An absentee ballot drop box with updated signage in Madison following the Wisconsin Supreme Court's decision to allow the use of ballot drop boxes. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)

A Dane County judge on Monday denied a motion from the city of Madison to dismiss a lawsuit against the city over its loss of nearly 200 absentee ballots during the 2024 election. 

Since misplacing and failing to count the ballots, Madison has been subjected to penalties from the Wisconsin Elections Commission and has hired a new city clerk. The lawsuit against the city was brought by a group of the voters whose ballots were not counted. The voters are represented by the voting rights focused firm Law Forward. 

Madison’s defense against the lawsuit has sparked criticism from voting advocates across the state for diminishing the importance of the right to vote. The city had argued it could not be sued for losing the ballots because absentee voting is a “privilege” and not a constitutional right. A legislative policy statement adopted in 1985 states that “voting is a constitutional right,” but that “voting by absentee ballot is a privilege exercised wholly outside the traditional safeguards of the polling place.”

The lawsuit comes as Wisconsin election officials and Democrats have been defending absentee voting rights from Republican attacks for years. The argument by Madison officials drew criticism from a number of Democrats, including Gov. Tony Evers.

Dane County Judge David Conway wrote in his order denying Madison’s motion to dismiss that it wouldn’t make sense if the constitutional right to vote did not extend to absentee voting.

“Just because the absentee voting process is a privilege does not mean that those who legally utilize it do not exercise their constitutional right to vote,” he wrote. “Of course they do. Once a voter casts a valid absentee ballot that complies with the Legislature’s rules for utilizing the absentee process, the voter has exercised the same constitutional right to vote as someone who casts a valid in-person ballot at a polling place. And that right to vote would be a hollow protection if it did not also include the right to have one’s vote counted.”

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A Dane County judge on Monday rejected the city of Madison’s claim that absentee voting’s characterization in state law as a “privilege” precludes damages against the city for disenfranchising 193 voters and ruled that Madison can face potential financial liability for the error.

In rejecting motions by the city and other defendants to dismiss the case, Dane County Circuit Court Judge David Conway said that a state law describing absentee voting as a privilege does not mean absentee ballots receive less constitutional protection than votes cast in person.

“That right to vote,” Conway wrote, “would be a hollow protection if it did not also include the right to have one’s vote counted.”

Conway also rejected former Madison Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl’s legal argument that there is a meaningful legal difference between intentionally not counting votes and mistakenly failing to count them due to human error. He held that state law allows for people to seek damages against election officials who “negligently deprive citizens of the right to vote.”

“When an election official fails to count a valid absentee ballot, whether by negligence, recklessness, or malice, he or she deprives the absentee voter of that constitutional right,” he wrote. 

The city and Witzel-Behl’s legal argument, made in response to a lawsuit seeking damages on behalf of 193 Madison voters disenfranchised in the 2024 election, drew sharp rebukes from legal experts, Gov. Tony Evers and the Wisconsin Elections Commission, which filed its very first friend-of-the-court brief opposing the rationale. 

Conway dismissed the Madison clerk’s office from the case after arguments that it could not be sued separately from the city, but allowed the case to proceed against the city, Witzel-Behl and Deputy Clerk Jim Verbick. The voters are represented by a liberal election law firm, Law Forward. 

“At the dawn of another election season, the message is clear: The right to vote protects Wisconsinites whether they vote in-person or absentee,” Law Forward staff attorney Scott Thompson told Votebeat. “We are pleased the court agreed with our arguments and that this case will proceed.”

Matt O’Neill, the lawyer representing Witzel-Behl, declined to comment.

Madison spokesperson Dylan Brogan said the city is reviewing the decision and considering its next steps. Brogan stressed that the city “has a long history of promoting and protecting absentee voting and that policy has not changed,” but said monetary damages for unintentional errors would mean money and resources “would be diverted to pay for this human error.”

Madison mayor says ‘nonsensical’ lawsuit could weaken elections

In an interview with Votebeat last week, Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said she didn’t like the state law calling absentee voting a privilege, not a right. But she said that critics should direct their concerns at the Legislature, rather than at the city. 

Rhodes-Conway said the city’s argument “literally repeat(s) what’s in state law.” Legal experts have disputed that characterization, saying the city advanced a novel interpretation of a long-standing statute. Rhodes-Conway said she wasn’t sure those critiques were relevant.

“It shouldn’t be in the law,” she said. “And the state Legislature should take action to correct that and better protect voting in this state.”

The 1985 state law describes absentee voting as a privilege exercised outside the safeguards of the polling place. Another provision requires absentee voters to comply with laws regulating the practice for their votes to count. The law has been cited in lawsuits seeking to restrict absentee voting, but it had never before been used to shield election officials from liability for failing to count valid ballots.

In his Monday ruling, Conway dismissed the city’s interpretation of the law without questioning the statute itself.

“Just because the absentee voting process is a privilege does not mean that those who legally utilize it do not exercise their constitutional right to vote,” he said.

Rhodes-Conway said that, despite using that legal argument in court, the city has consistently promoted absentee voting and will continue to do so.

Rhodes-Conway criticized the lawsuit as a whole, saying that the solution for the city disenfranchising 193 voters in the 2024 presidential election “is not to charge the city of Madison millions of dollars because our clerk’s office made a mistake.” 

“That’s not achieving anything. It’s not making elections better,” she continued. “It’s simply taking money that could be invested in basic services and in election protection and election services, and paying it to the plaintiffs. It’s just nonsensical to me.”

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

This coverage is made possible through Votebeat, a nonpartisan news organization covering local election administration and voting access. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Court says Madison can be liable for disenfranchising voters is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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The Wisconsin Elections Commission, filing its first ever friend-of-the-court brief, challenged Madison’s controversial legal argument that it should not be financially liable for 193 uncounted ballots in the 2024 presidential election because of a state law that calls absentee voting a privilege, not a right. 

The argument presented by city officials misunderstands what “privilege” means in the context of absentee voting and “enjoys no support in the constitution or case law,” the commission wrote in its filing Tuesday, echoing a similar rebuke by Gov. Tony Evers last month. 

“Once an elector has complied with the statutory process, whether absentee or in-person, she has a constitutional right to have her vote counted,” the commission said.

That both the commission and the governor felt it was necessary to intervene in the case should underscore “both the wrongness and the dangerousness of such a claim,” commission Chair Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, told Votebeat.

The dispute over the city’s legal defense stems from a lawsuit filed in September by the liberal election law firm Law Forward in Dane County Circuit Court against the city of Madison and the clerk’s office, along with former clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl and Deputy Clerk Jim Verbick in their personal capacities. It seeks monetary damages on behalf of the voters whose absentee ballots were never counted in the 2024 presidential election, alleging that their constitutional rights were violated.

Attorneys for Witzel-Behl — and later the city — argued that by choosing to vote absentee, the disenfranchised voters “exercised a privilege,” citing a 1985 state law that describes absentee voting as a privilege exercised outside the safeguards of the polling place. 

Law Forward called the argument a “shocking proposition,” and Evers filed his own friend-of-the-court brief last month, warning that the city’s position could lead to “absurd results.” 

Some legal experts said the argument could run afoul of the federal Constitution.

Matthew W. O’Neill, an attorney representing Witzel-Behl, declined to comment.

No statute can override the constitutional right to vote, the commission stated, adding that the Wisconsin Supreme Court decided in 2024 that state law the defendants invoked does not allow for a “skeptical view” of absentee voting.

The argument has also drawn negative reactions from a range of political voices. 

On Wednesday, six Wisconsin voting groups — Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, Common Cause Wisconsin, ACLU of Wisconsin, All in Wisconsin Fund, and All Voting is Local — released a scathing statement saying they were “deeply alarmed” by the city’s argument.

“We call on the City of Madison to immediately abandon this dangerous legal argument, take responsibility for disenfranchising voters, and work toward a remedy that respects voters’ constitutional rights,” the statement said.

Meanwhile, Rick Esenberg, the founder of the conservative group Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty — which cited the same 1985 law in its 2021 effort to ban ballot drop boxes — said on social media that Madison’s legal argument was likely going too far. 

“Madison is correct in noting that absentee voting is a privilege and not a right in the sense that the legislature has no obligation to permit it at all,” Esenberg said. “BUT if it does and people choose to cast their ballot in the way specified by law, it doesn’t seem crazy to say that Madison has a constitutional obligation to count their legally cast vote.”

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

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

Wisconsin Elections Commission challenges Madison’s argument on absentee voting 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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Democratic lawmakers gathered at the Capitol Monday to announce their latest attempt to legalize recreational cannabis in Wisconsin. “Across the country, the cannabis debate is over,” Rep. Darrin Madison (D-Milwaukee) said during a morning press conference, adding that “40 states and Washington D.C. have legalized cannabis in some form.” That group includes Wisconsin’s neighbors Michigan, Illinois and Minnesota. Yet Wisconsin continues a complete cannabis prohibition.

This is not a reality Wisconsinites have chosen for themselves;  two-thirds of Wisconsin voters who responded to a Marquette Poll in 2025 said that they wanted to see the cannabis plant legalized. “The will of the people is clear on this issue,” said Madison. “And today, we’re acting on it.”

Democrats in the state Legislature are aiming to fully legalize cannabis for responsible adult use, including a medicinal cannabis program. “Legalizing cannabis in Wisconsin is an economic necessity, a public safety strategy and a racial justice imperative,” said Madison. Using the state’s hemp industry as an example, Madison said that entrepreneurs built out a cannabis supply chain with hemp as its bedrock after the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill. As a result, Wisconsinites began buying  hemp-derived products including  smokeable flower, beverages, vapes and edibles. 

“That industry now supports 3,500 jobs, and contributes $700 million to Wisconsin’s economy,” said Madison. All of that is at risk of completely vanishing after the federal government changed course by imposing THC limits on hemp products growers and distributors say are biologically impossible to achieve. Currently several bills with differing visions of how to regulate hemp in Wisconsin are circulating among Wisconsin lawmakers, with a deadline set by the federal government for businesses to either adapt or shut down coming up in November. 

Madison stressed that full legalization would both protect a thriving industry and generate revenue. “Wisconsin would raise nearly $300 million annually once the market is fully up and running,” Madison said, citing an analysis by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau. “That’s hundreds of millions of dollars we are currently leaving on the table or worse, exporting to other states, while pretending that prohibition still works. We all know that it doesn’t. And nowhere is that failure clearer than in our criminal legal system.” Madison said, adding that in 2018, four out of every 10 drug arrests nationally were for cannabis. 

While Black and white Americans use cannabis at similar rates, Black people were more than five times as likely to be arrested for cannabis than white people in 2022, Madison said. He pointed to Ozaukee County, where Black residents were 34.9 times more likely to be arrested for cannabis, and Manitowoc County where Black residents were 29.9 times more likely to face cannabis-related arrests. Madison said that both counties rank in the top five nationally for racial disparities in cannabis arrests.

“Let’s be honest,” said Madison. “That is not about public safety,” he said. “That is about policy choices that criminalize Blackness, criminalize poverty, and criminalize entire communities. The idea that we can incarcerate our way to safe communities is a lie. And cannabis has been one of the most effective tools for enforcing that lie.” Madison called on Wisconsin to replace a failed punishment model with evidence-based regulations that would help enrich communities instead of harming them for generations. 

Mike Sickler, co-owner of TerraSol Brands, echoed the call for legalization. “We did not invent the demand, but we are here to respond to it,” said Sickler. The federal hemp ban shook the hemp industry, he said, spreading fear and confusion. “What is frustrating is that the solution is right here in front of us,” said Sickler. “We already have the infrastructure, we already have the best practices in place, we already have the workforce, we already have the market. What does not exist is a clear state law that allows us to continue operating responsibly.” 

Phillip Scott, a hemp farmer and advocate for the industry, said that the federal hemp ban and the lack of a legalized cannabis industry in Wisconsin has removed certainty and stability for family farms and small business owners who saw a light at the end of the tunnel after the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill. “These are not speculative businesses,” said Scott. “These are working farms, these are family farms, and they follow the law. But today, that certainty is gone.” Scott said that cannabis legalization is about jobs, rural economies, and “giving farmers clarity instead of chaos.” 

Scott said that farmers are not asking for special treatment, but rather a fair and stable transition for those who followed the law. “We are asking for reasonable access to a legal market, and we are asking for a system that doesn’t shut family farms out before they even get a chance.” 

“Legalization is about freedom,” said Rep. Andrew Hysell (D-Sun Prairie). “Wisconsin is an outlier in terms of denying people this freedom.” Hysell noted a 1974 decision from the Alaska Supreme Court that found that the state’s privacy rights included an individual’s right to use cannabis. “And here we are over half a century later, and no one has the freedom to buy marijuana in Wisconsin. Standing in the way of the people’s freedom is not good politics, almost 70% of Wisconsinites want full adult use legalization, and even more want medical.”

