s expenses helped change the outcome this year. 

Jason Bertrand, district administrator of the Crandon School District, also cited transparency — “really opening up all of our books” to taxpayers — as the reason the district’s referendum passed by a narrow 19-vote margin after the previous year’s rejection. 

Because Crandon is a rural school district with fewer than 6,000 residents, Bertrand recognized the $3.75 million price tag was a significant ask of taxpayers.

“It was a successful referendum, but I don’t want to do this again. I don’t feel it’s an appropriate thing that 90% of our public school districts have to keep going to a referendum and asking our local taxpayers to pay more and more money, especially when we see a $2.5 billion surplus,” Bertrand said, referring to the state government’s unallocated funds that Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Republican lawmakers can’t agree on how to spend.

“I think that we were taxed enough where we can provide funding for our public schools,” Bertrand said. “So that’s what my goal is in the next couple years, is to be able to work with our federal and our state as well as our tribal partners to figure out a sustainable method to be able to fund our public schools.”

Voters in the Denmark School District approved a $925,000 package they’ve passed four times since 2017.

“Being able to maintain the same amount of $925,000 a year while still balancing our budgets, even with the funding from the state that hasn’t met inflation, has really proven to our community that we are fiscally responsible,” Superintendent Luke Goral said. “We also, with that, do our very best to give staff the raises and things that we can but we don’t go above and beyond what our budget allows.” 

Voters in the Appleton Area School District approved the district’s $60 million operational referendum by a sweeping 31-point margin. The district said in a statement it plans to use the new funding to add counselors and social workers, among other things.

“With voter approval of a $15 million-per-year increase in funding over the next four years, the AASD will be able to maintain current programs, services, and staffing levels while continuing to address our ongoing budget challenges,” the statement said. “We recognize that this represents an investment from our community, and we are committed to using these resources responsibly, transparently, and in ways that directly benefit students.”

In 2024, Wisconsin voters saw a record number of referendums: 241. The majority of those happened in fall election cycles — the August primary and November general — so Wisconsin voters could see many more asks from school districts later this year.

The operational referendums schools passed generally cover three to four years, Jeff Mandell, president and general counsel at Law Forward, said. It’s not “a long-term solution” as school districts will have to introduce another referendum when the current one expires if the funding stress remains. 

Law Forward is representing several school districts, unions and individuals in lawsuits against the state Legislature and the Joint Finance Committee over public education funding. The Wisconsin Assembly is expected to respond to the lawsuit by Monday, April 13.

“By failing to adequately fund our public schools, the State Legislature is offloading its constitutional responsibilities onto the shoulders of local property taxpayers, many of whom are already struggling to make ends meet,” Mandell wrote in a public statement.

Despite growing opposition to property tax hikes, Wisconsin voters show increased support for school referendums 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 Gov. Tony Evers has called lawmakers to the Capitol on Tuesday for a special session to ban partisan gerrymandering. 

It remains to be seen whether Republicans, who control the Legislature, will shrug off Evers’ request as they have in past special sessions on issues like abortion rights and gun safety. It’s possible, given the way political winds of the 2026 midterm elections appear to favor Democrats, Republican lawmakers could come to the table, though not likely.

Last week liberal Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor defeated conservative Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar by 20 points for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The race, while technically nonpartisan, saw public support split along party lines. 

Evers, who is not running for reelection, has proposed a constitutional amendment, which requires two consecutive approvals by the Legislature in separate sessions and ratification by voters. The language of the amendment is just two sentences: “Districts shall not provide a disproportionate advantage or disadvantage to any political party. Partisan gerrymandering is prohibited.” 

Following a bill signing last week, Evers said his office was continuing discussions with Republican and Democratic leaders about his proposal. 

“We’re still working with legislative leaders and will continue doing that until that moment when they come back,” Evers said. 

State lawmakers hold the power to draw legislative and congressional districts in Wisconsin, typically once a decade after the federal government conducts the U.S. Census. Democrats, who last controlled the Assembly, Senate and governor’s office during the 2009-10 legislative session, did not pass any redistricting changes ahead of the 2010 U.S. Census and lost power to enact policy after Republicans took control of the executive and legislative branches that election year. 

“The Democratic trifecta was faced with a choice: secure fair maps for prosperity, or wait and hold out for a possible retaining power for another decade,” Evers said when he signed the special session executive order in March. “And we know how that story worked.”

In 2011, Republican lawmakers crafted maps that kept the GOP in power for more than a decade, even after Democrats won statewide offices in 2018. The Republican-drawn maps remained in place until the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck them down in late 2023. Cases challenging the state’s congressional maps are still making their way through the courts, but decisions are unlikely ahead of the midterm elections. 

Evers signed new legislative maps into law in 2024, and Democrats flipped 14 legislative seats under the new maps in an otherwise Republican-friendly election year. Those gains set up real competition for control of the Legislature this fall. 

The challenging political environment for Republicans in 2026 could create an avenue for some kind of reform if GOP lawmakers are interested, redistricting experts said in interviews with Wisconsin Watch. 

Legislative Republicans will have to consider what kind of consequences might come if Democrats take some form of power during the 2026 elections, said Jonathan Cervas, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University who specializes in redistricting and served as one of the consultants to the Wisconsin Supreme Court in the case challenging the state’s legislative maps. Republicans in that case compromised with Evers on the best path forward rather than letting the consultants draw maps, Cervas said. 

“I really liked that they decided to compromise. I thought that was maybe the best case scenario outcome, though it may not have felt like the best case scenario for any of the other parties,” Cervas said. “I’m not sure that that’s what the Democrats wanted. I’m not sure it’s what the Republicans wanted. But I think from the voter standpoint, that’s a really good outcome.” 

Cervas and Kareem Crayton, vice president of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Washington, D.C., office, both said there are similarities between the political environment in Wisconsin today and in the Virginia legislature around 2020 that led to redistricting reform ahead of the state’s 2021 map-drawing process. 

Virginia lawmakers initiated a constitutional amendment to create a bipartisan redistricting commission in 2019 when Republicans still held power in the state legislature. 

Democrats won a majority in Virginia elections that year, and the state party eventually objected to the constitutional amendment. Virginia voters in 2020 approved the bipartisan redistricting commission that shifted full control of map-drawing power away from state lawmakers. In 2021 the group failed to agree on legislative or congressional maps, and the decision fell to the Virginia Supreme Court. 

Now in 2026, Virginia voters will decide in a special election on April 21 whether to temporarily undo the 2020 changes and approve mid-decade Democratic-drawn congressional maps that could give the party four more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. It’s part of the redistricting wave initiated after President Donald Trump called on Texas and other Republican states to enact mid-decade redistricting ahead of the midterms to help Republicans hold on to the U.S. House.

“You just see this unraveling of the reforms that were once seen as promising, and largely because it’s such an unbalanced playing field,” Cervas said. 

What key players are saying

Longtime Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, who is not seeking reelection, was critical of Evers’ proposal in mid-March, but told reporters he would be open to working with the governor on something that is nonpartisan.

“If we could negotiate and try to find something that is truly nonpartisan, you never know,” Vos said. 

Vos added that drawing district lines “should be about demographics. It should be how many people, what are the municipal lines and all those kinds of things. It shouldn’t be about how people vote.” 

That’s not how the process worked when Republicans drew the lines in 2011. Instead the maps were drawn in secretive conditions with computer programs that allowed the districts to be calibrated to protect the Republican majority even in a Democratic wave election. When Evers and the Legislature couldn’t agree on maps after the 2020 Census, the then-conservative state Supreme Court ruled the new maps should adhere to a “least change” principle that had no basis in law or the constitution.

A spokesperson for Vos did not respond to additional questions from Wisconsin Watch last week about where Assembly Republicans stand ahead of the special session. Nor did a spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, who in March announced he is also not seeking reelection later this year. 

Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who is running for governor, said at a press conference in Madison last week that he would also want to see a nonpartisan proposal from Evers.

“He should produce a nonpartisan bill,” Tiffany said. “He should produce nonpartisan ideas because what we see is that his ideas are consistently partisan.” 

While Republicans hold power over the Legislature’s moves this week, Evers also faces potential objections about a partisan gerrymandering ban from some members of his own party. 

Neither Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer, D-Racine, nor Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein, D-Middleton, expressed clear support for Evers’ plan following the governor’s executive order in March. 

Both noted the challenges gerrymandered maps favoring Republicans pose for Democrats participating in the legislative process, but said they supported a future redistricting process that allowed voters to be heard.

The top Democratic candidates running for governor told Wisconsin Watch they support some form of nonpartisan redistricting, even in the wake of Taylor’s double-digit victory margin in the state Supreme Court race.

“Wisconsinites have been subjected to one of the worst gerrymanders in the nation for too long,” Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley said in a statement. “Letting the people’s voices be heard is the very foundation of democracy. We owe it to every Wisconsin voter, Republican or Democrat, to fix this system once and for all.”

Joel Brennan, the former Department of Administration secretary, said the gerrymandered Republican maps “deeply harmed the state.” Fair maps now have voters “choosing their own representatives, not the other way around,” Brennan said.

Madison state Rep. Francesca Hong said she supports a nonpartisan commission to create fair maps without “elected officials meddling in that process.” Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez said Wisconsin needs to keep map drawing “outside of political hands” to stop the power swing that happens when Democrats or Republicans come into power.  

Madison Sen. Kelda Roys, who stood with Evers when he signed the special session executive order in March, said she supports fair maps and a constitutional amendment to ban gerrymandering. 

“The party that earns the most votes should get the most seats,” she said in a statement. 

Missy Hughes, the former Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. CEO, and former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes pointed to mid-decade redistricting efforts led by Trump in Republican states ahead of the midterms. 

Hughes said nonpartisan redistricting methods are necessary to protect Wisconsin voters.

“Wisconsinites deserve it, and as Governor I will use every lever at my disposal to ensure that our vote is protected from Donald Trump, and our maps are fairly drawn,” she said in a statement.

Barnes said fair maps are important, but he also doesn’t want Wisconsin to “fight with one arm tied behind our backs” if there continues to be future partisan redistricting pushes from the federal government. 

“There should be fair, nonpartisan redistricting all across the country,” Barnes said. “If that is not the case across the country and Wisconsin finds ourselves in a position where we ultimately have to save democracy, we need to look at all available options.”

As Democrats surge, will Republicans take Tony Evers up on a special session to ban partisan gerrymandering? 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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Madison poll workers on Election Day counted 23 absentee ballots that arrived at four polling places after 8 p.m. Tuesday, despite a state law requiring that absentee ballots be “delivered to the polling place no later than 8 p.m.” in order to be tallied.  

The law provides no clear exception to that deadline and says ballots not delivered on time “may not be counted.” But court rulings have given boards of canvassers broad discretion in these cases, allowing them to count ballots as long as there’s “substantial compliance” with election laws and no evidence of “connivance, fraud, or undue influence.”

A past Wisconsin Supreme Court case held that election statutes don’t need to be fully complied with, so long as election officials preserve the will of the voter.

City election officials instructed poll workers to count and mark the affected ballots — which all arrived by the end of the night on Monday, the day before Election Day — in case the city, county or state decides to exclude them. 

The Madison canvassing board on Friday unanimously voted to count the 23 ballots. Assistant City Attorney Amber McReynolds said the error was made by the city clerk’s staff, not voters, and that past precedent supports counting the ballots. The county canvass begins Monday.

It is unclear why the ballots — which had been in the city’s possession for several hours before the deadline — were so delayed in arriving at the polling places. 

The late delivery marks another potentially significant error in how the city handles its ballots after it faced extensive public scrutiny and a state investigation for disenfranchising 193 voters whose ballots were misplaced in the November 2024 election.

It’s the first high-turnout election run by City Clerk Lydia McComas, hired to replace the clerk who oversaw the 2024 ballot snafu. McComas said her office had informed the Wisconsin Elections Commission of the situation.

Ballots left the city late and got to polls after deadline

Those ballots were in the hands of a ballot courier, who left a city election facility around 6:30 p.m. to deliver ballots to the polls. The courier arrived at those final four polling locations after 8 p.m., reaching the final one at about 8:30 p.m, delivering a combined 23 ballots to all of them.

“Due to a longer-than-usual delivery time, the very last few ballots arrived at four polling places shortly after polls closed,” McComas said.

When similar incidents happened in the past, the county board of canvassers didn’t count those votes in the final canvass based on legal advice, Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell said. He said he’s waiting for more details before deciding how to proceed with these ballots at Monday’s county canvass meeting.

In those past incidents, the county board decided that not counting the ballots in the final county tally “was an obvious choice based on the way the statute’s written,” McDonell said. “The statute isn’t vague.”

Given the ballots’ timely arrival, McDonell said, “they should have gotten out to the polls and should have been counted on time.”

Other municipalities have counted ballots discovered late

Other election officials have at times decided to count ballots discovered after the 8 p.m. deadline, but the rules for municipalities are different depending on their procedures for counting absentee ballots.

In November 2020, Milwaukee workers discovered nearly 400 uncounted ballots during a recount. A campaign representative for President Donald Trump objected to those ballots being included, but the municipal canvassing board unanimously decided that they should count.

At the February 2022 election, Wauwatosa election officials discovered 58 unopened ballots. After consulting the Wisconsin Elections Commission and the city attorney for advice, the city clerk convened the Wauwatosa Board of Canvassers, which included the missing ballots in the totals.

But the rules that allowed Milwaukee and Wauwatosa to count those ballots may not apply to Madison. In both of those cities, absentee ballots are counted in a central location. In Madison, absentee ballots are counted at the polling locations where the registered voter would have voted in person. 

In cities like Madison, election workers must deliver absentee ballots to polling places by 8 p.m. For central count municipalities, by comparison, state law only says election officials there shall count ballots received by the clerk by 8 p.m., without clarifying that they must be in a certain place by that point.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission has said the 193 ballots Madison missed in 2024 could have been counted had the city made the appropriate notifications to state authorities. But those ballots were likely already at polling places on Election Day — unlike the 23 ballots here, which arrived after the deadline.

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 Madison count some ballots delivered after an 8 p.m. deadline? 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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Gov. Tony Evers announced April 3 that he’s reviving the state’s commutation process, allowing Wisconsin prisoners to apply to have their sentences shortened for the first time in 25 years.

Immediately, the news began echoing through the state’s prisons. 

Some people caught it on the 4 o’clock TV news. Some got texts from excited family members and friends. 

With the news came questions. Who exactly will be eligible? How will the process work? How will people behind bars get the records they’ll need to apply, especially those who don’t have outside help?

Without access to the open internet, it’s notoriously hard to get reliable information in prison and even more so on a still-developing issue. 

Incarcerated people began calling and texting the people they trust on the outside, looking for answers. Several wrote to Wisconsin Watch reporters, sharing questions and reporting misinformation they’d heard.

Here at Wisconsin Watch, we’ll be following this developing issue in the coming weeks and months. 

As a starting point, we asked advocates for incarcerated people what potential candidates for commutations most need to know right now. They told us they’re still waiting for details, but they offered tips on how people can start preparing. 

Here are our sources:

• Diego Rodriguez, coalition coordinator for Justice Forward Wisconsin.
• Beverly Walker, executive director of the Integrity Center and administrator of the commutations committee at WISDOM, a statewide network of faith-based organizations.
• Harm Venhuizen, government and public affairs specialist at the Wisconsin State Public Defenders Office.

How big a deal is this news?

The last Wisconsin governor to commute sentences was Tommy Thompson, who issued seven commutations during his 14 years in office. Gov. Evers has granted more than 2,000 pardons since taking office in 2019. Pardons restore some rights but do not shorten a person’s sentence. Currently, they are available only to Wisconsinities who have completed their sentence, including any required supervision. 

Walker, who leads WISDOM’s commutations committee and worked with the governor’s office for three years on reviving the commutations process, called last week’s announcement “life-changing.”

“People were excessively sentenced and they just deserve an opportunity to have freedom, if they’ve done the work, to have a chance to come home,” Walker said.

Rodriguez agrees. “This is huge news,” he said. “This is the time for people to celebrate because we can safely lessen our prison population in a way that can help promote community, promote family bonds.” 

Wisconsin’s prisons are over capacity. As of April 3, 23,554 people were behind bars, 32% more than the facilities were designed to hold. As Wisconsin Watch has reported, that crowding has combined with a shortage of correctional officers to create dangerous conditions. 

Meanwhile, politicians on both sides of the aisle want to close the 128-year-old Green Bay Correctional Institution. If it closes, officials will need somewhere to send its more than 1,100 prisoners. 

Rodriguez said the members of Justice Forward Wisconsin, who belong to various Wisconsin groups that advocate for current and formerly incarcerated people, are working to gather as much information as they can for incarcerated people and their loved ones. They’re looking for answers to the potential challenges that could keep people from applying, like if they can’t afford to send mail or make photocopies.

But overall, he said, “there’s a general level of excitement and hope.”

Venhuizen of the Wisconsin State Public Defenders said in an email that “establishing this board provides hope that people who have done all the hard work of rehabilitation won’t have to languish but can instead return to their families and communities.” The process offers a much-needed “second look” at convictions, he said, but it doesn’t address the reasons so many Wisconsinites are in prison. 

“Wisconsin’s epidemic of over-incarceration is complex and deeply entrenched,” he said. “On the individual level, it’s going to be life-changing for the people who will receive commutations. At the system level, this is a step in the right direction, but it’s not a cure-all.”

How can incarcerated individuals and their loved ones learn more?

• Read Gov. Evers’ press release and the executive orders on commutations and on commutations for people sentenced to life without parole as juveniles. 
• Monitor the governor’s office’s commutations page and read its frequently asked questions. Check back for announcements about who will be on the commutations board. “The governor’s office is the best source of information on this topic right now,” Venhuizen said.
• Attend Justice Forward Wisconsin’s commutations webinar 9:30-11 a.m. on Saturday, April 11. Click here to register.
• Join WISDOM Wisconsin’s “Advocating for Commutations” Facebook group or check the page for announcements about future information sessions.

What steps can incarcerated individuals take now if they’re interested in applying for a commutation?

“Start preparing now if you meet the initial eligibility criteria, as we expect this board to move quickly ahead of the gubernatorial election,” Venhuizen said. 

He recommends the following:

• Review the application requirements listed on the governor’s commutations website and begin compiling the required documents.
• Start making plans with the people you’d want to write letters of support for you. 
• Write a “clear and compelling story of your growth and rehabilitation.” 
• Draft a post-release plan that explains where you would live and work and what programs you would participate in.

For those who are incarcerated and want help with the process, Rodriguez recommends contacting ProSay, an organization advocating for people on parole in Wisconsin, by messaging hello@weareprosay.org through the GTL app.

“I would say the biggest advice is to reach out to a group that is doing this work,” Rodriguez said. “This work gets so much easier when you’re involved in a community of other people that are doing it … And then keep asking questions until you get the answers that you need.”

Commutations are back. Here’s what incarcerated people and their loved ones should know. 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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Hey, Wisconsin. There’s an election on Tuesday.

If that comes as news, it could be because the top race is a relatively low-key Wisconsin Supreme Court contest between Appeals Court judges Maria Lazar, backed by Republicans, and Chris Taylor, backed by Democrats. They are running for an officially nonpartisan open seat on the court after conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley chose not to run for another term. 

While the state Supreme Court race will appear at the top of the ballot, there are other local municipal and judicial elections and school referendum questions for voters to decide.

As of Monday, the Wisconsin Elections Commission reported 317,000 people voted early in-person or by mail. In 2025, more than 693,000 people voted early ahead of the spring election.  

The polls will be 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 can register at the polls on Election Day. 

Wisconsin Supreme Court 

The 2026 Wisconsin Supreme Court election is a quieter race with fewer fireworks and significantly less overall spending than the two recent contests in 2023 and 2025, which the liberal candidate won by 10 points. 

The sleepier race is likely due to there being no majority on the line in 2026. A Lazar victory would maintain 4-3 liberal control. A Taylor win would grow the liberal majority to five out of the seven seats on the court and guarantee liberal control through at least 2030. 

Lazar and Taylor represent contrasting judicial philosophies on political issues that come before the court, including reproductive health care, redistricting, criminal justice and the power balance between government and business. 

The candidates have taken starkly different paths to the bench. Lazar served as an assistant attorney general under former Republican Attorney General JB Van Hollen after starting her career in private practice. She was elected to the Waukesha County Circuit Court in 2015 and 2021 and then to the Court of Appeals in 2022. 