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Madison small businesses and residents, protesting a federal immigration crackdown in Minnesota, are planning to show solidarity Friday by shutting down or donating proceeds to immigration and other advocacy organizations. On Friday, Jan. 9, people gathered outside the Wisconsin State Capitol to protest and mourn over the killing of Renee Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

Madison small businesses and residents, protesting a federal immigration crackdown in Minnesota, are showing solidarity Friday by shutting down or donating proceeds to immigration and other advocacy organizations, with marches and rallies planned during the day.

The businesses are following a call for a “nationwide shutdown” — a day of no school, no work and no shopping. According to the Guardian, the call for the shutdown came from several student groups at the University of Minnesota.

“The people of the Twin Cities have shown the way for the whole country — to stop ICE’s reign of terror, we need to SHUT IT DOWN,” states a website about the effort.

Madison businesses shutting down 

An array of small businesses in Wisconsin’s capital have announced plans to support the day of action. 

There is also a student walkout planned for 2 p.m. by UW-Madison students who plan to meet at Library Mall on campus and march to the state Capitol at 2:45 p.m. A rally is planned at 3 p.m. at the Capitol. Another march is also planned in Milwaukee at 2 p.m. at Cathedral Square Park.

Lake City Books, located on N. Hamilton St. in downtown Madison, will be staying open to serve  as a warming place for people protesting at the Capitol, according to the business’s Instagram account. The local bookstore plans to have free hand warmers and sign-making materials available.

The book store will kick off its February fundraiser with proceeds from its “Books Against Tyranny” display donated to the Minnesota ACLU chapter to “support those whose First Amendment rights have been violated.”

“We stand with MN. We support free speech and all peaceful protest. Please be kind to each other and continue to support small local businesses,” the book store said. 

Bloom Bake Shop plans to close its two locations in Madison at 2 p.m. so its team members can attend the rally downtown. The local bakery said it will also be selling sugar cookies dedicated to Minnesota, and the profits from the cookies will go to the Immigrant Rapid Response Fund.

“At Bloom, we’ve been clear about where we stand: with Minnesota, and with all those living in fear or suffering during this American crisis. We stand with people peacefully exercising their rights, and with those working to protect the freedoms our communities depend on,” the bakery said in an Instagram post. “Life feels bitter right now. Our intention is to offer something sweet, along with sincere hope, during these very challenging times. We must resist. We must stay strong. Together.”

Madison Sourdough said it plans to donate 10% of its proceeds on Friday to Voces de la Frontera, though it plans to close its kitchen early at 1:30 p.m., so its staff can attend the march and rally protesting unconstitutional and immoral tactics in Minnesota and across the country.

Casetta Kitchen said it plans to donate 20% of its Friday sales to Community Aid Network Minnesota. 

Forward Craft and Coffee on Atwood Avenue in Madison said it will be donating $1 of every drink it sells to the Minnesota Rapid Response Fund.

Other Madison businesses with plans to close or donate proceeds include: 

• A Room of One’s Own
• Ailimentari
• Ahan
• Boulders Climbing Gym
• Lola’s
• Mansion Hill Inn
• Origin Breads
• Robin Room Bar 
• SevvenCycle
• Teasider
• The Bubbling Tea Pot

Wisconsin Democratic lawmakers also express solidarity

State Rep. Francesca (D-Madison) said in a video that the shutdown is “a way to show the world that we grow power. We fight back as a collective and stand together.” She encouraged small businesses to join the shutdown effort in whatever way they can. 

On Thursday, a group of Wisconsin state lawmakers — all Democrats — took part in a solidarity event in support of Minnesota. Some traveled to Minneapolis to be in solidarity in person, including state Sens. Melissa Ratcliff (D-Cottage Grove) and Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) as well as state Reps. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee), Christian Phelps (D-Eau Claire), Maureen McCarville (D-DeForest). 

Others joined from a Zoom call including state Reps. Deb Andraca (D-Whitefish Bay), Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee), Robyn Vining (D-Wauwatosa), Brienne Brown (D-Whitewater) and Darrin Madison (D-Milwaukee), who spoke on the call. 

“We also continue to grieve and remember the loss of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Their lives mattered. Their families alongside every single family impacted by the actions of ICE deserve truth, justice and full accountability, and we stand with them in that demand. Right now, our communities are being tested,” Madison said. 

Madison said that “our communities are being tested” by an agency that “too often treats our neighbors like targets instead of human beings.”

“Here in Wisconsin, we, too, are pushing back,” Madison said. “Faith leaders, workers and neighbors are building rapid response networks and community defense efforts to protect families when the system refuses to. We stand in solidarity with Minnesota and communities who are saying ‘We will not be divided. We will not be intimidated and we will not stop organizing until every family can live without fear because we must keep families together.’”

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• Anna Mykhailova and Sasha Druzhyna fled Ukraine after Russia invaded, leaving behind careers as physicians.

• Wisconsin needs more medical professionals, including physicians. But those with foreign training face hurdles that can keep them from filling that gap.

• State officials recently eased requirements for foreign-trained doctors, but Mykhailova isn’t sure what the change means for her.

• Anna works as a sonographer at a Madison hospital, while Sasha is studying for a master’s degree in medical perfusion at the Milwaukee School of Engineering. 

• The family is among 100,000 Ukrainians with Temporary Protected Status, allowing them to live and work in the United States for renewable 18-month stretches.

Sasha Druzhyna knows all about transplants. 

As an anesthesiologist and perfusionist in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sasha used specialized equipment to keep patients’ blood pumping during heart transplants and keep donor organs alive until they reached their recipients. 

Now, after fleeing Russia’s full-scale invasion, the 52-year-old is learning his profession all over again as a student in Milwaukee School of Engineering’s medical perfusion program. 

Eighty miles away, his wife Anna Mykhailova, 42, is starting over, too. In 2024, she started a job as a cardiac sonographer at a Madison hospital, using skills she refined as a cardiologist in one of Ukraine’s top heart hospitals. She’s also studying for the medical board exams in hopes of one day practicing medicine in the United States. 

But as they work to rebuild their careers, they still don’t know if they’ll be allowed to stay.  

“It’s so stressful because of this immigration process. I will do these really hard exams and they (might) say, ‘Oh, you have to leave this country,’” Anna said of the family’s immigration limbo.

Wisconsin needs more medical professionals, including physicians. But as the couple’s experience shows, those who arrive in the country with foreign training face hurdles that can keep them from filling that gap.

A new life begins

Had the couple fled to Europe instead, their career paths might have been simpler. Sasha might be the teacher instead of the student. Anna might still be a doctor.

But the invasion left no time to deliberate. Anna and her colleagues moved their patients to the hospital’s basement, then brought their own families to shelter there, too. Anna and Sasha brought their daughter, Varya, who was 6 years old at the time. 

They listened to the news as Russian troops occupied the suburbs around Kyiv.  

“When they showed civilian kids killed by Russians … I realized that nobody will protect us and (we) just have to go,” Anna said. 

A friend with military connections warned that Ukrainian forces would soon blow up Ukraine’s own bridges to stop Russian troops from taking more ground. 

“They told us, if you want to leave, you have to leave right now,” Anna said. Sasha drove his wife and daughter west, past sirens and explosions, toward the border with Poland. 

A week later, Anna and Varya were on a plane to Boston, where Anna had a friend from medical school. Arriving with tourist visas, she thought they’d be away for just a few weeks. Sasha, who didn’t speak English, opted to stay.

“Coming here, starting from zero, no money, no nothing, no job — he didn’t want to come and wash floors in a supermarket … It’s really difficult to immigrate when you already had something in your home country,” Anna said. 

He kept working in the hospital, caring for his usual patients and the war-wounded. They figured the fighting would end soon. 

But about a year later, Sasha joined his family in Madison, where friends helped them get settled. 

“We realized that this war is going to be forever,” Anna said. “I don’t believe that they will stop it.”

The three are among more than 100,000 Ukrainians who’ve been granted Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, because the federal government deems it unsafe to return. The status allows them to live and work in the United States for renewable 18-month stretches.

Almost four years later, they’re still here — and hoping to stay. The war rages on, and they’ve embraced their new home. Varya, 10, now speaks mostly English.

“She doesn’t want to speak Ukrainian anymore,” Anna said in an interview at her Madison apartment building in September. “So for her to go back to school in Ukraine … it’s possible, but it’s going to be really difficult.”

But staying isn’t easy either. Restarting their careers has come with significant personal and financial costs, and there’s no guarantee their efforts will pay off.

Covert cardiologist

Until recently, all foreign-trained physicians seeking to practice medicine in Wisconsin had to pass three licensing board exams — offered only in English — then compete against recent medical school graduates for a three-year residency at a U.S. hospital.  

To Anna, the process seemed daunting. The tests cost around $1,000 each — not counting textbooks and study materials — and she was still taking classes to improve her English. She heard that hospitals preferred recent graduates, and she feared they’d be particularly reluctant to accept someone whose immigration status expires every 18 months.

Meanwhile, she and her husband struggled to find a place to live. The prestige they commanded back home was irrelevant to U.S. landlords running background checks. 

“Could you imagine? I’m in my 40s. I don’t have any credit score … I just got my work permit. I couldn’t find a job,” Anna said. “Nobody wants me. They don’t know who I am (or) what is our culture; everybody’s afraid of us.”

She began applying for research jobs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

 “I don’t know how many interviews I had,” Anna said. “Everybody was so nice, but (they said), ‘You are overqualified for this job.’”

Then the mom of one of her daughter’s soccer teammates mentioned that her employer, SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital, was hiring student sonographers. She encouraged Anna to apply.

The roles are designed for people currently studying medical sonography, but Anna already had the relevant training: Ukrainian doctors regularly do their own sonography. She applied for the job with help from teachers at the Madison nonprofit Literacy Network, where she’d been taking classes to improve her English and prepare for next steps in school or work.

She started the job in 2024, running ultrasounds to aid in medical procedures and to diagnose things like heart attacks, heart murmurs, strokes and birth defects. She was promoted to a full-time position soon after. 

On a typical day, she might see half a dozen patients. She doesn’t tell them she’s a doctor. 

“Nobody knows,” Anna said. 

Some patients get rude when they hear her accent. “I had a couple patients, they told me, ‘Don’t touch me. Call somebody else. I don’t trust you,’” she said.

Once a hospital security officer heard the way a patient spoke to her and urged her to file a report. The hospital sent a letter threatening to deny care if the patient acted that way again. 

“I have a really good experience working here,” Anna said. “I really like my job right now.”

In October, Wisconsin eased requirements for foreign-trained doctors, joining several other physician-strapped states that have recently made such changes, but Anna isn’t sure what the change means for her.

Under the new rules, qualifying foreign-trained physicians can work under the supervision of another physician without repeating residency training if they’ve passed U.S. board exams and have a Wisconsin job offer. 

Anna heard the news from a friend and asked about it at work. 

“I showed this bill to people in the medical field here, and they were just like, ‘Oh, we don’t know,’” Anna said. “So I don’t know how does it work here, or where to go and who to ask.”

It’s also not clear she’d qualify. The new rules require applicants to have practiced medicine in their home country for at least one year in the last five years. She left her job nearly four years ago, and she figures it will likely be a couple years before she passes the board exams. 

Lately, she’s been reading up on the licensing rules in other states and contemplating a move after her husband finishes school.

She wonders if things might have been easier if the family had immigrated to Poland, say, or Italy, instead of the United States. Back in Ukraine, her husband ran a perfusion school certified by the European Board of Cardiovascular Perfusion, and he received his own training in Europe. But she doesn’t think it’s worth emigrating again.

“It doesn’t matter where you go, everything is going to be different,” Anna said. “If I go to Europe, I have to start over. I have to study a new language, and then all of the education and activities for our daughter, and she also has to study a new language. So I just don’t want to do it a second time. I don’t have the energy to do it.”

From professor to pupil

Sasha, meanwhile, decided not to try to become a doctor again. His top priority was perfusion, the field to which he dedicated two doctoral dissertations and decades of work. In the United States, perfusionists don’t need to be doctors, but they do need specialized training.  

“The perfusion specialty board, they do not recognize European diplomas,” Anna said. “They want them to go back to school here. But he’s happy to do it. He was so happy that they admitted him.”

Last fall, he started the two-year master’s degree program at MSOE. 

“This wasn’t about choosing an easier path. Perfusion is a highly specialized and demanding field … This is where my experience is most relevant,” Sasha said, “and it’s work I genuinely value.”

Anna teases him about being so much older than the other students in the program. 