Taylor also began her career in private practice but then worked as the policy and political director for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin. She won a special election in 2011 as a Democrat to represent a Madison-focused district in the Assembly. Gov. Tony Evers appointed Taylor to the Dane County Circuit Court in 2020, and she ran unopposed in 2023 for her seat on the Madison-based 4th District Court of Appeals. 

Taylor has maintained a significant fundraising and spending advantage over Lazar throughout the campaign. The Marquette University Law School Poll in the weeks leading up to Election Day found a large percentage of undecided voters. 

In the last poll conducted before the April 7 election, 30% of likely voters said they supported Taylor, 22% favored Lazar and 46% said they were undecided.

School district referendums

Seventy-two Wisconsin school districts are asking voters in their communities to approve tax increases totaling $1 billion to borrow money for construction projects or to pay for operations, such as educational programs, technology or transportation services. 

The districts are turning to voters at a challenging time for referendum approvals. Referendum approval rates have declined since 2018, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum. 

Sixty-two of the school districts are seeking operating referendums. The remaining districts are asking for capital referendums, or approval of construction projects. Two districts, Howard-Suamico and Sauk Prairie, are asking for both operating and construction referendums. 

Appeals and circuit court races

There are appeals court and circuit court races on the ballot in multiple counties across the state, but most of these are uncontested elections. Candidates elected to county circuit courts and the Court of Appeals are elected to six-year terms.

The appeals court races in the Milwaukee-based 1st District, the Waukesha-based 2nd District and Madison-based 4th District are uncontested. The unopposed candidates include incumbent Judge Joe Donald in the 1st District, conservative attorney Anthony LoCoco in the 2nd District and incumbent Judge Rachel Graham in the 4th District. 

Twenty-six circuit court district seats are on ballots across the state, but only six — Dane, Marathon, Washburn, Washington, Wood, and a shared seat in Florence and Forest counties — feature contested races. 

Voters in Marathon and Florence and Forest counties will select new circuit court judges after the incumbents in those seats did not seek reelection. Evers-appointed judicial incumbents are running against challengers in circuit court branch races in Dane, Washburn, Washington and Wood counties. 

Other local elections 

Voters on Tuesday can also make decisions on who represents them on school boards, as county supervisors and as city mayors and alderpersons. 

What is on the ballot in these local races will differ from community to community. To find out more about specific local races on your ballot, visit myvote.wi.gov.

Wisconsin’s spring election is today. See what’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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Months before becoming one of the nearly 200 Madison voters in 2024 whose absentee ballots were never counted, Nathan Haimowitz did what he thought he was supposed to do.

As a journalist living in Spain and out of the habit of voting, the 26-year-old former poll worker said he wanted the 2024 presidential election to “be the thing that would spur me to vote more consistently.” To make sure everything was in order, he emailed Madison officials to confirm they had received his absentee ballot application. They told him they had, so he filled out his ballot, sent it in and assumed his vote would be counted.

It wasn’t. 

The mistake that disenfranchised Haimowitz and nearly 200 other voters set off a chain of consequences: The longtime city clerk resigned, state and local officials launched investigations, a lawsuit was filed, and the city began overhauling its voting procedures.

Haimowitz hasn’t cast a ballot since.

“It was definitely a deterrence,” he said. “I didn’t know why my vote hadn’t been counted.”

Early signs suggest the error is already reshaping how many of the disenfranchised voters engage with elections — pushing some away from absentee voting and, in some cases, out of the electorate altogether. Interviews with affected voters also reveal a broader disconnect: Many say they are dissatisfied both with how the city handled the mistake and with the high-profile lawsuit filed in its wake to seek damages for the disenfranchised voters. The city, they say, has not been appropriately responsive, and the lawsuit does not reflect their values. 

Until now, the public conversation has largely reflected the perspectives of the eight voters who joined the lawsuit as named plaintiffs. But others Votebeat spoke with described a different perspective — one that questions whether financial compensation is the right remedy at all.

Mark Ediger, a recently retired chemistry professor at UW-Madison, for example, said he found the lawsuit “pretty bewildering,” adding that as a Madison taxpayer, it would be people like him footing the bill. 

The 193 voters range from dozens of students who are only in Madison for a few years to some of their professors and other longtime city residents. Their responses to the error are just as varied. 

Some, like Haimowitz, stopped voting entirely. Others, like Ediger, say the incident was a one-off mistake that hasn’t impacted their voting behavior. Notably, Ediger is the only voter among the disenfranchised group who has voted absentee in both of the two elections following the error, according to election data obtained by Votebeat.

“The incident has not diminished my trust in elections,” Ediger told Votebeat, adding that he’s satisfied the city has appropriately addressed its cause. “I don’t see how this should change my voting behavior moving forward.”

But other voters said their experience will change how they vote in future elections. “I’m definitely going to prioritize in-person voting,” Joanne Fairbotham, one of the disenfranchised voters, told Votebeat.

“There’s growing evidence that when someone tries to vote and they are prevented from doing so for one reason or another, it makes them less likely to vote in the future, and it can change their behavior,” said Kevin Morris, a senior research fellow and voting policy scholar with the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program. “You can lose a lot of trust very easily, and it can be very difficult to build that trust.”

All of the disenfranchised voters cast absentee ballots in the 2024 presidential election. But, among the 22 who cast ballots in the February 2025 primary for state superintendent of public instruction and city council, nearly all did so in person. Two months later, two-thirds of the 132 who voted in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race did so at the polls, a share similar to how the same group voted in previous April elections. 

Disenfranchised voters question city follow-up 

Shortly after learning that her ballot hadn’t been counted, Fairbotham — a 35-year-old medical coder who lives in Madison — wrote to City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl, saying the error was “beyond devastating as an American who prides herself in voting in every election.”

“This is how people lose faith in their government that their rights will be protected,” she said in the letter, calling on Witzel-Behl to resign. 

Fairbotham said she never received a response from Witzel-Behl, who has since resigned — or anyone else employed by the city. 

“Not hearing a peep,” she said, is the most frustrating part. Fairbotham’s vote in the 2024 presidential election was the first time she cast an absentee ballot since the peak of the pandemic in 2020. She has only cast in-person votes since and said the incident still makes her angry.

Madison City Attorney Mike Haas disputed the characterization that the city didn’t communicate the seriousness of the error, pointing to a city and state investigation and a public apology from the mayor.

Still, some voters said the city’s outreach fell short after such a significant error. Haimowitz, for example, didn’t hear from the city when most of the voters did — a separate oversight by city officials meant overseas voters did not receive the same notice as those living locally. Until speaking with Votebeat, Haimowitz said, he didn’t know whether the mistake that kept his ballot from being counted was his or the city’s, nor what steps officials had taken to prevent it from happening again.

Election administration experts say direct, proactive communication can be critical in rebuilding trust. After a mistake like the one in Madison, jurisdictions should reach out to affected voters, review what went wrong and clearly explain how it will be prevented in the future, said Jennifer Morrell, CEO of The Elections Group and a former Colorado election administrator.

The city has completed the first two steps, Morrell said, but it did not fully follow through on the third.

After sending an initial notice telling voters they could reach out with questions, the city held no further public hearings, said Haas, a longtime election lawyer and former administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Few of the disenfranchised voters followed up, he added.

Some disenfranchised voters find lawsuit bewildering

The divide among disenfranchised voters extends to the lawsuit filed in the aftermath of the error.

In March 2025, the liberal group Law Forward filed a claim seeking $34 million from the city and Dane County over the error, later turning it into a lawsuit. In February, a circuit court judge ruled that the city could be held liable for monetary damages.

A small group of affected voters has joined the case, arguing it’s one of the only ways to hold the city accountable for failing to count their ballots.

But others see it differently. “In an era where the reliability of elections is being challenged by some groups in completely spurious ways, it seems to me that this lawsuit just adds to that noise,” Ediger said.

Lawsuits seeking monetary damages for disenfranchisement are now rare, but were more common in the late 1800s and 1900s, when Black voters were intentionally and repeatedly disenfranchised by election workers. Then, the fines forced the government to think twice, said Ediger. But there’s no similar pattern of errors or intentionality here in Madison, he added, which makes him doubt the lawsuit’s purpose. 

Haimowitz said he also opposed the lawsuit, despite how much it has shaken his confidence.

“I’m not sure that the city should pay such a heavy price for this,” Haimowitz said, adding that at a time when some Republicans are peddling “Stop the Steal” narratives and casting doubt on election integrity, especially in battleground states like Wisconsin, the Law Forward letter unnerved him.

“That kind of money could be debilitating to a city elections board that is already under immense scrutiny and pressure to get it all right,” he said.

Law Forward staff attorney Scott Thompson pushed back on comparisons between the case and post-2020 lawsuits filed by Republicans, including one that sought to throw out over 200,000 absentee ballots in Wisconsin.

“That cavalier attitude towards votes that we saw in 2020 is simply unacceptable, and not compatible with democracy,” he said. “And so what do we do with that? Well, I can tell you what we will not do: We will not stand idly by if hundreds of people in a community lose the right to vote because their ballot simply wasn’t counted.”

He said that lawsuits often make people uneasy, but that their perspective may change when a fundamental right is taken away. He declined to directly comment on some of the disenfranchised voters’ issues with the case.

For some disenfranchised voters, financial damages are part of accountability. Precious Ayodabo, a named plaintiff, wrote in a Cap Times column that her disenfranchised absentee vote “is worth enough” to warrant compensation.

“It’s worth enough that I waited for hours in line to cast it. It’s worth enough that politicians spend millions of dollars to receive it. It’s worth enough that people have put their lives on the line and died to protect it,” she wrote.

Thompson declined to make Ayodabo and the other plaintiffs available for interviews. Of the 193 voters, eight are plaintiffs in the case, he said.

Others who support the lawsuit say it’s less about personal payment and more about forcing systemic change. Fairbotham said she’s grateful the case is pushing the city to take the error seriously, particularly after the Wisconsin Elections Commission found the city violated state law.

Thompson said the lawsuit isn’t about making sure the government knows “every single jot and tittle” of absentee voting procedure, but to ensure election officials count every vote, which he defined as “the absolute most basic obligation.”

Still, some election experts warn the case could have unintended consequences. Morrell said the lawsuit could become one of many elements that dissuade election officials from staying in administrative roles.

“If we’re setting an unrealistic expectation that any mistake made by an election administrator opens you up to a lawsuit, that feels like an impossible situation to be in,” she said. “Election administrators take this so seriously and do everything they can to ensure mistakes don’t happen,” she added, “but they do.”

For Haimowitz — a voter who has helped others register to vote and served as a poll worker — the question isn’t just whether the city fixes the problem. It’s whether he can move past having his ballot go uncounted.

“It was something that made me think it’s clearly not that easy to vote,” he said.

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

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

Disenfranchised Madison voters sound off on city, lawsuit 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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A Wisconsin court has dismissed Democrats’ efforts to get the state to redraw its congressional maps.

The three-judge circuit court panel said it did not have jurisdiction to decide whether the state’s congressional districts have been gerrymandered along partisan lines, leaving the matter to the state’s Supreme Court.

“This Panel is not endorsing the current congressional map. Rather, we, as circuit court judges, do not have the authority to read into a Wisconsin Supreme Court case an analysis that it does not contain,” the judges wrote.

Wisconsin’s current district lines trace back to the 2011 congressional maps, which attorneys for the Democrats said were gerrymandered by the Republican-controlled Legislature. Gov. Tony Evers vetoed Republican-drawn 2021 maps, which then prompted the state Supreme Court to order new maps drawn that made the “least change” to the existing district lines from 2011.

This lawsuit was part of a wave of redistricting suits filed by Democratic-aligned groups across the country, but it’s unlikely to yield new maps before the midterm elections.

Republicans represent six of Wisconsin’s eight congressional districts, though statewide partisan elections are often competitive and only won by a slim margin. Sens. Ron Johnson and Tammy Baldwin — a Republican and a Democrat, respectively — won their most recent elections by a percentage point or less. Evers won reelection by more than 3 percentage points in 2022.

Attorneys in the redistricting case may appeal the panel judgment to the state Supreme Court. Another redistricting lawsuit, which argues that Wisconsin’s congressional maps favor incumbents, is pending before its own three-judge circuit court panel.

This story was produced and originally published by Wisconsin Watch and NOTUS, a publication from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute.

Wisconsin court dismisses Democrats’ attempt to redraw congressional map 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 Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program, the state’s primary way of preserving green space and wetlands from development, is set to expire June 30 — but only after the Republican-controlled Legislature failed to form a consensus after months of negotiations and potential amendments to the initial bill. 

Internal drafting documents obtained by Wisconsin Watch show that the Republican reauthorization bill — authored by Rep. Tony Kurtz, R-Wonewoc, and Sen. Patrick Testin, R-Stevens Point — went through at least 10 drafts between fall 2024 and when the bill was released in June 2025.

Despite the contentious negotiations over the program’s future, environmental advocates say there is still widespread popularity for Knowles-Nelson in Wisconsin. 

“There is no controversy about the program outside of Capitol politics,” said Charles Carlin, director of strategic initiatives at Gathering Waters, Wisconsin’s Alliance for Land Trusts. “That kind of stunning gap between what the conversation about the program is inside the Capitol and what the conversation about the program is across the rest of the state is really startling.”

Kurtz and Testin did not respond to a request for comment. 

A program built on compromise, now caught in a political fight

Knowles-Nelson was signed into law in 1989 by Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson and has survived both Republican and Democratic administrations, consistently drawing support from both parties. It funds everything from land acquisition by the DNR to grants for nonprofit conservation organizations and local governments.

“Knowles-Nelson is how we conserve land to protect environmentally sensitive areas. It’s how we provide access for hunters and anglers and silent sports recreationists,” Carlin said.

In the latest budget cycle, the bipartisan support unraveled after the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down a mechanism that had allowed members of the Joint Finance Committee to anonymously block individual DNR land purchases. 

Conservation advocates cheered the ruling, but Rep. Joel Kitchens, R-Sturgeon Bay, who has tried to push for a compromise to save the program, warned advocates “they should be careful what they wish for.”

“I thought there was a good chance that that would be the end of the program,” Kitchens said. “So, you know, here we are.”

Why did the bill fall apart?

The Kurtz-Testin bill introduced in June 2024 would have funded the program at $28.25 million per year through 2030.

After failing to take action on Knowles-Nelson through the state budget process, Republicans in the Assembly passed an amended version of that bill funding the program until 2028 hoping to maintain existing land, not fund new projects. 

Cody Kamrowski, executive director of the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation, said that his organization supported the initial version of the bill, even though it wasn’t an ideal starting place.

“And then some additional amendments were made. Some more amendments were made, and then it morphed into something that wasn’t Knowles-Nelson,” Kamrowski said. “I mean, Knowles-Nelson stewardship is a land acquisition program, and with all those amendments that were put in, it wasn’t a land acquisition program.” 

The Kurtz-Testin bill would have required the full Legislature to specifically authorize any DNR land purchase with a grant award of $1 million or more — effectively meaning every significant land deal would need to pass as its own bill before any money could move.

Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin, D-Whitefish Bay, the author of a competing reauthorization bill, said the timeline alone makes that unworkable. “There is no real estate acquisition in history that could last over two years,” she said. “They’re very time-sensitive.”

Kamrowski emphasized that land acquisition opportunities don’t wait for political windows to reopen. “A lot of times it’s a once-in-a-generation or once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to purchase a key piece of property,” he said.

The Republican bill would also have funded the program at roughly $28 million per year — less than the $33 million it had been receiving since 2021, and far below the $72 million Habush Sinykin proposed or the $100 million in Gov. Tony Evers’ version of the budget. 

Funding for Knowles-Nelson has fallen significantly since its peak in 2011. Program spending in 2018 was about a quarter of what it was in 2007, according to the nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum. 

The Kurtz-Testin bill never came to a vote. In February 2026, Senate Republican leaders pulled the bill from the floor schedule without explanation. When Habush Sinykin introduced an amendment to simply extend the program for one more year at its existing $33 million funding level, it got struck down along party lines.

“All it would have done was give the program one more year at $33.25 million, the exact same level since the 2021 budget,” Habush Sinykin said. “But it was rejected.”

Before the bill was introduced, internal drafting notes show that when Kurtz’s office took over the bill in February 2025, one of the listed priorities was to “shift focus from north to south, green space in urban areas” — removing a restriction that had prevented the program from funding parcels smaller than 10 acres. 

Kitchens said the bill has been historically controversial in the northern parts of the state because the high proportion of publicly owned lands don’t contribute to the tax base. 

“It’s a program that is viewed very differently in different parts of the state,” he said. “In the Northwoods, where they have less of a tax base, they really don’t like seeing property coming off the tax rolls. There’s always been more of a geographical split than it is really liberal, conservative.”

If the funding expires June 30, the program itself does not disappear from the statute books, but the program will no longer be funded, Carlin said. However, the practical consequences of this mean the planning landscape will be scrambled for land trusts.

The expiration also lands on top of an already strained conservation system. Carlin noted that Wisconsin has accumulated more than $1 billion in deferred maintenance at state properties and faces tens of millions of dollars in habitat management shortfalls. Letting Knowles-Nelson lapse, he said, doesn’t solve those problems.

“I think this is going to have to be a central conversation in the next state budget that can be as simple as appropriating money to the stewardship program in the short term,” Carlin said. “And then there’s a much broader conversation to be had about, how do we again get serious about taking care of our land and water so that our kids and grandkids inherit a better Wisconsin than we do.”

Evers’ office said he remains optimistic that Republicans and Democrats can reach a deal as legislative leadership and the governor’s office negotiate a potential K-12 funding increase from the projected $2.37 billion state surplus. 

“The governor has been clear that he expects the Legislature to stay in session until they’ve finished the people’s work,” spokesperson Britt Cudaback said.

U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the top Republican running for governor in November, said his focus would be “on maintaining the lands we already own for future generations, while being fiscally responsible with the more than $500 million in outstanding debt taxpayers still owe.”

He also said that the stewardship program has helped protect some of our most special places. “Wisconsin’s outdoor traditions are part of who we are,” Tiffany said.

Habush Sinykin, meanwhile, said Democrats are looking to flip enough Senate seats to break the Republican supermajority on the Joint Finance Committee — turning the current 12-4 split to 8-8. 

“That’ll make a big difference to allow us to reauthorize the program,” she said.

Funding for Wisconsin’s largest land conservation program could expire in three months. Here’s how we got here. 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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International migration to Wisconsin has dropped sharply since President Donald Trump’s return to office, mirroring a national slowdown as visa issuances and border crossings decline.

New U.S. Census Bureau data shows Wisconsin gained just over 7,200 residents through international migration between fiscal years 2024 and 2025, down from more than 22,000 over the previous year — a 67% decline. 

Overall, Wisconsin added about 16,000 new residents in that period, increasing the state’s overall population by roughly 0.2%. 

Nearly every Wisconsin county saw net international migration fall by double-digit percentages. Several counties lost more residents to international migration than they gained.

The few Wisconsin counties that saw net increases added only small numbers of new arrivals from outside the U.S. Shawano County, for instance, received 29 international migrants in fiscal year 2025, up from 24 the year before. 

Not all international migration is immigration. The Census Bureau counts movements in and out of the country by citizens and noncitizens as international migration. That includes members of the armed forces and people moving between Puerto Rico and the rest of the U.S.

But a sharp drop in legal and unauthorized immigration is driving the decline. The U.S. State Department issued roughly a quarter million fewer visas in the first eight months of 2025 than during the same period of 2024 and admitted about 60,000 fewer refugees in fiscal year 2025 than the previous year. Meanwhile, Border Patrol encounters with migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border fell to 50-year lows. 

Federal immigration court records show a similar pattern. Only 198 immigrants with Wisconsin addresses made their first appearance in immigration court in February, down from a monthly peak of about 2,400 in March 2024. 

Federal immigration courts, run by the U.S. Department of Justice, handle deportation cases and immigrants’ requests for asylum and other forms of relief. 

More than 43,000 immigrants who entered the court system over the past decade listed addresses in Wisconsin. Three-quarters still await final rulings. New arrivals and removal cases slowed to a trickle after President Trump’s inauguration in January 2025. Many immigrants detained in Wisconsin over the past year first entered the court system before Trump returned to office.

Even so, international migration accounted for nearly half of Wisconsin’s overall population growth between fiscal years 2024 and 2025, and a similar share over the past decade.

Nearly two dozen counties lost population last year, and another seven would have lost population without international migration.

In Milwaukee County, a scenario with no international migration in 2025 would have meant a net loss of more than 2,000 residents. Instead, the county shrunk by just over 100 residents. Natural growth outpaced international migration, but the county lost nearly 5,000 residents to domestic migration.