“He’s like a father for all his classmates,” Anna said. “The first day, he brought actual paper, a notebook with different colored pens. His classmates brought just iPads. They were like, ‘What is that? Are you a dinosaur?’”

Paying for tuition for the first semester took most of the couple’s savings, Anna said. Their immigration status makes them ineligible for federal student loans.

She’s not sure how they’ll cover the remaining costs. 

Sasha was also accepted to the perfusion school at ​​State University of New York Upstate Medical University, which offered him a job that would have offset his tuition costs, but he didn’t want to uproot his family again. 

“My daughter would need to change her school, leave her friends,” Sasha said. “You know how important it is for a girl of 10 years, your friends? It’s the most important thing in your life.”

But being in school has meant far less time with her. Since September, Sasha has spent his weekdays in Milwaukee, attending classes and shadowing other perfusionists during surgery. When he’s not in the operating room, he spends the night in a spare room he rents from a friend. 

Back in Madison, Anna is “basically a single mom” five days a week. On Fridays, Sasha drives home to see his family and work on a transplant team at UW Health, where he uses perfusion techniques to keep donated organs alive and healthy until they’re transplanted.

With luck, he’ll move back to Madison after he finishes his coursework in May. He’s hoping to do his second-year rotations at Madison hospitals.

Status: Pending

Back in Kyiv, the couple’s condo stands vacant, full of the things Anna left behind when she packed hurriedly for a few weeks away. 

The high-rise penthouse, located beside the many bridges on Kyiv’s east side, boasts an impressive view of the city and the river — and Russian missile strikes. The couple can’t sell it, or go back, until the war ends. 

“Nobody wants to live on the 27th floor when you don’t have electricity, elevator or water, and you can see rockets and jets in front of your eyes,” Anna said.

Meanwhile, despite the time and money the two doctors have invested in their new lives, their future in the United States is uncertain.

The family’s Temporary Protected Status expired in April, and they still haven’t received an answer on the renewal application they submitted a year ago. 

“The Homeland Security office said that our work permits are still valid (while) we are waiting for their decision,” Anna said. “We’re just waiting to see.” 

If their application is approved, they could be on the hook for thousands of dollars. The Department of Homeland Security announced in October that Ukrainians’ applications, including those already waiting to be processed, will be subject to a new fee of $1,000 per person.

Anna has been looking into other visa options, too. Many foreign doctors practice in the United States on H1-B visas, an employer-sponsored visa for workers with specialized skills. If Sasha can eventually get one of those visas as a perfusionist, Anna will get a work permit, too. But in September, the Trump administration announced a $100,000 fee on most new H1-B visas, raising concerns that employers — including hospitals — will cut back on those visas.

Even if the family is able to renew their status, it will end in October unless the Department of Homeland Security extends Ukraine’s TPS designation. Since President Donald Trump took office last year, his administration ended TPS for immigrants from 10 countries, revoking legal status for more than 1.6 million immigrants, NPR found. 

Anna worries that she and her family could become targets for deportation before they ever get a decision on their application. 

“I don’t feel safe,” Anna said. “When you are waiting, you are legally in the United States, but this new administration and ICE police, they think that you are illegal here.” 

Still, she said, she and Sasha try to stay positive.

“My husband says this is a good opportunity. He feels so young because he is studying as a student, and he says it’s just an adventure,” Anna said. 

She looks for the bright side, too. She points to the support and kindness Americans have shown her and the fact that she’s learned she can survive “without anything.”

“I feel like a homeless person. I feel like Ukraine is not my home anymore, and the United States is not my home yet,” Anna said, “but people are trying to make it feel like home.”

Natalie Yahr reports on pathways to success statewide for Wisconsin Watch, working in partnership with Open Campus. Email her at nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org. 

The transplants: 2 doctors fled Ukraine for Wisconsin. They’re still trying to get their careers back. 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 criticized an argument by Madison and its former city clerk that they shouldn’t be held liable for losing 193 absentee ballots because absentee voting is a “privilege,” writing in a court filing that accepting such an argument would “lead to absurd results.”

The argument is key to the city’s defense against a lawsuit that seeks monetary damages on behalf of the 193 Madison residents whose votes in the November 2024 election weren’t counted. It was first presented by the former clerk, Maribeth Witzel-Behl, citing a provision of state law, and then adopted by the city.

If courts accept the argument that absentee voting is a privilege and not a right, the Democratic governor said in a friend-of-the-court brief, election officials would be free to treat absentee ballots in ways that diminish people’s right to vote. For example, he wrote, they would be under no obligation to send voters replacement ballots if ballots they left in a drop box were damaged, and clerks could effectively disqualify ballots from politically disfavored precincts by intentionally not signing their initials on the ballot envelopes.  

Experts say that for a governor to intervene in such a local matter is rare and underscores how seriously Evers views the potential implications. In an earlier communication with the court, the governor said the argument from the city and Witzel-Behl “ignores longstanding state constitutional protections.”

Barry Burden, a political science professor at UW-Madison, said Democrats are likely conflicted by the case, seeking to prevent election administration failures like those in Madison while also resisting arguments that could weaken protections for absentee voting in Wisconsin.

“They’re in a weird place to be criticizing absentee balloting in Madison, one of the most Democratic cities in the state,” he said, adding that he thinks the governor “is speaking for the Democratic Party in getting involved in this case” to convey that it is an “isolated incident” and that the party does not share the position that “absentee voting should be treated any differently in terms of the protections that are given to voters than people who vote in person.’”

In his filing Friday, the governor noted that about 45% of ballots in the 2024 presidential election were absentee.

“The constitutional right to vote,” Evers wrote, “would mean little if close to half of all voters in Wisconsin were deprived of it because they chose to legally cast an absentee ballot.”

Witzel-Behl, former clerk, stands by the ‘privilege’ defense

The lawsuit against Madison officials is a novel type of case in seeking monetary damages over the loss of voting rights. Liberal law firm Law Forward filed the case against the city and the clerk’s office, along with Witzel-Behl and Deputy Clerk Jim Verbick in their personal capacities, alleging that through a series of errors that  led to 193 absentee ballots getting lost in the November 2024 election, election workers disenfranchised the voters and violated their constitutional rights.

As part of their defense, attorneys for Witzel-Behl argued in a court filing that by choosing to vote absentee, the 193 voters “exercised a privilege rather than a constitutional right,” and that she therefore couldn’t be held financially liable for the lost ballots. Madison later joined that argument.

Law Forward rejected the argument in a response filed in late December, calling it a “shocking proposition.”

Attorneys for the city and the former clerk submitted their own briefs last week.

Attorneys for Witzel-Behl reiterated their argument that absentee voting is a privilege and not a constitutional right, adding that “an error in the handling or delivery of an absentee ballot is not the constitutional equivalent of barring the door to the voting booth.”

While absentee ballots should normally be counted, they argued, not counting them because of an unintentional error isn’t a constitutional violation for which they should be financially liable.

Rather than following court precedent, they said, the plaintiffs seek to create a “new, foundationless doctrine allowing monetary damages for the mishandling of an absentee ballot.”

Other defendants zero in on novel monetary claim

In a separate brief, Verbick, the deputy clerk, said he “does not, of course, dispute that Plaintiffs have a right to vote” but rather alleges that there’s no path for the plaintiffs to seek monetary damages for the city’s error.

The city, in another brief, similarly said that no court case cited by Law Forward allows plaintiffs to seek damages for ballots that are unintentionally mishandled. 

Allowing such claims, outside attorneys for the city warned, would push courts into “dangerous, untested waters.” 

“As other courts have cautioned,” they said, “exposing local election officials to financial liability for unintentional disenfranchisement would thrust courts into the minutia of any given election, a role for which courts are unsuited.”

In a separate statement, the city said it believes that all forms of voting, including absentee voting, should be “encouraged, promoted and protected.” But it argued against attaching a dollar amount to a mishandled vote.

Doing so, it said, “would end up regularly costing cities, towns and municipalities hundreds, thousands — or in this case millions — of dollars that could otherwise be spent improving voter access and elections processes.”  

Absentee voting has changed substantially since law’s enactment

The law cited by Witzel-Behl’s attorneys labeling absentee voting a privilege — one that may require more regulation than in-person voting — dates back to 1985. It was enacted after judges in a series of Wisconsin court cases called for more liberal interpretation of absentee voting rules. While it has previously been used to invalidate absentee ballots on which voters did not follow procedure, it has so far not been used in support of a locality failing to properly count votes.

“Absentee voting has changed so radically in the 40 years since the law was written,” Burden said. “It was used by a very small number of voters, it was more difficult to use, there were more witness requirements at the time, and clerks were not really as amenable to absentee voting as they are today.”

Today, absentee voting is an expected and routine part of elections.

“So to treat it as kind of a special class with different rules or rights, maybe in the 1980s that  made more sense,” Burden said. “But now it’s as important as any other kind of voting and so it seems more peculiar, I think, to treat it in some different way.”

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 Gov. Tony Evers disputes Madison’s argument that absentee voting is a privilege 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.

UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin will be leaving the university at the end of the school year to become president of Columbia University. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)

University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin is set to leave her post at the end of this school year to become the president of Columbia University in New York. 

Mnookin has served as UW-Madison’s chancellor since 2022, leading the university as it has faced pressure from Wisconsin Republicans to end diversity programs as well as cuts to federal research grants and tensions surrounding a pro-Palestine encampment on campus. 

“It has been a true honor to be a part of the Wisconsin family,” Mnookin said in a statement Sunday. “I am proud of what we have accomplished together, even in a challenging period for higher education, and I know great possibilities lie ahead for the UW-Madison campus community.”

After her departure was announced, Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) praised Mnookin’s tenure. 

“Chancellor Mnookin had many great accomplishments during her tenure, such as bringing more free speech to campus and closing its division of DEI,” Vos said in a statement. “I enjoyed working with her as we both wanted students to reach their full potential and have a successful and impactful life after graduation. I wish her nothing but the best and I know that Columbia University will be in great hands with her at the helm.”

Mnookin will be taking over at Columbia as the university has been under a national microscope following pro-Palestine protests and a crackdown by both campus officials and the Trump administration. Last year, Columbia agreed to pay the federal government about $200 million to restore federal funding that had been cut. 

Universities of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman will name an interim chancellor to take the role after Mnookin leaves following spring commencement. The UW system board of regents will launch a search for someone to fill the role permanently. 

“During her tenure, Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin brought unbounded energy, resilience, and deeply thoughtful leadership to this great university. As she now takes on a new opportunity at another prestigious institution, we extend our substantial gratitude for her service and wish her continued success in the years ahead,” Rothman said.

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A 422,000-square-foot Art Deco building overlooking Lake Monona in Madison was the home of state employees for nearly 100 years. It most recently served as the offices of the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. 

Today large “For Sale” signs bookend the historic structure, which sits vacant just a few blocks from the Capitol. A brochure for the property describes redevelopment opportunities such as a boutique hotel or mixed-use space. It also notes its proximity to a potential future commuter rail station in another state-owned building occupied by the Department of Administration.

The sale of the building, announced in December, is merely one piece of a multiyear initiative of Gov. Tony Evers’ administration known as Vision 2030. The plan seeks to make state government smaller and save taxpayers money through “rightsizing” underused office space and supporting hybrid work to grow the number of state workers across the state, according to the Department of Administration. 

Since its launch in 2021, state agencies have sold millions of dollars worth of buildings and consolidated more than 589,000 square feet of office space, nearly 10% of the state’s total building footprint, according to DOA reports. The funds from building sales are used to cover outstanding state debts and then transferred to the state’s general fund. 

“I see this really as a win-win both for state workers and for taxpayers,” DOA Secretary Kathy Blumenfeld said in an interview with Wisconsin Watch. “One of the things that we’re looking at is modernization and how can we be more efficient and be good fiscal stewards for the state.” 

Vision 2030 fits with a long-standing desire by Wisconsin’s leaders of both parties to reduce the physical footprint of state agencies and create a presence outside of Madison. Former Gov. Scott Walker also sought to move state divisions and to seek efficiencies for taxpayers by reducing private leases. Walker’s administration oversaw the construction of a new state office building that opened in Madison in 2018 and is home to eight state agencies today. 

These ideas on building a smaller, modernized state government are likely to continue when Evers leaves office next year. Former Evers Cabinet member Joel Brennan, who led DOA when it launched Vision 2030 in 2021, is one of at least eight Democrats running for governor this year.

Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann, a Republican candidate for governor running against U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, announced in December a “Shrink Madison” plan to require state employees to return to in-person work, sell state office buildings in Madison and eventually move key agencies to different regions across the state. His plan specifically mentions continuing Evers’ Vision 2030 efforts.

But he also goes further to move agencies out of liberal Dane County and into more conservative parts of the state — a potential source of political patronage. Schoemann proposes moving the Department of Veterans Affairs to La Crosse, the Department of Natural Resources to Wausau, the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection to Stevens Point, the Department of Financial Institutions to Green Bay, the Department of Tourism to Rhinelander and the departments of Children and Families and Workforce Development to the Kenosha/Racine area. 

Those moves would take years, but Schoemann in an interview said he sees it as a way to improve the relationships between state government and its citizens. 

“I think this is about people, first, affordability and accountability and changing the culture of state government, which to me, ultimately, is just entirely too focused on itself … and getting it back focused on the people,” Schoemann said. 

Why Vision 2030? 

The Evers administration’s plan grew out of the pandemic when conditions required remote work, deferred maintenance costs for state buildings kept rising, and there was a growing need for workers to fill state jobs — all colliding at the same time. 

“All these things were swirling at one time, and we launched a study in 2021 trying to get our arms around that,” Blumenfeld said. 

Hybrid work opportunities meant state agencies took up less space and could hire workers outside of Madison and Milwaukee, which Blumenfeld refers to as the “Hire Anywhere in Wisconsin” initiative. Remote work also meant the state could get rid of underused office space through consolidation or sales, she said. In Milwaukee, the state sold a former Department of Natural Resources headquarters in 2022 and purchased 2.69 acres for a new office building. But as of last year it planned to work with a private developer to create a multitenant public-private space instead. 

Expected moves in Madison this year include the sale of the former human services building along Lake Monona where offers are due in March. Other expected moves in 2026 include the spring listing of two adjacent general executive offices in downtown Madison, the brutalist GEF 2 and GEF 3 buildings, at a combined total of 391,000 square feet, Blumenfeld said. 

Blumenfeld said DOA has seen limited opposition to building sales and agency moves to reduce office space, but the Republican-led Legislature has pushed back on remote work following the pandemic. Lawmakers have argued that in-person work ensures more accountability for state employees. Evers in October vetoed a Republican bill that would have required state employees to “perform assigned work duties in physical office space for at least 80 percent” of their work time every month. 

“The important progress my administration has made on our Vision 2030 goals means that it would not be possible to return to largely in-office-only work arrangements without leasing more space,” Evers wrote in his veto message. “Or having to re-open buildings that are slated for closure and sale — both of which will cost taxpayers more money.” 

Blumenfeld said she can’t predict what the next governor will do when it comes to government efficiency, but changes in the state’s workforce needs and updates to work spaces are unlikely to slow down.

“Our hope is that we’ve laid a really solid foundation for utilizing space efficiently, effectively, for hiring the best talent, for bringing in people from all over the state and bringing family-sustaining jobs to all 72 counties,” Blumenfeld said. 

Wisconsin’s next governor

Wisconsin voters will choose the next governor later this year, with primary contests in August and the general election in November. 

Other than Schoemann’s plan, gubernatorial campaigns that responded to questions from Wisconsin Watch shared different perspectives on how they would address state government’s size and efficiency.   

Tiffany, the Northwoods congressman and Schoemann’s primary opponent, said he supported then-Gov. Walker’s move of the DNR’s forestry division to Rhinelander when he served in the Legislature, but his goal is focused on rooting out “waste, fraud and duplication” in state government. 

“I’ve supported changes like that when they make sense, but my focus is making government smaller, more accountable, and more efficient, not just rearranging the furniture,” Tiffany said.

Among Democratic candidates, plans for state government include making sure state agencies are effectively helping Wisconsinites and that citizens can access resources. 

“Mandela Barnes’ priority as Governor is to deliver for Wisconsin families and lower costs — which includes ensuring state agencies are serving communities effectively, are spending taxpayer dollars efficiently, and that Wisconsinites in every corner of the state can access the services they rely on,” Cole Wozniak, a spokesperson for the Barnes campaign, said in a statement. 

Brennan, who helped develop Vision 2030, in a statement said state government should continue to work for and be led by Wisconsinites. 

“Any conversation about the future footprint of state government should start with access, effectiveness, and responsible use of taxpayer dollars,” Brennan said. 

Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, said the state should invest in modernizing its technology so agencies can deliver better services to citizens across the state. Republicans in the Legislature have pursued a “fiscally irresponsible starvation of government for decades,” she said.  

“There’s a huge opportunity to make state government work better and deliver better outcomes for people at lower cost to taxpayers,” Roys said. “But it does take that upfront investment and political capital, frankly, to say it’s actually worth spending a little money to save bigger in the long run.” 

Wisconsin’s state building footprint is shrinking. Candidates for governor have different ideas about what’s next is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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The city of Madison and its former clerk are arguing in court that they can’t be sued for failing to count 193 absentee ballots in the 2024 presidential election, in part because a Wisconsin law calls absentee voting a privilege, not a constitutional right. 

That legal argument raises questions about how much protection absentee voters have against the risk of disenfranchisement — and could reignite a recent debate over whether the law calling absentee voting a privilege is itself unconstitutional.

That law, which appears to be uncommon outside of Wisconsin, has been cited repeatedly in recent years in attempts to impose more requirements and restrictions on absentee voting, and, at times, disqualify absentee ballots on which the voters have made errors. It does not appear to have been invoked to absolve election officials for errors in handling correctly cast ballots.

Nonetheless, the law has become central to the defense presented by Madison and its former clerk, Maribeth Witzel-Behl, in a novel lawsuit seeking monetary damages on behalf of the voters whose ballots went missing. 

The suit, filed by the law firm Law Forward, names the city and the clerk’s office as defendants, along with Witzel-Behl and Deputy Clerk Jim Verbick in their personal capacities, and cites a series of errors after the 2024 election that led to the ballots not being counted in alleging that they violated voters’ constitutional rights. 

In defending against that claim, attorneys for Witzel-Behl argued in a court filing that by choosing to vote absentee, the 193 disenfranchised voters “exercised a privilege rather than a constitutional right.”

Witzel-Behl’s filing argues that the 193 disenfranchised voters did, in fact, exercise their right to vote, but chose to vote absentee and therefore place the ballots into an administrative system that “can result in errors.”

“The fact that Plaintiffs’ ballots were not counted is unfortunate,” the filing states. “But it is the result of human error, not malice. And that human error was not a violation of the Plaintiffs’ constitutional right to vote.” 

Matthew W. O’Neill, an attorney representing Witzel-Behl, declined to comment.

The city’s attorneys have now adopted the same argument, filings show. 

Asked about the city’s legal defense, current Madison clerk Lydia McComas didn’t address the argument directly but told Votebeat that the city is committed to counting all eligible votes “regardless of how they are cast.”

Phil Keisling, a former Oregon secretary of state, said he wasn’t aware of other states with similar laws. He said he found the city’s argument wrong and offensive. 

“The right to vote, if there is a state constitutional right to vote, should have nothing to do with the form that a voter chooses,” he said.

Law passed to clarify absentee voting requirements

The law that Madison cites in its legal defense was enacted in 1985, long before absentee voting became widespread. The stricter language about the regulation of absentee voting came after judges in a series of Wisconsin court cases called for more liberal interpretation of those regulations.

The law states that while voting is a constitutional right, “voting by absentee ballot is a privilege exercised wholly outside the traditional safeguards of the polling place.” A subsequent provision states that absentee ballots that do not follow required procedures “may not be counted.”

The law appears similar to a 1969 U.S. Supreme Court decision that drew a distinction between the right to vote and the right to receive absentee ballots. That decision has since been interpreted — and misinterpreted — in a “number of ways by a number of people wanting to trim back mail voting,” said Justin Levitt, an election law professor at Loyola Marymount University.

After the Wisconsin law was enacted, the state election board clarified the Legislature’s position that failing to comply with procedures for absentee ballot applications and voting would result in ballots not being counted. The board did not suggest the law could be used to excuse municipalities that improperly discard legally cast ballots.

Absentee voting has long been available in Wisconsin but surged in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic and has been extensively litigated since then.

The law calling absentee voting a privilege was central to a lawsuit that resulted in a 2022 statewide ban on ballot drop boxes; another lawsuit to prohibit voters from being able to spoil ballots and vote with a new one; and President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election outcome in Wisconsin.

A later lawsuit led to the reinstatement of drop boxes in 2024. In that case, plaintiffs argued that the law “unconstitutionally degrades the voting rights of all absentee voters by increasing the risk of disenfranchisement.” The court, then led by liberal justices, declined to overturn the statute but disagreed with an earlier interpretation that absentee voting requires heightened skepticism.

Experts say Madison’s defense misinterprets the law

Rick Hasen, a professor at UCLA Law School and expert on election law, said he didn’t think the law itself was problematic, adding that states have various laws controlling absentee voting. The U.S. Constitution, he noted, doesn’t require any state to offer absentee voting.

But “once the state gives someone the opportunity to vote by mail,” he said, “then they can’t — as a matter of federal constitutional law — deprive that person of their vote because they chose a method that the state didn’t have to offer.”

The city and Witzel-Behl’s use of the law in this instance “seems to be wrong,” Hasen said.

Attorneys for Law Forward in a court filing called Witzel-Behl’s argument a “shocking proposition.”

“There is no right to vote if our votes are not counted,” Law Forward staff attorney Scott Thompson told Votebeat. “And this is the only case I’m aware of where a municipal government has argued otherwise.” 

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

This coverage is made possible through Votebeat, a nonpartisan news organization covering local election administration and voting access. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Madison’s defense in missing ballot case: Absentee voting is a ‘privilege,’ not a right is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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This story was produced in partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Investigative Journalism class taught in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

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• The state reported five deaths from people falling through the ice on Wisconsin lakes last winter, compared with seven over the previous five years.

• There were 10 Madison lake rescues the previous two winters (plus another one in the last week of December 2025) after only one in 2023.

• More dangerous ice conditions are having a negative effect on businesses and tourism.

When Alec Hembree fell through the ice on Lake Wingra last winter, he remembered, “it was instantaneous.”

It was just after dark on Jan. 20. The temperature was around 2 degrees. Hembree was riding his bike across the frozen lake from his work on Madison’s east side to his home on the west side, a commute he had tried successfully for the first time the previous week. When he fell in, his feet couldn’t touch the bottom. He barely had time to be scared.

“I think there were a couple people on the lake,” Hembree said. “They wouldn’t have been able to get to me before I got out.”

The air was so cold, Hembree’s leather gloves immediately froze to the icy surface of the lake when he tried to pull himself out. After about 30 seconds in the water, he was able to pull himself and his bike out. It all happened so fast, he wasn’t sure how he did it. He thinks his training from being an Eagle Scout helped. 

“Everything was in an ice shell at that point,” he said. He biked 10 minutes to a co-worker’s house, where he used a hair dryer to thaw his jacket zipper and get out of his frozen clothes before his co-worker gave him a ride home.

Hembree’s experience is becoming more common on Wisconsin’s lakes. For some, falls prove deadly. The Department of Natural Resources last winter recorded five people statewide who died falling through the ice on off-highway vehicles across the state. Between 2020 and 2024, similar accidents accounted for a total of seven deaths.

According to the Madison Fire Department, the Lake Rescue Team was dispatched four times to rescue people who fell through the ice in 2025 and six times in 2024, though only once in 2023. Through the end of 2025, the department had responded to 39 incidents of people falling through the ice since 2016. On Dec. 27 (as this story was being finalized for publication) the department rescued another individual who had fallen through the ice on Lake Mendota.

But those are only the incidents where the Lake Rescue Team was dispatched, so the stories of Hembree and others who fell through the ice and managed to escape aren’t included.

“This (past) year has probably been one of the more dangerous years on ice that I can remember,” said Lt. Jacob Holsclaw, the Wisconsin DNR’s off-highway vehicle administrator.

Treading on Wisconsin’s frozen lakes has gotten more dangerous, creating cost for taxpayers and business owners and calling into question the future of an important state pastime.

A growing trend

Trekking on Dane County’s frozen lakes is a common winter activity for southern Wisconsin residents.

“Walking on frozen lakes” was the most common activity on the lakes among respondents to a 2010 Dane County Land & Water Resources Department survey. At 28%, that was more common than swimming, kayaking, boating, or fishing from a boat or pier. Other ice-related activities such as skating and fishing were more popular than water skiing, jet skiing and sailing. The study authors estimated that close to 110,000 Dane County residents — more than a fifth of the population — walked on the county’s frozen water bodies at least once in 2010.

The heavy usage of the frozen lakes provides a revenue stream for numerous Dane County businesses and nonprofits. For example, the Clean Lakes Alliance hosts the annual Frozen Assets Festival, in which hundreds of participants take part in a fundraising 5K on frozen Lake Mendota and others enjoy scientific demonstrations, ice skating, kiting, boating and other ice-related activities.