Even as international migration sharply declines, Republican voters in the state continue to express strong concern about immigration. In aMarquette University Law School poll conducted this month, 77% of Republicans said they were very concerned about illegal immigration and border security, compared with 54% who said the same about inflation and the cost of living — the top issue for Democrats and independents.

Immigration to Wisconsin plunges, yet still fuels nearly half of population growth 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 under two weeks, voters will head to the polls to select a new Wisconsin Supreme Court justice. The winner will likely play a role in how voters cast ballots for the subsequent decade.

That’s because the Wisconsin Supreme Court plays a key role in settling voting disputes, particularly when state government is divided between a Democratic governor and a Republican-controlled Legislature.

In the past few years, the court has issued a series of high-stakes rulings on election administration — banning and then unbanning ballot drop boxes, ordering new legislative maps, limiting who can bring voting-related lawsuits, and allowing the state’s top election official to remain in her role.

While the Wisconsin Supreme Court race is officially nonpartisan, candidates have become increasingly willing to embrace partisan views and often campaign on their records as liberals or conservatives. In this race, Appeals Court judges Maria Lazar and Chris Taylor are squaring off. Taylor is a former Democratic member in the state Assembly, while Lazar is a member of the conservative Federalist Society. 

Although there are exceptions, justices’ votes on election cases often align with their ideological backgrounds.

Unlike the past two Wisconsin Supreme Court races, though, this contest won’t determine ideological control of the court. Liberals already hold a 4-3 majority, and the outcome will either preserve the liberal majority or expand it to 5-2 by replacing retiring conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley. As a result, the race has drawn significantly less attention and spending than the last two contests, which decided the court’s ideological balance.

Even so, the winning candidate in that person’s upcoming 10-year term is likely to weigh in on a range of voting battles currently playing out in lower courts. Those may include cases over whether voters with disabilities can cast electronic ballots, the legality of Wisconsin’s membership in the multistate Electronic Registration Information Center, a demand for the Wisconsin Elections Commission to audit the citizenship of registered voters, and whether voters can spoil a ballot that they’ve already returned and cast a new one.

Critically, the winning justice will also be a member of the court for the 2028 presidential election, when voting disputes often intensify and escalate to court challenges. 

“There’s a lot of importance just because of the length of the term,” said UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden, who noted that the Wisconsin Supreme Court in the past 10 years has weighed in on absentee voting rules, the legality of postponing elections because of the pandemic and President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election. 

Because Wisconsin is a consistent battleground state, Burden said, the court becomes a frequent venue for efforts to change election rules for national races. Some of those potential lawsuits may be hard to predict, he added, because developments in technology and AI in campaigns over the next decade may require new rules or changes to current laws.

Although liberals have a firm hold on the court now, Burden said, they shouldn’t take that for granted. Ten years ago, conservatives had a clear court majority, so much so that liberals didn’t even field a candidate in the 2017 race. Now, liberals have a hold on the court and could extend it with a win. 

With Wisconsin politics frequently switching from one side of the aisle to the other, he said, this election may be pivotal for the balance of power down the road.

Candidates’ pasts reveal stark contrast on elections

The candidates’ records — from their rulings, prior public-facing jobs and campaign positions — reveal sharp divides in how they each approach election law.

For example, as an assistant attorney general for the state under GOP Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, Lazar defended Wisconsin’s voter ID law and Republican-drawn legislative maps, which critics have described as among the most gerrymandered in the country.

Taylor took the opposite stances on both issues. During her time in the Legislature, she called for repealing the voter ID law, which has since been enshrined in the Wisconsin Constitution. She also derided the Republican redistricting effort as a means to do “whatever it takes to amass and protect their power.”

More recently, Lazar was involved in an unusual case in which two state appeals courts issued conflicting opinions on the same election issue: In November 2023, one court found that a conservative group wasn’t entitled to obtain information related to people deemed by judges to be incapable of voting. The next month, Lazar joined the majority in a second court that reached the opposite conclusion — despite a Wisconsin Supreme Court precedent stating that only the high court can overturn appellate decisions.

That case is now before the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Both candidates have also played pivotal roles in more recent election rulings.

In one case involving absentee ballots, Taylor wrote the majority opinion rejecting the Legislature’s argument that an absentee voter’s address must include a street number, name and municipality. Instead, she adopted a more lenient standard for an address, requiring voters to provide enough information for a clerk to reasonably identify where a voter lives.

In a separate case, Lazar joined a panel rejecting a lower court opinion that voters with disabilities should be allowed to have electronic ballots sent to them electronically. 

Cases on the Wisconsin Supreme Court horizon

Only a small fraction of cases heard in circuit and appeals courts ultimately come before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The high court issued just 23 opinions in its 2024-25 term, and it’s hard to predict which cases will be taken up. At present, only one election law case is currently before the court.

That number may remain low following a 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling restricting who can file lawsuits over election rules and policies. Writing for the majority, liberal Justice Jill Karofsky said people must be personally “aggrieved” to bring election lawsuits. 

In dissent, outgoing conservative justice Bradley wrote that the majority’s ruling “guts the People’s right of access to the courts in election law matters.”

Among the issues likely to reach the court in coming years are challenges to the state’s congressional boundaries, which liberals are trying to redraw ahead of the typical 10-year cycle. One such case is currently slated for a jury trial before a three-judge panel in April 2027.

The court could also be asked to decide whether election officials can be sued for failing to count votes, a central issue in the ongoing lawsuit over whether Madison should be forced to pay out millions for disenfranchising nearly 200 voters whose ballots were misplaced in the 2024 presidential election .

Ultimately, the most consequential case the next justice could face may come in 2028, the next presidential election year. In 2020, the Wisconsin Supreme Court narrowly halted Trump’s attempt to throw out enough Democratic votes to change the outcome of the race. The 2024 election wasn’t extensively litigated in Wisconsin courts, but the potential for court challenges remains in future presidential contests.

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’s free national newsletter here.

Wisconsin Supreme Court race pivotal for future election policy is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

A bill that would have offered sentence adjustments for crimes committed when the offender was younger than 18 died in the Wisconsin Senate last week. The measure would have applied to people who received sentences of at least 15 years for offenses that didn’t involve a death and to those sentenced to at least 20 years for crimes that did include a death. It also  would have prohibited a life sentence without parole or extended supervision for youth offenders, and required the consideration of mitigating factors, such as age and maturity, at sentencing. The bill failed to gain traction or a public hearing in the Senate because, according to the lead sponsor, Sen. Jesse James (R-Altoona), there was a lack of clarity about the number of residents in prisons who would be affected. 

At a Feb. 12 event held by the criminal justice reform advocacy group WISDOM near Eau Claire, James told the gathering that information he had originally distributed concerning the number of residents who would be eligible for a sentence adjustment was not accurate, and because of that, he would not call for a public hearing on the bill.

In response to a Wisconsin Examiner request for clarification, a staff person in James’ office said in an email message: “After talking to the Senator to help with more context, I think there was a misinterpretation of what he meant. We received data from DOC (Department of Corrections) that does not necessarily match with data that advocacy groups have been circulating to other members of the Legislature. While we do work with advocacy groups on the bill, we did not provide them their data, so we are not 100% sure where they got it from. The discrepancies between the data our office was giving out versus these advocacy groups caused some confusion about how many individuals this bill would actually help. Given the time frame left in the session with the Assembly being done sooner than the Senate, clearing up the confusion and getting a public hearing in either chamber just did not come to fruition in time.”

Nikki Olson, founder and executive director of the Wisconsin Alliance for Youth Justice (WayJ), represents one of those advocacy groups.

“Sen. James was essentially given a range while WayJ has a specific number,” she said. “Our specific number fits into the range, so I consider his data and ours to be accurate.”

She added, “Sen. James was given two numbers. The number of people who will be impacted. A separate number was given of people that may or may not be impacted. There was data overlap between the two numbers. These two numbers combined means 130ish-300ish people would be impacted. Our number of 253, as of the end of 2024, fits within that range. The range represents a snapshot in time during 2025. Our specific number is a snapshot as of the end of 2024. I would anticipate the change between the two snapshot dates to be minimal and still within the range.”

The Examiner reported in December 2025 on a bill that had been in the works since the 2022-23 session addressing the same focus of youth sentencing. One of the advocacy groups that supported that effort, Kids Forward, estimated the number of residents who could be affected was more than100.

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• Both Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates talk about judicial independence, but their views line up on opposite sides of the conservative/liberal divide.

• Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar emphasizes the need to prevent liberals from controlling five seats on the court.

• Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor calls for a pro-democracy court opposed to gerrymandering and overturning election results.

• Early voting starts Tuesday, March 24. Election Day is Tuesday, April 7.

Editor’s note (March 25, 2026): The debate between Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates Maria Lazar and Chris Taylor was rescheduled for Thursday, April 2, at 7 p.m. The original debate was scheduled for March 25, but was canceled when Taylor announced she was diagnosed with kidney stones. The April 2 debate will still be hosted by WISN 12 and will be held at the station’s studios in Milwaukee.

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Inside a dimly lit banquet hall at an Irish pub in Germantown and at a century-old supper club along Wautoma’s Silver Lake, both 2026 Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates championed a fair and impartial judiciary.  

“We need to put someone on this bench who is not going to cater to the public whims, who is not going to put their hand up in the air and say, ‘What trend in society is important today?’” one candidate told the Germantown crowd. 

“We must have the judiciary be fiercely independent,” the other candidate said in Wautoma. “We cannot be rubber stamps for any party, any branch of government and certainly not the federal government.”

A voter might have trouble deciphering which candidate made which statement, but in the April 7 election to fill an open seat on the state’s high court, the choice couldn’t be more stark.

While both Appeals Court judges Maria Lazar (the candidate in Germantown) and Chris Taylor (the candidate in Wautoma) advocate for impartiality, their judicial philosophies and public support represent opposing political views on issues such as reproductive health care, criminal justice policy and the balance of power between government and business. Taylor is a former Democratic lawmaker. Lazar is a member of and has spoken three times before the conservative Federalist Society. Taylor is endorsed by the Democratic Party of Wisconsin and Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin. Lazar is endorsed by former Republican Gov. Scott Walker and the state’s six Republican members of Congress. 

The election marks a quiet departure from the two most recent high court elections when it comes to national attention, spending and vicious political attack ads. As of mid-March, outside spending by political groups on the 2026 election reached just over $638,000, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, which tracks money in state elections — far below the nearly $25 million at this time last year.