But the future of frozen recreation in Dane County is in peril. Madison winters are getting shorter and less predictable. And falls through the ice are becoming more common.

Ron Blumer, a Madison Fire Department division chief who heads the department’s Lake Rescue Team and has been with the city since 1995, said in recent years his team has conducted “a lot more responses” to calls to rescue people who fell through the ice.

Part of the uptick can be attributed to climate change and the shrinking number of days of 100% ice cover on the Yahara lakes. Since 1855, when the Wisconsin State Climatology Office began consistently tracking Lake Mendota’s freezing and thawing dates, the lake has stayed frozen for an average of 102 days every winter. But only in four of the last 25 years has Mendota been frozen that long. During the 2023-24 winter, the lake was frozen for 44 days — a more than 20-year low. Last winter it froze for 69 days.

There’s no ‘safe’ ice

While information about how thick ice should be for walking or driving varies between sources, there is some consensus: No ice is ever completely safe.

“We really shy away from saying that there’s ever any ice that’s 100% safe,” Holsclaw said. The DNR’s website offers no hard and fast rules for what’s considered a “safe” thickness.

“You cannot judge the strength of ice by one factor like its appearance, age, thickness, temperature or whether the ice is covered with snow,” the website reads. “Ice strength is based on a combination of several factors.”

Air temperature is just one of those factors. But others include wind, sunlight, whether the ice is near a spring or other moving water, and whether the ice is frozen water (black ice) or mixed with snow (white ice).

“Black ice can withstand a lot more force (than white ice),” said Adrianna Gorsky, a freshwater and marine sciences Ph.D. candidate at UW-Madison. “Even if you have really thick white ice, it might not be as strong as if you had black ice only.”

Fluctuations in temperature during winter can also have a marked effect on ice thickness and quality. In January and February of 2025, it wasn’t uncommon for temperatures to fluctuate by tens of degrees within a single week in Dane County. On Jan. 21, the day after Hembree fell through the ice, Madison temperatures were in the single digits. A week later, on Jan. 28, the high temperature was 49 degrees. This frequent melting and thawing back and forth, Gorsky said, could result in mixed layers of black and white ice that would compromise the ice’s structural integrity.

Variations in temperature can also make lake ice expand or contract, causing pressure heaves or large cracks to form in the surface of the ice.

“And there will be a gap in there where there’s thin ice or no ice at all,” said Jon Mast, a lieutenant on MFD’s Lake Rescue team. These areas can be especially dangerous to walk near.

For as much that is known about factors affecting ice thickness and qualities, “there is a lot of unknown,” said Gorsky. That’s because winter limnology is relatively understudied compared to other areas of marine science.

“There’s a lot of things we still don’t know and a lot of theory that we’ve based off summer open water season that doesn’t really hold true for winter,” Gorsky said.

Increasingly visible effects of climate change on lake ice have precipitated “a cry for more research” in winter limnology, Gorsky added. And it can’t come soon enough. Because falls through the ice are costing local businesses, nonprofits and taxpayers money.

The cost of thin ice

In Madison, there are no fines associated with being rescued from falling through the ice. Because, Blumer said, “we want people to enjoy the lakes and to have fun.” But that fun still comes at a cost.

Businesses and organizations that rely on the ice for income are feeling the strain of weakening lake ice too.

In 2024 the Clean Lakes Alliance canceled all on-ice events for its Frozen Assets Festival, including the annual 5K. According to Sarah Skwirut, the Clean Lakes Alliance’s marketing coordinator, only around 200 participants participated in the on-land “winter workout” the organization hosted in lieu of the 5K, down from 800 who ran the 5K the previous winter, which generated around $30,000 for the nonprofit.

“If the lack of ice becomes more common in the future,” Skwirut said in an email, “we will need to adapt and find new ways to engage the community and promote our work.”

Small businesses are equally if not more affected by the phenomenon. In 2022, Pat Hasburgh purchased D&S Bait and Tackle in Madison, “very aware of what I was getting myself into as far as climate change and running a business that kind of depends on ice,” Hasburgh said. He admitted the recent, mercurial winters have made it difficult to plan for the ice fishing season.

“I mean, I had a pile of augers waist high in 2022,” Hasburgh said, citing that people are less likely to need such a high-powered tool to break through the ice in warmer winters. And 2024 was even worse.

“We had four weeks of ice, as opposed to three months,” he said. “That was a rough one to try to make it through as a business.” Hasburgh is used to around a third of D&S’s business coming from ice fishing, but guessed that it was probably less than a quarter in 2024.

Beyond Madison

The increase in falls through the ice is easier to see in a populous part of the state like Dane County. But the trend is apparent across Wisconsin. And in many cases, the cost is more than just lost business or an icy bike ride.

The five deaths this past winter happened in Pewaukee, Kenosha, Fond du Lac, Superior and Westfield, an hour north of Madison, where a man died on Jan. 6 after falling through the ice on Lawrence Lake while riding a UTV.

In a Facebook post, the Marquette County Sheriff’s Office urged the public “to avoid venturing onto frozen lakes or rivers unless they have confirmed the ice is thick enough for safe activities.”

The temperature in Westfield on Jan. 6 was below freezing and had been every day the previous week.

An October 2024 study published in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment warned that lakes between 40 and 45 degrees north latitude — a range that includes all of Wisconsin south of Wausau — could lose all safe ice for the winter sometime this century.

A solution may lie in more research. Gorsky said predicting the future of what winter is going to look like for lakes “is a really big research topic.”

For Hembree’s part, he considers himself lucky to be alive. But he has “no concerns” about going back on the ice. He’s enjoying it while he still can.

“If I do go out commuting on the lake again I will be, certainly, more cautious,” he said.

On thin ice: Falls through the ice on Wisconsin lakes are becoming more common. There’s more than just warm weather to blame. 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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• Undergraduate students can major in public policy starting in fall 2026.

• Officials say that it’s the first public policy major in Wisconsin and that it may be the only one in the country focused on teaching students how to engage in civil dialogue and find common ground. 

• More and more students were interested in undergraduate certificates from the La Follette School of Public Affairs, which caused leaders to investigate whether there would be demand for a major. 

• Students will learn how to use curiosity to connect with people, as well as how to evaluate the effectiveness of policies.

At a time when American politics are increasingly polarized and partisan, the University of Wisconsin-Madison is launching a new undergraduate major focused on working across those divides to create evidence-based public policy. 

The public policy major, debuting in fall 2026, is the first undergraduate major from the La Follette School of Public Affairs. The Wisconsin Legislature created the school in 1983 to educate future public servants for state and local government. In 2019, after decades of offering only graduate programs, the school added undergraduate certificates — UW-Madison’s version of a minor — in public policy and later in health policy.

Today, they’re among the most popular certificates on campus, said La Follette School Director Susan Webb Yackee. The animosity and gridlock that plague American politics hasn’t discouraged students. In fact, she thinks it’s only made them more interested. 

“This could be a time when our young people are running away from our policy problems, but many of them are running toward them,” Yackee said, noting that she’s seen particular interest in policies about health, environment and climate change. 

With the new major, those young people will have the option to make public policy their primary focus. School leaders say that it’s the first public policy major in Wisconsin and that it may be the only one in the country focused on teaching students how to engage in civil dialogue and find common ground. 

Those are the skills society needs today, Yackee said.

“In a 50-50 state like Wisconsin, in a 50-50 country like the United States, we won’t be able to solve our big public policy problems by simply taking the point of view that one might agree with,” Yackee said. “We will have to work across the political aisle to make real change.”

Yackee spoke to Wisconsin Watch about how she hopes the new program will transform students, campus and the future of policymaking in the United States.  

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

What exactly is public policy, and how is it different from political science?

Public policy is the study of government institutions as well as decision making that affects everyone’s lives. That differs from political science in the sense that we’re interested in not just the politics of how those decisions get made, but also whether public policies that go into effect work or not. Evaluating what works and what doesn’t in existing public policy, as well as predicting what kinds of policies may work and why, is a terrifically important part of our faculty research, as well as the classes that students take….

I’m a political scientist, but most of our faculty at the La Follette School are economists. They’re oftentimes much more focused on … Does that policy work? How is it different than policies in other states? If there’s a policy change, did that change actually match what legislators or practitioners wanted to see happen? 

Why did the faculty decide to focus the new curriculum on civil dialogue and finding common ground?

Our mission is evidence-based policymaking, and we quickly identified that to get to our mission, people had to be able to sit down in the same room and talk about it. You have to be able to talk before you can talk about evidence … That was a need we felt we could serve particularly well within our major … That’s also a skill that a lot of our undergraduate students on campus, who might not be public policy majors, could also benefit from. 

For some people, this feels like a sort of dismal time for politics or public policy. What are you hearing from students about why they’re interested in public policy and what kinds of problems they want to solve?

It’s absolutely true that politics and our current public policy atmosphere turns off a lot of people right now. But very interestingly, we’re seeing huge student engagement in public policy on campus …

A lot of UW-Madison students are interested in working in the nonprofit sector. Many nonprofits need to be able to evaluate their programs to see if they work or not … We teach classes in: How would we understand the goals of the program? How would we quantify them? … So the kind of skills-based classes that we teach have a lot of translation into other fields beyond just government service. 

Do you hear students expressing frustration with politicians today? 

I think there’s a lot of frustration with inaction, and I think that’s normal for traditionally aged college students. Is that any different today than it was in the 1970s or the 1950s? They’re impatient for change, and good for them. I am too, and I love their impatience. 

Let me give you a concrete example of a class I taught … It was for students to do applied policy analysis with real-world clients. This class happened to have three real-world clients, and they were all sitting Wisconsin legislators…

The first day of class was me saying, “Some of you are going to get assigned to work with a Republican (client), and some of you are going to get assigned to work with a Democrat … and if that’s a problem for you in this class, then you ought not to take it, because we are going to provide the best nonpartisan analysis that we can possibly provide to these elected members so that they can make the best decisions they can make for our state.” 

It was sort of like a pin drop when I said that. Nobody dropped the class. Those students did a fabulous job … A lot of those students were bio majors or chem majors — they weren’t political science majors. They did these reports on these topics, and some of them have now been passed into state law. So they were part of the ecosystem which created real change. 

The students … (also) testified in one of the Senate committee rooms in the Wisconsin Legislature… They presented. They were asked questions. Afterwards, one of the students came up to grab me and said, “Dr. Yackee, this is the professional thrill of my lifetime” …

That class is sort of a nutshell of what we’re hoping to accomplish in this undergraduate major.

What do we know about how to promote civil dialogue and find common ground and about how to teach people to do that?

One of the things that we know about teaching classes on talking across the political divide is the importance of establishing ground rules in terms of how those conversations are going to take place. One of our current faculty members, Associate Professor Amber Wichowsky, very much emphasizes curiosity. One of the ground rules for her classes is you need to be curious about how and why people feel differently than yourself … 

It’s innate human behavior to put people in different camps of “us” and “them” … If we come into conversations with that framing, we will not be successful. If we come in with a framing of curiosity and an openness to new perspectives and ideas — it is not that we’re looking to change people’s values, but we are looking to humanize the other because that is one step toward being able to listen to other people’s points of view and work across the political divide.

Free speech on campus is a hot topic these days. How do you hope the major and the skills that you’re providing students might create the kind of environment that you’d like to see on campus? 

Great question. I think of it like my bicep: I don’t work out as much as I should, but the more I work out that muscle, the stronger it gets. I think we don’t have enough opportunities for students to engage with people that are different than them and think differently than them.

Let me submit that a university is a place of ideas, so the most important kind of diversity is the diversity of ideas. It should be a fundamental job of ours to encourage those interactions … We’re going to do that in our classes, but we’re also going to do that by hosting politicians and practitioners and journalists that have different points of view. We’ve done that now for years, and we will continue to do that. 

So if this major is successful, how do you picture the campus will be different?

We hope that it would provide an outlet for students who are interested in applied politics and policy and careers in that space to have a fuller and richer UW-Madison educational experience … 

If we can position students with (these) skills … and they can be trained and ready to go when our country arguably needs them more than ever, then we will have done our job as educators, but we’ll also have done our job in promoting the Wisconsin Idea in a really important way. 

Have a question about jobs or job training in Wisconsin? Or want to tell a reporter about your struggle to find the right job or the right workers? Email reporter Natalie Yahr, nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org, or call or text her at 608-616-0752‬.

Yahr reports on pathways to success statewide for Wisconsin Watch, working in partnership with Open Campus.

New UW-Madison major will teach students to bridge partisan divides 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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As a 19-year-old election worker in Hennepin County, Minnesota, Lydia McComas discovered how meaningful it was to help voters navigate the process. Less than a decade later, she’s the city clerk in Madison, Wisconsin, overseeing one of the most scrutinized election offices in the state and working to rebuild trust after last year’s ballot mishandling scandal. 

Between those two points, McComas followed an unusually direct path: a college internship supporting elections planning, then a full-time job in a county elections office along with a graduate program in election administration.

She’s part of an emerging generation of officials who set out early and very intentionally, through internships and university training, to make a career out of election work. Driving this movement toward professionalized election administration are veterans of the field who recognize the need to replace retiring clerks and have spent years creating a stronger, more sustainable pipeline.

Together they are transforming a profession once dominated by civic-minded volunteers and on-the-job learners.

“I’d love for more young people to get involved with election administration and explore it as a future career,” McComas told Votebeat in an interview. 

For now, McComas is an outlier in Wisconsin: At 28, she’s among the youngest to hold a municipal clerk position — and one of the few who pursued the election profession, on purpose, from the outset. Nearly 80% of the state’s chief election officials are over 50, and fewer than half have a college degree or higher, according to the Elections & Voting Information Center. 

Her rise comes amid historic turnover that highlights the urgency of developing the pipeline of election officials: Between 2020 and 2024, more than 700 of Wisconsin’s municipal clerks left their posts, the highest churn in the nation.

The new generation is fully aware that the job has changed since many of those veteran clerks started, said EVIC research director Paul Manson, with their work under closer public examination and intense political pressure.

McComas’ expertise will be tested

McComas’ new role is about more than elections — she’ll take meeting minutes, process licenses and handle business registrations, among other duties. But her expertise is connecting with voters, the media and community partners and explaining complex election procedures in layman’s terms.

That expertise will be tested immediately in Madison, where trust in the city’s election office is still mending after last year’s controversy over 193 missing ballots. The fallout — investigations, a civil lawsuit, and the suspension and resignation of longtime clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl — left voters demanding transparency.

“There’s pressure to make sure that everything works well, that the public trusts us,” McComas said. She knows the climb will be steep. Most of the staff who weathered that turbulent year remain, seasoned administrators now adapting to greater public scrutiny.

The glare of attention on Madison, she said, mirrors the national reality for election administrators everywhere — their jobs are increasingly under the spotlight of polarization and doubt.

“Last year was really tough, and next year is tough,” McComas said, noting the four statewide elections ahead in 2026. 

An early start in the workings of elections

People take different paths into election administration. Milwaukee’s chief election official, Paulina Gutiérrez, came from public safety and legislative work, while Green Bay Clerk Celestine Jeffreys was the mayor’s chief of staff. Others arrive from outside government — teachers, bankers or longtime poll workers who worked their way up.

McComas’ journey into this world started early. As a kid in Minneapolis, she tagged along with her parents to the polls, filling out mock ballots and proudly wearing an “I will vote” sticker. She also joined them knocking on doors for get-out-the-vote drives. Those formative experiences led her to study political science at the University of Minnesota, volunteer on campaigns and intern for U.S. Sen. Al Franken.

Her time on campaigns confirmed that the partisan side of politics wasn’t for her. “I was used to talking to people regardless of their party,” McComas said. “Working for candidates and not doing that just felt wrong.”

Her first job in elections was a college internship with Hennepin County in 2017, supporting the election department on planning, updating training manuals and legislative priorities. McComas was struck by the precision required in running elections and wanted to devote her career to it, she said.

After graduating, she joined Hennepin County Elections full time, first as a general election administrator and then specializing in voter engagement for a jurisdiction of 700,000 voters in and around Minneapolis. She helped voters get registered and answered questions about voting during a pandemic.

She also oversaw compliance with election laws and developed training for poll workers.

Meanwhile, she pursued a graduate certificate in election administration from the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs.

She was hired in Madison in August.

A new era for training for election officials

Academic programs like the one McComas followed, focusing on elections as a career path, are more common today, but still rare at most universities, where public affairs education focuses more on city management, emergency planning and public health, said Tammy Patrick, chief program officer at the National Association of Election Officials and a longtime election administration educator.

The ones that exist are growing: The University of Minnesota’s election program had just over 50 enrollees in 2017. In 2025, there were over 200. In addition to the Humphrey School, Auburn University offers a graduate certificate in election administration, and Northern Arizona University now provides an undergraduate program.

Meanwhile, 43 states, including Wisconsin, have other types of programs to train local election officials, a Bipartisan Policy Center analysis found. Wisconsin is also among the 22 states offering training specific to new election officials. The Arizona Secretary of State’s Arizona Fellows program places students in county election offices, boosting interest in election work and helping offices engage younger, more diverse voters.

Patrick, who has taught at the Humphrey School since 2016, sees an urgent need to formalize the field and promote it to youth because so many older clerks are retiring.

“It’s just not on anyone’s radar as an option,” Patrick said, “and I think that that’s part of the work we need to do as a profession, which is particularly challenging in this environment, because now people are aware of election administration for all the wrong reasons.”

Formalizing the pipeline might be even harder for Wisconsin, where most municipal clerks work part time, and most who work full time spend much of the year working on things besides elections.

McComas said that both Madison and Hennepin County try to do local outreach to universities and have interns to promote election administration as a career path.

Still, she finds herself explaining to many people that running elections is a full-time job, not just a poll-working gig for several days a year.

McComas says she’s prepared for challenge in Madison

In Madison, McComas said her first goal is to rebuild trust. 

She plans to draw on her voter engagement background to make that happen. Under interim clerk Mike Haas, the city overhauled many of the systems that failed in the 2024 election, but those improvements, she said, went largely unnoticed because there wasn’t a strong communications plan.

“Next year,” she said, “we will be able to show the public that we are transparent and that we are answering any questions.”

Although her career doesn’t go back decades, McComas said her experience has prepared her for this moment. Her graduate certificate program gave her a broader perspective, she said, and helped reaffirm her commitment to the role. 

Beyond school, McComas said the work — and the people she met in Hennepin County — sparked a lasting passion for election administration. Surrounded by colleagues who shared her dedication and curiosity, she found a community she wanted to be part of for the long haul.

“I knew I wanted to devote my career to that work,” she said.

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

This coverage is made possible through Votebeat, a nonpartisan news organization covering local election administration and voting access. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

New Madison clerk typifies movement to professionalize election administration 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 version of this story was originally published by WPR.

Thousands of protesters across the state joined the second wave of nationwide “No Kings” protests on Saturday.

The protests were held in cities and rural communities in all parts of Wisconsin. Protesters said they hoped to bring attention to what they call an authoritarian power grab by President Donald Trump.

In Milwaukee, crowds at Cathedral Square Park chanted and marched. Many held signs making fun of the president; some wore costumes — a frog suit, an inflatable Cookie Monster — joining a trend that began during protests of immigration raids in Portland, Oregon. There were many American flags, upright and upside down, along with flags of other nations.

Chad Bowman, a member of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community or Mohican Nation, donned a ceremonial ribbon shirt and part of his dancing regalia. Bowman says he is proud to be an American. 

“I’m Native, and I believe in this country,” Bowman said. “I believe in democracy, and Trump and his cronies are ruining it.”

A Milwaukee protester wearing an inflatable unicorn costume and swinging an American flag said she dressed that way “because it’s ridiculous to suggest that we’re criminals, or illegal or terrorists.” She said her name was Mary but declined to give her full name, fearing retaliation for her participation in the protests. She said she has family members who are federal employees who are not working due to the ongoing federal government shutdown.

“They can’t stand not being able to do what they are … passionate about doing for the American people,” she said.

In Madison, thousands marched from McPike Park on their way to the state Capitol. Many carried American flags as a marching band played.

Joe Myatt of Janesville carried a sign bearing a quote from Thomas Jefferson. He said he’s concerned about the “shift towards authoritarianism” in the U.S. and around the world.

“Basically, Trump’s trying to consolidate as much force into the office of the presidency and he’s violating the Constitution by doing it,” Myatt said. 

Parto Shahidi of Madison said she showed up at the protest to support freedom and democracy. Shahidi said those rights are the reason she came to the U.S. from Iran 30 years ago.

“I became a U.S. citizen just for that,” she said. “And if I want to lose it, I will go back home — there is no freedom there.”

And as in Milwaukee, many protesters posed for photos in inflatable get-ups. That included multiple people dressed as frogs, and Leo Thull of McFarland, who wore a hot dog suit.

“Seeing America slowly descend into fascism is terrifying,” he said. “But with fascists like these, I feel like the greatest power we have is to be more ridiculous than they are. That’s why I’m dressed up as a hot dog today.”

Donna Miazga of Waunakee carried a sign that said “They blame immigrants so you won’t blame billionaires.”

She said she’s been disturbed to by “Gestapo”-like images of arrests by masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who “take people without due process.”

“I feel like it’s just about splitting us in two and fostering hate toward people who are even the slightest bit different,” Miazga said of the Trump’s approach to immigration.

The last major nationwide No Kings protest was in June, when as many as 5 million people took to the streets, including thousands in Milwaukee and an estimated 15,000 in Madison.

As in the case of earlier protests, communities throughout the state hosted demonstrations and marches. National organizers boasted that more than 2,700 events are planned nationwide, including in Wisconsin from Superior to Kenosha.

In Appleton, hundreds lined the streets of downtown. Organizers said nearly 1,000 people attended in the Door County community of Juddville. In the Wausau area, as many as 1,000 protesters lined Rib Mountain Drive. Protesters demonstrated in Janesville, Spooner, Waupaca and Rhinelander, among dozens of other locations.

In Rice Lake, which has a population of about 9,000, more than 700 people attended a rally, said organizer Mark Sherman — including some in frog, unicorn, shark and fairy costumes.

“We had a fun, peaceful, beautiful rally on a beautiful day,” said Sherman, 76, of Rice Lake.

He noted that he and a fellow Rice Lake organizer are both veterans, and said they were moved to get involved because of the oath they took to defend the U.S. Constitution.

Organizers of the rallies include labor unions, local Democratic Party chapters and aligned advocacy groups. The national organizers say the goal of the protests is to build a nonviolent movement to “remind the world America has no kings and the power belongs to the people.”

Republican leaders including House Speaker Mike Johnson have called the events “hate America rallies.” On social media, Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden called the event “Election Denier Fest 2025.”

Editor’s note: WPR’s Rob Mentzer contributed to this story.

Wisconsinites protest Trump administration at ‘No Kings’ rallies — with signs and unicorn suits 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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• Incoming undergraduates to UW-Madison will have to fill out the CSS Profile to apply for institutional financial aid.  

• The form is available starting Oct. 1. 

• The CSS Profile will not replace the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), which means new freshmen and transfer students will have to fill out both forms. 

• Wisconsin Watch and the Cap Times spoke to UW officials about why they are adding the form, as well as nonprofit leaders who have concerns about the move.

Students applying to the University of Wisconsin-Madison will soon need to complete a second, longer financial aid application if they want a share of the millions of dollars in financial aid the university gives out each year.  

Starting this fall, UW-Madison will require applicants to fill out the CSS Profile, an online application used by around 270 colleges, universities and scholarship programs to award institutional aid, separate from a different form used to apply for federal financial aid. Students can start working on their CSS Profile Oct. 1. 

Many colleges that use the CSS Profile are private. Others are highly selective public universities, such as the University of Michigan and the University of Virginia. In Wisconsin, two private schools also use the application: Beloit College and Lawrence University.  

UW-Madison says requiring the application will help direct funds to students who are most in need, but some student advocates worry the extra step could hinder the very students the university aims to help.  

Wisconsin Watch and the Cap Times teamed up to find out what students and their families need to know about this new requirement.

Who needs to complete the CSS Profile?  

Only incoming undergraduate students at UW-Madison who are U.S. citizens or eligible noncitizens must complete the CSS Profile to be considered for institutional financial aid. This group includes both new freshmen and transfer students.  

Continuing students and new graduate students don’t need to complete the form. The university encourages them to complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, which guides eligibility for federal assistance.   

Does the CSS Profile replace the FAFSA? 

No. The FAFSA is used to apply for financial aid awarded by the U.S. government, including Pell grants and federal student loans. That form was simplified in recent years to make it easier for families to fill out, despite hiccups during the rollout process. Students who want to apply for federal aid still need to complete the FAFSA each year.  

The CSS Profile is a supplement to the FAFSA, said Taylor Odle, an assistant professor who studies education policy at UW-Madison. The application is run by the College Board, the not-for-profit membership organization that makes the Advanced Placement exams and SAT college admissions test. 

The CSS Profile helps colleges decide how to allocate their own financial aid and scholarship funds by gathering a more detailed picture of a student’s finances than the FAFSA offers. For instance, the application asks about medical debt and about businesses an applicant’s family may have.  