“It’s a positive in that it’s a much more low-key, low-energy, civil election,” said Howard Schweber, a professor emeritus of political science and legal studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “You can argue that it has gone too far. There has to be something in between the endless barrages of television advertisements and elections that happen without anybody knowing about them, and as a state we do seem to, with respect to judicial elections, have trouble finding that happy middle ground.” 

With fewer fireworks in 2026, the race has instead highlighted the stark contrast between Lazar and Taylor’s political backgrounds and how their campaigns have used those differences to attack each other. 

Lazar, a conservative member of the Waukesha-based 2nd District Court of Appeals, started her legal career in private practice before joining the Department of Justice as an assistant attorney general under Republican Attorney General JB Van Hollen. During  that time, she defended Gov. Scott Walker-era laws, such as voter ID and Act 10. She was elected to the Waukesha County Circuit Court in 2015 and 2021 and then to the Court of Appeals in 2022 when she unseated an Evers-appointed judge. That race also broke along party lines, with Republicans supporting Lazar. 

Taylor, a liberal member of the Madison-based 4th District Court of Appeals, also began in private practice. Taylor worked as a policy and political director for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin for eight years until winning an Assembly special election in 2011 as a Democrat. Gov. Tony Evers appointed Taylor to the Dane County Circuit Court in 2020, and she ran unopposed in the 2023 election for the Court of Appeals. 

Taylor’s campaign and liberal-leaning groups have seized on Lazar’s resume, often describing her as an extremist. Lazar’s campaign has swiped at Taylor’s legislative experience, casting her as a radical politician. 

In interviews with Wisconsin Watch, both candidates dismissed the partisan labels. 

“I’m not a Republican,” Lazar said. “No, I didn’t work for Scott Walker. I represented Scott Walker. I represented legislators. I represented the Government Accountability Board. I represented Tony Evers and Doug La Follette. So anyone who thinks that I’m extreme because I actually tried to do a good job and represent my state is the extreme party.”

Taylor, who told Isthmus earlier this year that she is a Democrat, said she does not approach her judicial work from a liberal viewpoint. 

“I don’t ever think of myself as the liberal,” Taylor said. “I hear it all the time. I know everyone says that, but I don’t approach being a judge that way at all.” 

The stakes in 2026 are different

The election’s subdued tone stems largely from the fact that no court majority is on the line. 

Lazar and Taylor are running for the seat being vacated by conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley, meaning a Lazar win on April 7 would not shift the court’s ideological balance. The liberal majority could grow to five out of seven seats with a Taylor victory, guaranteeing liberal control of the court through at least 2030. 

“That would make the road back to a conservative majority very difficult, indeed,” Schweber said. 

In addition, conservative Justice Annette Ziegler earlier this month announced she would not seek reelection in 2027. That could open the door further for liberal candidates, who in 2023 and 2025 won by more than 10 percentage points.  

When Lazar discusses what’s on the line in this race, she tells supporters that the liberal majority on the court cannot “ever” grow to five justices. Three justices must agree to hear an appeal. The court needs balance — and to reflect the people of Wisconsin, Lazar explained to supporters in Germantown. 

“We need to make sure that we have someone up there who can vote to take appeals,” Lazar said. “We need to make sure we have someone up there who will not legislate from that bench.”

Waukesha County Judge K. Scott Wagner said Lazar possesses the temperament, intellect and respect for the law the Wisconsin Supreme Court needs at this time. The two first met as private practice attorneys on a commercial litigation case in 1989. She encouraged Wagner to run for judge last year, he said. 

“She really is very common sense. She understands the role of the court,” Wagner said in an interview. “I don’t think people understand how the courts are supposed to work. They really are the nonpartisan referee, and even in my brief career on the bench, I’ve had to say, ‘Look, this is not a law I would have written, but it’s a law that exists, so I’m going to apply it.’ You’re like the ref. I think she gets that.” 

At recent campaign stops in central Wisconsin, Taylor describes the race as a chance to expand a “pro-democracy” majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. A strong court can protect the state from future attacks on the elections, she told the room in Wautoma, highlighting the court’s 4-3 split decision in 2020 that upheld Joe Biden’s victory in Wisconsin over challenges from Donald Trump’s campaign. 

“It was a valid election, and our state Supreme Court rejected those efforts to overturn our election, but only by one vote. That’s it,” Taylor said. “We have to have a court that protects our democracy and stands up for our elections. The attacks on our elections are not going to stop.” 

Lazar recently faced criticism about her response to that case in an interview with PBS Wisconsin in which she declined to comment on how she would have ruled in the case because the Trump campaign could come before the state Supreme Court in the future.

Chief Justice Jill Karofsky, who has endorsed Taylor’s campaign, said in an interview Taylor has a unique understanding of creating laws and how they impact real people. Plus, she said, Taylor’s legislative experience would bring an expertise that does not exist among justices on the court at this time. 

“I believe that the people of Wisconsin deserve a justice on their Supreme Court who is prepared, that they have a justice who has the depth and breadth of legal and life experience that Chris Taylor has,” Karofsky said. “And they deserve to have someone who remembers every single day that the cases that come before us involve real people with real issues. Chris, quite frankly, checks every single one of those boxes.” 

Taylor has held a significant advantage over Lazar in fundraising, but with less attention on this race than past elections, both judges still have to turn out voters across the state. In February, registered voters surveyed by the Marquette University Law School Poll indicated they know little about the race and were largely undecided. 

The Marquette poll found only 6% of registered voters said they had heard a lot about the state Supreme Court race, 55% said they had heard a little and 38% said they had heard nothing. At the same time in 2025, the poll found 39% of registered voters had heard a lot about the race, 42% heard a little about the election and 19% had heard nothing at all. 

Another poll is scheduled for release on Tuesday, just two weeks before Election Day, and could provide a clearer picture of voter moods. Both candidates were scheduled to appear at a debate March 25 night hosted by WISN 12 at the Marquette University Law School. The debate was rescheduled for April 2 due to a health issue.

Lazar wants to change Wisconsin’s Supreme Court elections

Lazar did not immediately jump into remarks on the Supreme Court race as she stood before guests at the meet-and-greet event in Germantown. Instead, she grabbed the campaign yard signs of Appeals Court candidate Anthony LoCoco and Washington County Circuit Court candidate Grant Scaife and placed them alongside her own at the front of the banquet hall. 

She highlighted LoCoco, an attorney for the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty who is running unopposed for an open seat on the 2nd District Court of Appeals, where Lazar serves, due to the retirement of the lone liberal judge Lisa Neubauer. She complimented Scaife for challenging Washington County judge Gordon Leech, who Evers appointed in 2025. 

Lazar endorsed both men and praised their campaigns before diving into the details of her own race. It takes “a lot of courage” to run for office, she told the audience. 

Lazar considered the Supreme Court as a future endeavor, but Bradley’s retirement announcement in August changed her timeline. Former Waukesha County judge Kathryn Foster, whose judicial chambers were next to Lazar’s, said she could see Lazar was meant for the Supreme Court early in her time on the bench.

“As good as she is with people, I think she really loves to research and write,” Foster said. “And that’s what that job is.”

In September, Lazar spent time discussing a potential campaign with her family and friends. She looked at the current court and the “overboard” nature of the 2025 election and said: “I can do better than this.”

Conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination that month was a key part in the decision-making process, Lazar said. 

“There was a lot of discussion in my family about should that be a reason why I don’t run,” she said in an interview. “And actually that was the impetus for me to say I’d made up my mind that I was running because we cannot let people scare us away from doing the right thing.” 

Lazar entered the race in October, four months after Taylor launched her campaign. It’s been an uphill climb. Lazar has struggled to compete with Taylor’s fundraising numbers, even with $20,000 contributions each from Republican donors Diane Hendricks and Liz Uihlein. In the first month of this year, Taylor raised $750,000 from more than 10,600 individual donors to Lazar’s $183,000 from 353 donors. The final campaign finance reports before the election are due next week.

Still, Lazar said she remains optimistic. The February Marquette Poll showed Taylor seven points ahead of Lazar among likely voters. But 62% said they were undecided. 

Lazar said she has tried to run a more traditional campaign focused on judicial background and experience. 

“We are supposed to talk about who is the better candidate judicially, who has more experience in the judiciary and who has the better judicial philosophy,” Lazar told supporters. “And I’ll give you the answers: me.” 

Taylor driven by helping others

Inside the Portage County Democratic Party office in Stevens Point, where the walls are papered with old campaign signs, Taylor stopped to talk with nearly every person in the room. 

A man stuffing envelopes mentioned gerrymandering to Taylor. The state Supreme Court can “protect democracy” and hold lawmakers accountable for unfair maps that “don’t lift some people’s votes up and make them more important than other people’s votes,” she said.

A campaign staffer hoping to keep the day on schedule tapped Taylor’s elbow to move her along, but Taylor likes to talk. 

“One more,” she responded, turning to shake another woman’s hand. 

Taylor told the crowds she met on a Saturday across central Wisconsin communities that she’s driven by a love of people and standing up for injustice. It started as a child when she was bothered by bullies and continued through her work for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin and her years in the Legislature, she said.

“Being in the Legislature was a lot like being an attorney in private practice and working for Planned Parenthood, because I was really an advocate for my constituents,” Taylor said. 

Taylor’s legislative record includes support of bipartisan efforts such as the Safe at Home Act, which gives victims of domestic violence an assigned address for mail that is not their actual address. Taylor was the top Assembly Democrat on the bill, which was introduced in 2015 and led by then-Sen. Scott Fitzgerald and Rep. Joel Kleefisch, both Republicans.

The Republican Party of Wisconsin has hit Taylor for voting against crime victims during her time in the Legislature. A press release points to bills Taylor voted against on intimidating victims of domestic violence, which the Wisconsin Coalition Against Domestic Violence opposed because it focused on harsher penalties rather than other reforms to the criminal justice system. Republicans also noted Taylor’s opposition to a bill on residency requirements for “sexually violent offenders,” which included an amendment that preempted local ordinances. 

The party also criticized Taylor’s votes in 2017 and 2019 against Marsy’s Law, a constitutional amendment on strengthening the rights of crime victims during the judicial process. A campaign spokesperson told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last year that Taylor voted against the amendment because the state already had protections for crime victims. 

Shannon Barry, who has worked in the field of domestic violence support for 27 years, first crossed paths with Taylor in meetings about the Safe at Home Act. Barry recalled Taylor asking thoughtful questions and listening to what would make victims of domestic violence safer. 