“If you’re a low-income student, while completing the CSS Profile is an additional step for you, it is often potentially in your best interest because it paints the truest picture,” Odle said. 

How much does it cost to complete the CSS Profile? 

UW-Madison applicants will be required to pay a $25 fee to complete the form. But that fee is automatically waived for applicants with a household income below $100,000. 

What’s the deadline for UW-Madison applicants to submit the CSS Profile? 

UW-Madison recommends students applying for the 2026-27 school year submit the CSS Profile by Dec. 1, 2025. Students may submit the form after that date, but December is the deadline for priority consideration for funds. 

Why is UW-Madison now requiring the CSS Profile? 

UW-Madison previously used the FAFSA to allocate all types of financial aid, said Phil Asbury, executive director of the university’s student financial aid office. The CSS Profile will allow UW-Madison to more specifically target university resources toward certain students, especially after the FAFSA recently got shorter, he said. 

“We’re really fortunate in that we have more students coming from low-income families or lower-income families each year. Those are really good things, and we want that to continue,” Asbury said. “But we also want to help as many families as we can, and so this will help us to better focus those funds on the families that need it the most.” 

Asbury worked with the CSS Profile in his previous positions at Northwestern University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While he doesn’t expect the form will be a struggle for UW-Madison applicants, he recognizes it’s an additional step. 

“If families know they will only qualify for a federal loan, or maybe they know they’re Pell Grant eligible and that’s all they need to go to school, then they can continue to only do the FAFSA,” Asbury said. 

UW-Madison provided roughly $200 million in institutional support last school year to undergraduate students, Asbury said. About $150 million was need-based financial aid. 

Students received on average about $17,000 in aid from the university last school year, Asbury said. Nonresident students may receive a bit more since their tuition rates are higher, he said. 

UW-Madison is requiring more information from families amid efforts to game the country’s financial aid system. For example, a Forbes article in March advised parents to use investments or businesses to generate losses that would reduce their adjusted gross income and then qualify them for financial assistance. 

People trying to hide assets on financial aid applications is “an open secret,” said Carole Trone, executive director of Fair Opportunity Project, a Wisconsin-based nonprofit that offers online counseling to help students across the country apply to and pay for college. She worries abuse of the financial aid system is increasing barriers for students who otherwise couldn’t afford to attend college. 

Why are some concerned about the newly required form? 

A 2021 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education called the CSS Profile “The Most Onerous Form in College Admissions.” Since then, the application has been shortened and now uses “skip logic” to bypass parts based on students’ answers to previous questions.  

UW-Madison is using a “lighter version” of the CSS Profile, which has fewer questions than the full version, Asbury said. 

Wisconsin Watch and the Cap Times asked the College Board for the maximum number of questions on the form and for a copy of the application in advance of its Oct. 1 launch. The College Board declined these requests. 

Unlike the FAFSA, the CSS Profile won’t pull financial information directly from an applicant’s tax returns, Trone said.  

Trone remembers completing the CSS Profile years ago when her three kids applied to college. The form asked the value of her 401(k) retirement account and her home and the balance on her mortgage.  

She is worried about students whose parents are unable to help sort through these kinds of questions. That’s why, when UW-Madison announced the new requirement, her team at Fair Opportunity Project started preparing to help students with the CSS Profile, too. 

“I’ll admit, even when I was filling out, I was like, ‘I think that’s the right answer,’” Trone said.  

“There’s no way a student’s going to know that. … Whereas with the FAFSA now you really don’t actually have to have a lot of stuff with you to be able to complete it anymore, with the CSS Profile, it’s going to be a work session.” 

Another key difference: On the FAFSA, students whose parents are divorced or separated need to provide information about the parent who provided more financial support over the last year. The CSS Profile requires information from all living biological parents, step-parents and adoptive parents, with exceptions for a handful of special circumstances, including when a parent is incarcerated, abusive or unknown.  

There are also differences for families who speak other languages. The FAFSA is available in English and Spanish, and families can read guides or request an interpreter in 10 other languages, including Korean, Arabic and French Creole. The CSS Profile is available only in English, with help available by chat, phone and email in Spanish.  

Some who advocate for college access worry UW-Madison’s new requirement will be an additional barrier for students who already struggle to get on the college track. 

“FAFSA itself has been a hurdle for some students applying to college,” said Chris Gomez Schmidt, executive director of Galin Scholars, a Madison nonprofit that coaches a handful of high school seniors through college admissions each year. “I think adding an extra, complicated financial application could potentially disproportionately affect students with fewer resources for applying to college, so students from urban or rural areas across the state of Wisconsin.” 

Galin Scholars plans to teach its participants about the CSS Profile during an October financial aid workshop but many students won’t be so lucky, Gomez Schmidt said.  

Trone at the Fair Opportunity Project isn’t convinced the new requirement will pay off for the university. She noted the vast majority of U.S. colleges don’t use the CSS Profile. 

“I’m curious to see how long UW does this,” Trone said. “Maybe they’ll do it for a couple years and realize they’re not actually getting that much better results.” 

What help will be available? 

As students work through the CSS Profile, they can click on help bubbles for more information. The College Board’s website offers additional guidance, too.  

As with other steps in applying for college, students can also seek help from their high school counselors. UW-Madison informed counselors across the state about the new application at a series of workshops in September, and its financial aid office is available to help applicants. 

“We do workshops on a monthly basis, and traditionally we’ve called those FAFSA Frenzies,” Asbury said. “We might have to rethink that name now, but we tend to do those throughout the year.” 

Applicants seeking more help can find a variety of videos and articles online about filling out the CSS Profile, made by government agencies, nonprofits and entrepreneurs across the country.  

Fair Opportunity Project will offer help with the CSS Profile at its one-on-one virtual counseling sessions, which are free to low-income and first-generation college students. Other students may access these sessions for a fee.   

The organization is hoping to make help even more accessible by launching a free chatbot that answers questions about the CSS Profile, but that task has proven more complicated than anticipated.  

The nonprofit built its existing FAFSA chatbot by training it with the hefty guides and updates the federal government releases each year. The CSS Profile is created by a private entity that isn’t required to make its documentation public. 

“We will need to spend more time converting available webinars and presentations into AI training materials. We need to raise more funds to get this extra work done,” Trone said. She hopes the chatbot will be available to the public by November.  

Meanwhile, she’s also looking into the “potential risks” of creating a chatbot specific to a privately owned application. 

“They are very proprietary about their products, like SAT and AP, so this is a real concern that we need to look further into,” Trone said. 

Why do other Wisconsin schools use CSS Profile? 

Beloit College is a private liberal arts school near the Illinois border that enrolls about 1,000 undergraduate students. The school started using the CSS Profile about six years ago, but only for international students, said Betsy Henkel, the college’s director of financial aid. 

“We also have an internal application,” Henkel said. “But as you can imagine, if students are applying to 10 schools for admission, the thought of doing one application and sending it to 10 schools is much more appealing than doing multiple financial aid applications with each of them.” 

When access to the federal government’s simplified FAFSA was delayed in recent school years, Beloit College temporarily used the CSS Profile to give domestic students a financial aid estimate while they waited, Henkel said. 

Lawrence University — a private liberal arts school in Appleton with roughly 1,500 students — has used the CSS Profile for over a decade, Ryan Gebler, the university’s financial aid director, said in an email.  

Similar to UW-Madison, Lawrence University uses a “lighter version” of the CSS Profile, with fewer questions, Gebler said. Overall, the application process has gone smoothly at Lawrence, he said. 

“Simply put: Compared to the FAFSA, the CSS Profile provides a more accurate calculation of what a student and their family can pay for college,” Gebler said.   

Natalie Yahr reports on pathways to success statewide for Wisconsin Watch, working in partnership with Open Campus. Email her at nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org.

Becky Jacobs is an education reporter for the Cap Times. Becky writes about universities and colleges in the Madison region. Email story ideas and tips to Becky at bjacobs@captimes.com or call (608) 620-4064.

UW-Madison is changing its financial aid process. Here’s what to 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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This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

Some of the 193 Madison voters whose ballots mistakenly didn’t get counted in the 2024 presidential election filed a lawsuit on Thursday seeking class-action status, arguing that the city unconstitutionally deprived them of their right to vote.

The lawsuit stands out because it seeks monetary damages for alleged violations of voting rights — a remedy that has become increasingly rare. According to election experts, that type of claim is unlikely to succeed.

“These voters deserved better,” Scott Thompson, an attorney for the plaintiffs with the firm Law Forward, said in a statement. ”In Wisconsin, we value the right to vote, and there will be consequences when that right is denied.”

What’s the dispute?

During the November 2024 election, Madison election officials made a series of errors that kept 193 absentee ballots from being counted on Election Day. Officials waited so long to report the ballots to the county and state that they couldn’t be added before the election results got certified.

The incident led to the city clerk’s suspension and resignation, city and state investigations, and specific orders imposed by the Wisconsin Elections Commission that require the city to establish new procedures.

Who are the plaintiffs and what are they seeking?

The named plaintiffs are some of the 193 voters whose ballots didn’t get counted in the 2024 election: Precious Ayodabo, Cary Bloodworth, Benjamin Jones, Sara Browne, Jenna Innab, Amira Pierotti, Miriam Sham, and Johannes Wolter. They’re represented by attorneys at Law Forward, a liberal election law group, and Holwell Shuster & Goldberg LLP.

They’re suing the city of Madison, the city’s clerk office, former Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl, and current Deputy Clerk Jim Verbick, seeking monetary damages for the city’s failure to count the voters’ ballots. The complaint doesn’t specify the amount, but in a claim filed in March, the group representing the plaintiffs requested $34 million, or $175,000 for each disenfranchised voter.

Madison’s interim City Clerk and City Attorney Mike Haas declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Why does it matter?

This lawsuit aims to emphasize the importance of properly counting all ballots and set a monetary penalty for denying a person their vote. Election law experts note that claims for such remedies were common in voting rights battles of the late 1800s and 1900s — particularly when officials deliberately worked to disenfranchise Black voters — but are now rarely pursued and unlikely to succeed.

Although election officials around the state have repeatedly emphasized the severity of Madison’s errors, some told Votebeat that seeking monetary compensation for election mistakes would add unnecessary pressure on them.

Thompson, the Law Forward attorney, told Votebeat that he understands how clerks feel but wants there to be a clear penalty for disenfranchising voters, especially as some conservative groups in the past have sought to prohibit clerks from counting certain ballots.

What happens now?

The lawsuit will likely play out for months or longer. Madison has already hired a new clerk, Lydia McComas, who is set to start in late September.

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

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

Disenfranchised voters sue Madison for monetary damages over 2024 ballot error is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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The Wisconsin Elections Commission ordered Madison election officials to follow several specific election procedures to ensure that ballots don’t go missing again in the capital city, rejecting arguments by the interim clerk that the orders may exceed the agency’s legal authority. 

The commission’s 5-1 vote Friday came a month after it withheld a first set of proposed orders amid pushback from Madison and Dane County officials and asked the city to propose its own remedies. Madison interim Clerk Mike Haas said the specificity of the commission’s original proposed orders “would set a troubling precedent.”

The city did submit its proposals, but the commission rejected them as overly broad and finalized orders that were largely similar to the ones it proposed in July, with some minor revisions, including citations of the legal basis for each order.  

The orders require Madison officials to create an internal plan detailing which election task is assigned to which employee; print pollbooks no earlier than the Tuesday before each election; develop a detailed record to track absentee ballots; and search through election materials for missing ballots before the city’s election canvassing board meets to finalize results.

The WEC action responds to lapses by the Madison clerk’s office, then headed by Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl, after the November 2024 presidential election, when staffers lost track of 193 ballots and did not report finding them until well past the state deadline for counting. The commission launched its investigation into the matter in January.

Clerk’s cookie baking factored into commissioners’ discussion

During discussions ahead of the vote, Commissioner Don Millis, a Republican, cited Votebeat’s reporting that Witzel-Behl spent a long post-election vacation at home — not on an out-of-state trip, as he had believed — baking thousands of cookies when some lost ballots were discovered. That, he said, factored into his vote for stricter orders.

“She couldn’t be bothered to turn off the oven, to come to the office to figure out if the Ward 65 ballots could be counted,” he said. “The failure to mention that the clerk was readily available to address this issue, along with the fact that none of the city officials we depose felt it was their job to get the ballots counted, makes me even more determined that the Commission must impose the directions in our order.”

Similarly, commission Chair Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, said it was “peculiar” that clerk’s office staff never told commissioners during their monthslong investigation that they rented cars on city time to deliver cookies after the ballot discovery. 

Those deposed “were all part of the cookie crew,” she said ahead of her vote. “Why didn’t they tell us about that? Why didn’t the city of Madison ever mention this? Why did nobody bring this up?” 