“I think she really tries to ensure that whatever she is doing is aligning with the needs of people and their rights, and wanting to make sure that people have the ability to achieve their highest potential,” Barry said. 

Taylor said she left advocacy behind to transition to the bench, but she believes her time in the Legislature has made her a better judge. She understands the role of each branch of government and how the Legislature functions, she said, which helps when the Court of Appeals has to determine the intent of state lawmakers. 

Her work remains driven by how the law and the court can help others, she said. 

“The main motivator in my life is that I care deeply about people,” she said. “That has motivated me for as long as I can remember, and I think people deserve a court that is going to protect them and stand up for them, not the most powerful.” 

Two judges, two paths: Here’s what sets the Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates apart is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

The Wisconsin State Legislature is being sued over its use of private lawyers by progressive firm Law Forward. The lawsuit, filed on Feb. 19 in Dane County Circuit Court, takes aim at a provision in the lame duck law passed by the Republican majority and signed by outgoing Republican Gov. Scott Walker in 2018 before Democratic Gov. Tony Evers took office for his first term. The provision allows the Assembly speaker and Senate majority leader to obtain outside legal counsel.

A Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigation published in July 2025 found that since 2017 lawmakers had spent over $26 million in taxpayer money on legal fees to private law firms, many of which had ties to the national Republican party and the state DOJ under former Republican state attorneys general.

Law Forward President and General Counsel Jeff Mandell said in a statement that Wisconsinites “deserve to know their money is being spent lawfully to advance a valid public purpose.” 

“This lawsuit challenges the tens of millions in taxpayer funds, most of which is wasted by the Republican-controlled Legislature on private legal counsel in pursuit of private interests, in clear violation of the Wisconsin Constitution’s public purpose doctrine and Wisconsin’s system of divided government,” Mandell said.

The lawsuit argues that the retention of private lawyers using public funds is unconstitutional because it is duplicative of the legal services provided through the Department of Justice that the state already pays for and has been used primarily for private, partisan or political interests. 

The Wisconsin Constitution prohibits spending public funds for purposes that aren’t public.

It asks the court to declare the use of private counsel unconstitutional and to block the state Department of Administration from processing future payments for private counsel for lawmakers. 

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of three Wisconsin taxpayers: Daniel Theno, a Brown County Board Supervisor and former state senator, Randy Scannell, a former Green Bay City Council alderman, and J. Drew Ryberg.

The defendants named in the suit include the Assembly, Senate, and the Department of Administration (DOA) as well as Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester), Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg), Senate President Mary Felzkowski (R-Tomahawk) and other legislative leaders. 

“The Legislature hires attorneys to defend Wisconsin’s laws because the people of Wisconsin deserve a rigorous defense of the laws on the books. Even though the Attorney General can defend our laws, we have seen that the Department of Justice is unable to put politics aside on partisan issues,” Lemahieu and Vos said in a joint statement. “Hiring outside counsel simply allows the legislature to ensure all sides are presented vigorously so the judiciary can hear all points of view to make the best decision.”

One case that the lawsuit cites is Wisconsin State Senate v. City of Green Bay.  The case, which was settled in July 2024, centered on the City of Green Bay and Mayor Eric Genrich alleging that audio recording devices installed in City Hall in 2021 violated state electronic surveillance laws. 

The Senate and its member, Sen. André Jacque (R-New Franken), initially brought the case, but the Senate was dismissed as a party after it was filed. The Law Forward suit alleges that the Senate continued paying for private counsel “with bills sometimes exceeding $150,000 in a month” and argues the Senate and Jacque “initiated and persisted in litigation for no discernable public purpose.” 

Another case cited is the hiring of Michael Gableman by Vos in 2021 to investigate Wisconsin’s 2020 presidential results, which Trump falsely claimed had been rigged to cause his loss. The Assembly paid Gableman over $1.3 million in public dollars for Gableman, other staff and expenses until August 2022 when Gableman was fired.

Referencing a statement made by Sen. Tim Carpenter (D-Milwaukee) after the ordeal, the lawsuit argues that “‘nothing’ actually overstates the value to the people of Wisconsin of the services rendered” and that Gableman’s efforts “led to a bevy of litigation, in multiple circuit and appellate courts.” The lawsuit also claims that afterwards the Assembly hired outside counsel to represent Gableman and sometimes the Assembly in circuit and appellate courts in litigation that was the result of the investigation.

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments Wednesday in a case that highlights how judges can apply different interpretations of the law and constitution to suit their ideological viewpoints.

The case resulted from disagreements between the Republican-led Legislature and Attorney General Josh Kaul following the 2018 lame-duck session that limited the powers of the incoming Democratic administration. 

The lawsuit, which the Legislature filed in 2021 when there was a conservative majority on the state Supreme Court, focuses on who has oversight of the dollars the state receives from legal settlements. The Legislature argues the 2018 law requires the attorney general to put money from a financial settlement in the general fund, which state lawmakers control. Kaul argues that he can put settlement funds in accounts that the Department of Justice oversees and still comply with the law.

In December 2024, the 2nd District Court of Appeals in a 2-1 ruling reversed part of a circuit court decision that said Kaul could continue to direct settlement dollars into DOJ-controlled accounts.

The Appeals Court opinion was written by Judge Maria Lazar, a conservative who is running for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in April against liberal Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor. Lazar ruled the language in the 2018 law aligns with the Legislature’s arguments that settlement dollars belong in the general fund. 

“Despite the legislation expressly designed to bring all settlement funds under legislative control and despite the simple and plain language of that legislation, the Attorney General has continued to act precisely in the manner which the Legislature sought to end,” Lazar wrote.

But in a dissent, retiring Appeals Court Judge Lisa Neubauer, the only liberal on the Waukesha-based District 2 Court of Appeals, criticized Lazar for basing her decision on what the Legislature intended, rather than a strict reading of various clauses in the law that may give the attorney general wiggle room.

The oral arguments this week follow a series of decisions in recent years on lawsuits challenging the separation of powers between the Legislature and the executive branch. In June, the court unanimously struck down a portion of the 2018-era lame-duck laws that required the attorney general to receive approval from the Legislature’s budget-writing committee to settle most civil cases. For the 4-3 divided liberal-majority court, the rulings in these cases have shown agreement among the justices over the need for clear boundaries between the core powers of the branches of government, legal experts said. 

Where this latest lawsuit differs is the debate seems focused more on the language of the law than the separation of powers, said Chad Oldfather, a professor at the Marquette University Law School. Typically the conservative approach to statutory interpretation has been to focus on the basic meaning of the law while the liberal approach has been to examine the law’s intent. That has been the opposite in this case, Oldfather said.  

“The advocates are kind of flipping a little bit the usual ideology of the statutory interpretation approach,” Oldfather said. “And all that’s going on while it’s clear that there are some people on the court who want to fundamentally shift the way the court does statutory interpretation. So there’s a real interesting mix of issues going on in this case.” 

The law in question has been wrapped up in a yearslong debate over separation of powers that has made its way to justices in recent years, said Bryna Godar, a staff attorney at the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School. In many of those cases, the Supreme Court opinions have shown the justices interested in balanced branches of government. 

“There seems to be an inclination to reinstate greater separation of powers between the branches and preserve the important roles of various actors, whether that’s the attorney general or the governor or the Legislature,” Godar said. 

For example, in a 6-1 decision in 2024, with Justice Annette Ziegler dissenting, the court ruled the Legislature’s Republican-led budget-writing committee could not block spending by the Department of Natural Resources for the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Fund. 

“While the legislature’s motivation for overseeing the public fisc may be well-intentioned, fundamentally, the legislature may not execute the law,” Justice Rebecca Bradley, a member of the conservative bloc, wrote in the majority opinion. “The people gave the executive alone this power.”

In the 7-0 decision last June on the Legislature’s approval of the attorney general’s civil case settlements, Justice Brian Hagedorn wrote that the constitution does not give lawmakers the ability to execute the law when there are financial decisions. 

“If the Legislature has a constitutional interest in the execution of the laws every time an executive action involves money, there would be virtually no area where the Legislature could not insert itself into the execution of the law,” Hagedorn wrote. 

There are still areas of disagreement among the court in these types of cases. Last July, the court reached a 4-3 decision in a lawsuit between Gov. Tony Evers and the Legislature, which determined 2018 lame-duck legislation that gave a legislative committee the ability to delay rules and policy changes from executive agencies was unconstitutional.

In that case, the court’s four liberal justices were in the majority. Hagedorn wrote an opinion both concurring and dissenting with the majority’s decision, while Bradley and Ziegler dissented.

“The majority has created a grave constitutional imbalance by strictly construing, and thus confining, the constitutional powers of the legislative branch while not doing the same when it comes to the power of the executive branch,” Ziegler wrote.

Latest Wisconsin Supreme Court case flips the script on which judges strictly interpret the law 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 Supreme Court race could have spurred another bank-breaking election cycle. Instead, national super donors have kept their pocketbooks closed, and with only a month until the election, the liberal candidate appears to be sailing ahead in contributions.

Wisconsin Court of Appeals Judge Chris Taylor, the liberal candidate, has raised more than $3.8 million over the past year, compared to the $438,000 conservative candidate Maria Lazar, who is also an appellate judge, has brought in. 

The low-key nature of this year’s race is a sharp reversal from the 2025 state Supreme Court contest, in which the candidate campaigns, political parties, outside interest groups and mega billionaire Elon Musk combined to spend a record $144.5 million on the contest. Brad Schimel lost to Susan Crawford, maintaining the liberal majority on the court.

But the financial landscape of the election is not a done deal, both camps say.

“We can’t take anything for granted on our side,” said Sam Roecker, a Taylor adviser. “We know that there are supporters of (Lazar’s) who have the capacity to dump a lot of money in this race, and we saw what happened last time around when tens of millions of dollars got poured in.”

And as more voters start paying attention to the race, Lazar has a “window of opportunity” in the weeks leading up to the April 7 election, Republican strategist Bill McCoshen said.

“The truth is a lot of folks on the conservative side thought that our candidate wasn’t going to have a very strong chance a month ago. Now we think she could actually win,” McCoshen said.

Without big spending, this year’s state Supreme Court campaigns aren’t breaking through to voters like they did in 2025. Just 6% of voters said they had heard a lot about the election, compared to 39% at the same time last year, according to a Marquette Law School Poll released last month.