In a memo circulated ahead of the meeting, commission staff said the scope of the error “warrants a detailed order from the Commission correcting (Witzel-Behl’s) office’s policies and procedures, and ensuring those issues are actually fixed before the next statewide election.”

Haas, who was formerly the commission administrator, disagreed with the original proposed orders. He said the commission’s authority “does not extend to requiring the future implementation of specific procedures in excess of those required in the statutes.”

But commission staff pushed back, calling it “unreasonable and absurd” to read state law as barring the commission from ordering specific remedies.

In some cases, the commissioners made the requirements more stringent than what Madison proposed, but more lenient than the commission’s originally proposed orders.

For example, one order the commission initially proposed would have required Madison to print pollbooks no sooner than the Thursday before Election Day, despite state law calling on officials only to have the “most current official registration list.” Haas requested an order more in line with what state law outlines, printing the ballots as close to Election Day as possible.

The final order sets the deadline for printing pollbooks on the Tuesday before Election Day — two days earlier than first proposed — and requires that they be delivered no later than the Friday before the election.

Witzel-Behl’s office printed pollbooks for the two wards that lost ballots on Oct. 23, nearly two weeks before Election Day. The commission said printing that early made it harder for officials to track absentee ballots returned before Election Day and harder for poll workers to see how many ballots went uncounted.

Interim clerk’s objections to the commission’s order

Haas, who took over as interim clerk after Witzel-Behl was suspended in March, told Votebeat on the Tuesday ahead of the meeting that it was “way too early” to think about whether Madison would appeal the commission’s orders in court. In a statement after Friday’s vote, he said he was grateful that the commission altered some orders after the city’s feedback.

“The question is which level of government is best suited and authorized to determine specific procedures that work for the municipality in going above and beyond what the statutes require,” he told Votebeat. “We look forward to working with the Commission to ensure compliance with state law.”

Mark Thomsen, a Democratic commissioner, said he wasn’t comfortable with the agency beating up on Madison over mistakes made under a former clerk when a new permanent clerk hasn’t yet been hired.

At the meeting, Thomsen said he was uncomfortable imposing burdens on a new clerk that “no one else has to follow.”

“This order seems spiteful, and I don’t want to go there,” he said, before casting the lone dissent. Republicans Millis, Bob Spindell and Marge Bostelmann joined Democrats Carrie Riepl and Jacobs in approving the orders.

State law allows the commission to “require any election official to conform his or her conduct to the law, restrain an official from taking any action inconsistent with the law or require an official to correct any action or decision inconsistent with the law.”

Many of the orders, such as assigning specific staff to each election task, are not explicitly mentioned in statute.

Addressing claims that the orders were too detailed, commission staff attorney Angela O’Brien Sharpe said, “If the Legislature intended for the commission to only be able to issue general orders, they would have written a law to say just that.”

In a statement following the vote, Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said the city is reorganizing the office to improve efficiency and accountability.

“We appreciate the Wisconsin Elections Commission considering our input and amending its orders to reflect that feedback,” she said. “I hope the WEC’s investigation can help inform best practices for election clerks around the state.” 

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

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

Wisconsin Elections Commission finalizes specific orders for Madison to follow to avoid ballot errors is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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• Rent Smart, a free, six-module course developed by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension, educates people about the essentials of renting. It aims to serve people from high school students and incarcerated individuals to people in homeless shelters.
  
• Completion of the course earns renters a certificate that could make their applications more desirable to landlords.
  
• The interactive classes are accessible online, and they include “Train the Trainer” opportunities for professionals who want to educate renters in their own communities. Educators in Brown County are offering additional in-person training.

In an increasingly tough housing market, a University of Wisconsin program seeks to give renters a leg up in their search for safe, affordable housing by educating them about the process and improving their standing with landlords. 

Rent Smart, a free, six-module course developed by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension, covers the essentials of renting — everything from what’s affordable, what to look for during an apartment inspection and what to ask a landlord while applying. 

“How do we create a really good business relationship between tenants and landlords? I think Rent Smart can help with that,” said Todd Wenzel, a UW-Madison Extension human development and relationships educator in Winnebago County and one of two state co-chairs of the program.

The program aims to serve a variety of people, from high school students and incarcerated individuals to people in homeless shelters. The interactive classes are accessible online, and they include “Train the Trainer” opportunities for professionals who want to educate renters in their own communities.

Successful participants receive a certificate outlining the modules they’ve completed. It can help renters stand out in cases when landlords receive dozens of applications for a single unit, Wenzel said.

Out of 462 people who completed the program and took a survey, 98% said they believed it “will or might help them obtain appropriate housing.” Meanwhile, 84% of those who moved after completing the course said their new housing was safe, more affordable and/or better quality.

For many participants — particularly those facing access issues, Rent Smart is their introduction to how the rental system works.

“Rent Smart (is) helping create potentially a better applicant pool of individuals,” Wenzel said. “Doesn’t matter if you’re 18 or you’re 80, or you’ve had an eviction, or you’ve been incarcerated — you have that knowledge that not only is going to help you as a tenant, but it is actually going to help the landlord.”

Patrick Leifker, executive director of the Brown County Housing Authority, said the hope is that landlords who see an applicant’s Rent Smart completion certificate will recognize the effort they’ve put in, whether that means overlooking past evictions or other challenges that might otherwise disadvantage the renter.

Rent Smart offers classes on Zoom 10 months out of the year. The remaining two months are dedicated to teaching people to administer the program locally, expanding the program’s reach. 

That’s what’s happening in Brown County, where Rent Smart trainers are working on making the curriculum more accessible. Previously, most Brown County trainers offered training only within their own organizations, Leifker said. Now, trainers are offering the classes to the broader public.

Rent Smart: just part of the housing solution 

Leifker believes programs like Rent Smart can promote housing stability for Brown County residents who most need it. 

Brown County, like many Wisconsin communities, is seeing housing prices and homelessness rise. 

Wisconsin’s Fair Market Rent for a two-bedroom apartment reached $1,204 this year, an increase of nearly 7% from 2024, according to a National Low Income Housing Coalition report released in July. Fair Market Rents estimate a typical amount a household moving today would pay for a “modest, decent-quality rental home,” according to the report.

Brown County residents must earn $22.06 per hour to afford Fair Market Rent, the report found. It’s the ninth highest wage among counties in Wisconsin, up from 12th highest in 2024.

Meanwhile, Brown County’s annual summer point-in-time count of people experiencing homelessness on a single night on July 23 identified 123 unsheltered people on the streets, a preliminary figure that does not include people in homeless shelters. That was up from 31 people counted in July 2019, according to the nonprofit Wisconsin Balance of State Continuum of Care. The figures are widely viewed as an undercount of the true homeless population.

Worsening housing challenges have prompted several Brown County organizations to step in, with some turning to renter education and landlord engagement.

Efforts to educate landlords, too 

The outreach includes making sure landlords understand what to expect when renting to housing assistance recipients.

Much of this work traces back to the formation of a landlord engagement work group as part of a broader plan to tackle homelessness in the region. The workgroup is now part of the Brown County Homeless and Housing Coalition. It allows landlords to share real-time feedback on what’s working and what isn’t. 

“For a long time … we knew that we needed each other,” Leifker said. “They needed us to help their tenants ensure that the rent was being paid on time. We knew we needed them for places for our renters to live, but it was really kind of almost on two parallel lines and we never intersected.”

Bill Paape, city of Green Bay inspection supervisor, brings his guidance to the work group, helping answer questions about inspection processes and procedures. 

The city, in partnership with the police department, hosts regular landlord training sessions that bring together speakers from various departments to support both new and experienced landlords. These sessions aim to address issues created by what he described as evolving housing needs and economic shifts.

“Housing is very tough to come by in certain areas, depending on the housing types and the affordability part of it,” Paape said. “So it’s trying to brainstorm what we can do together to make it easier on everybody.”

Still, more is needed to help renters and landlords stay afloat, starting with addressing the root causes of the housing crisis, said Rick Van Der Leest, president of the Apartment Association of Northeast Wisconsin and Fox Valley Apartment Association. Programs are needed that help tenants pay their rent, rather than just delay eviction. 

“Owners cannot be successful without our residents also being successful,” Van Der Leest said.

How to access Rent Smart

Brown County is offering in-person Rent Smart sessions on Thursdays throughout August, with details about September sessions to be later made available. Those interested in registering can find more information on the Brown County UW Extension website or call 920-391-4610. 

People across Wisconsin can find more information about online Rent Smart courses by visiting the UW Extension website.

Rent Smart training helps tenants navigate Wisconsin’s housing crunch 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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Members of the Wisconsin Elections Commission expressed alarm Thursday at how much time former Madison Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl spent on vacation while a crisis was erupting in her office: the discovery of 193 missing ballots from the November 2024 election that never got counted.

In its 400-page investigative report, finalized at a meeting by a 5-1 vote, the commission said that Witzel-Behl began her vacation in mid-November, days after the election, “and then had little to do with the supervision of her office until almost a month later.” No staffers took responsibility during the extended absence, the commission chair, Democrat Ann Jacobs, complained before the vote. The missing ballots were not reported to the commission until mid-December. 

Records obtained by Votebeat provide some clarity into what Witzel-Behl was doing around the time: baking thousands of cookies and calling on her staff to help deliver them.

Most of that activity began after Dec. 2, when the second batch of uncounted ballots was found.

These records have not been publicly reported and were not included in the investigative report finalized Thursday.

“This is remarkable,” Republican Commissioner Don Millis said when Votebeat showed him some of the findings. “None of the witnesses we deposed disclosed her cookie staycation.”

After approving the report, the commission voted 4-2 to delay action on proposed corrective orders after city and county officials argued that the requirements were overly specific and exceeded state law. The city now has until Aug. 7 to provide a more complete response to the recommendations, and a follow-up meeting has been scheduled for Aug. 15.

Witzel-Behl didn’t respond to a request for comment. 

‘Cookie extravaganza’ featuring ‘100 different types’

Emails show that Witzel-Behl took time off for all or part of 17 days between Nov. 11 and Dec. 6 and said, according to an event invite, that part of it was for “devoting a staycation to baking.” 

Beginning in November, she invited city staff and election officials in Madison to what some staff called a “cookie extravaganza” held on Dec. 7, a Saturday, to help decorate cookies and take some home for their families. She baked “100 different types” of cookies, the invite said.

According to the commission, Witzel-Behl knew about the first batch of ballots on Nov. 12. That was well before the cookie event.

The second batch of uncounted ballots was discovered on Dec. 2 by office staff. Witzel-Behl was out of the office that day and for the rest of that week. She told the commission she learned of the second batch of ballots on Dec. 10. “While on vacation, she did not inquire of her staff whether there were absentee ballots in the bag,” the report reads. 

On Dec. 10, she sent an email to three staffers, including Deputy Clerk Jim Verbick, saying she’d reserved three cars for cookie deliveries. “Maybe each of you can make at least one cookie delivery to a library,” she wrote. 

She also arranged additional deliveries and rented more cars for later the following week, an email sent Dec. 13 shows. “We still have several packages of cookies, so feel free to pick a few agencies for another delivery,” she suggested to 16 staffers across her office and other city departments the same day.

“I had assumed — obviously erroneously — the clerk was vacationing in some faraway place,” Millis told Votebeat, denouncing Witzel-Behl for not personally managing the discovery of the uncounted ballots.

The clerk’s staff didn’t tell the commission about the missing ballots until Dec. 18. By that point, the state had already certified the election and the missing ballots couldn’t have counted.

‘She worked her ass off’ — on the cookies

Jacobs said before the vote that she was surprised by Witzel-Behl’s “complete lack of action” during the relevant time period. Marge Bostelmann, a Republican appointee on the commission and the former longtime Green Lake County clerk, said that even if she had been on vacation in such a situation as a county clerk, she would have remained accessible if urgent questions arose.

Commissioner Bob Spindell, a Republican, was the lone dissenter on the vote to approve the report, saying he didn’t want Witzel-Behl to be “crucified.”

One person close to the Madison Clerk’s Office, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, told Votebeat that the task of making thousands of cookies and arranging deliveries “became all-consuming” for Witzel-Behl. “You could see how she was not focused on getting through reconciliation or whatever.”

“For some people, baking is calming,” that person continued. “It seemed like she needed a break. But then she worked her ass off (on the cookies). It was a huge operation.” 

Between early and mid-December, city employees from a variety of departments thanked Witzel-Behl for her cookies. It’s not clear how many cookies she ultimately made.

On Dec. 16, one person in the city’s transportation department sent a clerk’s office staffer an email asking, “Are these cookies for the entire first floor? The entire building? The entire universe?”

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

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

Madison clerk was on a cookie-baking staycation as missing-ballot mess unfolded 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.