Despite Taylor’s wide fundraising advantage and outsize TV advertising, about two-thirds of voters are undecided, the same poll found. Taylor polled 5 percentage points higher than Lazar among voters who have made a decision, narrowly outside the margin of error.

“The real point is it’s not getting through to voters, or voters haven’t tuned into it. But you know, that’s more than a six to one greater awareness a year ago than it is today,” said Charles Franklin, the director of the Marquette Law School Poll. “I’m not saying that we’ll go into election day without anybody having heard anything, but it was an earlier campaign last year and with more resources behind it.”

Generally, liberal candidates have an advantage in spring judicial elections, Franklin said. College graduates and older voters, who have shifted leftward over the past several decades, are the primary voting blocs in spring court elections.

The stakes are different this cycle. The court’s liberal majority is secure. The winner will replace retiring conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley. Still, losing this race would make it even harder for conservatives to regain power on the state’s high court. If they lose this year, they would have to retain the seats held by conservatives Annette Ziegler next year and Brian Hagedorn in 2029 and then flip seats held by liberals Rebecca Dallet and Jill Karofsky in 2028 and 2030.

“Last year’s was to determine which ideological faction will have control of a majority of the court, and this year’s won’t change that. This year’s is to replace a conservative on a court that leans liberal already,” said Jeff Mandell, the co-founder of the progressive organization Law Forward.

Janine Geske. a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, said that liberal voters have been galvanized to turn out for judicial elections by hot-button national issues like abortion and gerrymandering that have taken center stage in the state’s highest court. 

“Those issues became really the issues on the ballot versus the candidates themselves. As a result, I think we had more progressive candidates,” Geske said.

It’s a playbook that was adopted by Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz, who won Wisconsin’s high-profile race in 2023 on a platform of sharing her “values” regarding political issues that were likely to come before the court.

Lazar just might find success with that strategy, too, McCoshen said.

“Judge Lazar is doing a better job of at least tipping her hat to what her conservative leanings may be so that voters have a better understanding of what they’re voting for,” McCoshen said.

This story was produced and originally published by Wisconsin Watch and NOTUS, a publication from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute.

One year after Elon Musk’s Wisconsin spending blitz, the state’s Supreme Court race falls quiet 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.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge Monday temporarily blocked a Department of Homeland Security policy that instituted a seven-day notice requirement for members of Congress to conduct oversight visits at facilities that hold immigrants, finding it likely violates appropriations law that allows for unannounced visits.

The order from Judge Jia Cobb of the District Court for the District of Columbia rejects initial arguments from the Trump administration that the separate funding stream from the tax cuts and spending package passed last year circumvents a 2019 appropriations law that allows for unannounced oversight visits to those facilities from lawmakers.

Members of Congress sued the government over the policy from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

“Throughout this litigation, Defendants have emphasized the vast amount of money appropriated to DHS and ICE under the (One Big Beautiful Bill Act). The Court agrees that these funds are indeed staggering,” Cobb said. “But the power of the purse rests with Congress, and even a deep-pocketed agency must comply with Congress’s restrictions on the permissible uses of appropriated funds.” 

The Department of Justice appealed the decision shortly after the order was given. 

DHS shutdown

Monday’s decision came amid a partial government shutdown of DHS over Democrats’ concerns about enforcement tactics used by immigration agents following the deaths of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.  

The group representing the 13 members of Congress who filed suit, Democracy Forward, praised the decision.

“Today’s ruling makes it clear that Secretary Noem cannot operate detention facilities in the shadows or silence elected officials who are doing their jobs,” Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said in a statement. “The court has once again affirmed that oversight is not optional, transparency is not negotiable, and human rights do not disappear at the doors of a detention center.”

The 13 Democratic members of Congress who sued included: Joe Neguse of Colorado, Adriano Espaillat of New York, Kelly Morrison of Minnesota, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, Robert Garcia of California, J. Luis Correa of California, Jason Crow of Colorado, Veronica Escobar of Texas, Dan Goldman of New York, Jimmy Gomez of California, Raul Ruiz of California, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi and Norma Torres of California.

This policy is the third from Noem to require members of Congress to notify the agency to conduct an oversight visit. A 2019 appropriations law, referred to as Section 527, allows any member of Congress to carry out an unannounced visit to a federal facility that holds immigrants.

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Seventy-two Wisconsin school districts are going to referendum in April seeking just over $1 billion from taxpayers at a time when voters indicate they are less likely to support increased funding for schools. 

A record high 60% of registered voters said reducing property taxes was more important than increasing spending on public schools, according to the recent Marquette University Law School poll conducted in February. Fifty-seven percent of voters in the same poll said they would vote against a school referendum, same as October, but a reversal from six years ago when 57% said they would support one. 

The public concern about property taxes creates an especially difficult environment this year for the school districts seeking financial approvals from voters. Sixty-two districts are pursuing operational referendums this spring, according to data from the Department of Public Instruction. Operational questions ask voters to approve whether school districts can increase taxes to pay for things such as educational programs, technology and transportation services. 

The rest of the referendums in April would allow districts to borrow money for capital construction projects. Two districts, Howard-Suamico and Sauk Prairie, are asking voters to approve both capital and operational referendums. 

Approval rates for districts have declined since 2018, according to research from the Wisconsin Policy Forum. A record number of school districts proposed referendum questions to voters in 2024, but the 70% approval rate was the lowest passage rate for referendums in a midterm or presidential election year since 2014. More than 20% of the districts going to referendum this April are returning to voters after failed referendums in 2025. 

In the meantime, debates continue at the Capitol over state funding for public schools. Gov. Tony Evers and Republican legislative leaders are expected to continue negotiating over how to use the state’s $2.4 billion surplus and what amount should be used to lower property taxes and support public schools. Just last week, a group of Wisconsin parents, four teacher unions and five school districts sued the Legislature arguing it’s failing to fund public schools. The Necedah Area School District, one of the plaintiffs in the case, is asking voters in April to approve a $5.8 million operational referendum across the next four school years. 

Meanwhile, Wisconsin school districts continue to battle with the financial impacts of declining enrollments and rising costs as district leaders say state funding they receive has not kept up with inflation. The Appleton Area School District is seeking a $60 million operating referendum spread out over the next four years, which would fund efforts to help students struggling with poverty and mental health issues and plug a $13 million operating deficit that formed over three years of high inflation rates that outpaced available funding, Superintendent Greg Hartjes said. 

“Certainly the timing is not good,” Hartjes said of Appleton’s operating referendum. “But it is because of that three years of high inflation that we can’t sustain another year. If we don’t pass a referendum, we are going to cut $13 million from our budget next year. And that’s a lot of services for kids.” 

Why a school district goes to referendum

The two main sources of revenue for Wisconsin school districts are state funding and property taxes. In 1993, Wisconsin lawmakers put limits on how much school districts can increase funding from those two revenue sources. State law allows districts to go to referendum to ask voters to exceed the revenue limits with additional property taxes. 

“It sometimes gets talked about as if it’s a fluke, or if it necessarily means that something bad is happening. That isn’t always the case,” said Sara Shaw, the deputy research director at the Wisconsin Policy Forum. “You might have an instance where a local community says, ‘Actually we’re fine with this. You tax us more. We have the means to be taxed more and we have the desire to fund education more.’” 

School district revenue limits were connected to inflation until 2009, during the Great Recession, when a Democratic-controlled Legislature and Democratic governor chose to decouple them. Since then, as Republicans took control of state government in 2011, state education spending has not kept pace with inflation or the national average, according to the Policy Forum. 

In recent years, the lack of inflationary increases to revenue limits and declining school district enrollment are among the main reasons why districts have gone to referendum, said Dan Rossmiller, the executive director of the Wisconsin Association of School Boards.

“At the same time, your fixed costs, such as transportation, heating, lighting, insurance, health insurance for your employees and the salaries of your employees and the portion you pay toward their retirement are all coming up generally,” Rossmiller said. “So that puts school districts in a bit of a vice.” 

The Wisconsin Rapids School District, which is asking voters to support a $19 million operating referendum over the next five years, is one of those examples. The district has an existing five-year operating referendum approved in 2021 that expires this school year, but was boosted by pandemic-related funds that are no longer available. Inflation, rising insurance costs and declining enrollment have put the district in a difficult position, said Wisconsin Rapids Superintendent Ronald Rasmussen. 

“The district is in a situation now where our expenses exceed our revenue,” Rasmussen said. 

But referendums are about compromise, Sen. Romaine Quinn, R-Birchwood, said at a February meeting of the Legislature’s budget-writing committee. It’s also not just schools that are feeling the impacts of inflation, Quinn said. 

“There isn’t anybody in their family budget, a local entity unit of government or state government that can afford to keep up with the inflation that we’ve had to endure over the last four to six years,” Quinn said.

What about the 400-year veto?

During the 2023-25 state budget process, Evers used the governor’s veto powers to provide an annual $325 per pupil increase to school district revenue limits for 400 years.

Republicans have repeatedly slammed the veto and advanced proposals seeking to limit the governor’s partial veto powers in the future. In February, the Legislature added to the November ballot a constitutional amendment to prevent the governor from using veto powers to increase taxes or fees. It’s unclear if the proposed language would have affected the 400-year veto because the veto didn’t directly increase taxes or fees. Instead, it gave school districts more discretion to increase property taxes.

School leaders say they’re appreciative of the revenue authority coming from the 400-year veto, but it doesn’t make up for the lack of consistent inflationary increases since 2009. Districts are also still dependent on how the Legislature acts on revenue limits or general state aid. 

“The more state aid we get means we get less property taxes,” Rasmussen said. “And this year, the revenue limit changed by $325, but the aid we got from the state that line stayed the same, so the difference was made up by local property taxes.” 

Hartjes and Rasmussen said they are approaching frustration about property taxes by trying to inform residents about the basics of school funding, being transparent with potential voters about district finances and breaking down the cost of the referendum on a typical home in their community. 

Districts across the state that are going to referendum this spring are holding similar information sessions to answer questions from potential voters and creating webpages for people seeking more information. 

It’s not an easy task, especially as the cost of living remains the top issue for Wisconsin voters this year. 

“Your price of everything else that you have to buy as a consumer is difficult,” Hartjes said. “And then to ask to have your property taxes raised? We understand the challenge for families.”

The election is April 7. Early voting starts March 24.

A 400-year veto, $1 billion in referendums and now a lawsuit: School districts demand more funding 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.