The Healthcare.gov website, where people can sign up for health insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Sunday, Dec. 15, is the deadline to enroll for people who want coverage to start Jan. 1. (Screenshot | Healthcare.gov website)

People who want to sign up for health insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act in 2025 must do so by the end of the day Sunday, Dec. 15, if they want coverage to start on New Year’s Day.

“For accidents or injuries or when illness strikes, the last thing that anyone should have to worry about is how they’re going to pay for that, or whether they’re going to fall into some sort of medical debt,” said Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley during an online press conference Friday to draw attention to the Sunday deadline.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) imposed new consumer protection provisions for health insurance plans, among them a requirement that people cannot be denied coverage or charged higher premiums because of their personal health history.

The act also led to the creation of a federal health care marketplace Healthcare.gov, where people can purchase individual health insurance plans if they don’t have health coverage through an employer or some other group source, including Medicaid or Medicare. Healthcare.gov provides information about the plans available in a person’s geographic area.

The ACA open enrollment period for individual plans started Nov. 1. Whether people are enrolling for the first time — because they’ve lost their coverage through work, for example — or renewing their insurance after enrolling previously in 2023 or before, “you should take advantage of this time right now,” said Joe Zepecki of Protect Our Care, a national campaign to support and strengthen the ACA. Protect Our Care organized Friday’s news conference.

People who sign up for a plan at Healthcare.gov must do so by Sunday, Dec. 15, to get coverage that starts Jan. 1.  For people who enroll after Sunday, 2025 coverage won’t start until Feb. 1. The final deadline for enrolling is Jan. 15.

People can get guidance in assessing their choices of plans through the statewide health insurance navigator, Covering Wisconsin (coveringwi.org).  In addition to the website, Wisconsin residents can call 414-400-9489 in the Milwaukee area or 608-261-1455 in the Madison area to reach a navigator with the organization. Both telephone numbers are available to residents anywhere in the state.

As of Dec. 1, 88,189 Wisconsin residents have enrolled in coverage during the current open enrollment period, according to the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). That’s slightly short of the pace at the same time last year, when 99,950 people enrolled by Dec. 2, the Wisconsin Office of the Commissioner of Insurance reported.

Almost 250,000 Wisconsin residents — a record number — have been covered in 2024 under plans provided through the ACA website, Zepecki said Friday.

Expanded federal tax credit subsidies tied to the income of an applicant have reduced the cost of plans purchased through the ACA dramatically. Those subsidies have reduced the cost for about 61,000 Wisconsin residents, Zepecki said, and will remain in effect through 2025, making health plans much more affordable for people.

The enhanced insurance premium tax credit subsidies were first instituted with the enactment in 2021 of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) in the first year of President Joe Biden’s term, and they were extended in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

Zepecki said that for a 45-year-old Wisconsinite making $60,000 a year, the enhanced subsidy would save about $1,442 a year. For a 60-year-old couple with a combined income of $82,000 a year, “the difference in having the premium tax credits and losing them is more than $18,000 a year,” he added. And for a family of four with a household income of 125,000 a year, the premium tax credits would save more than $8,200.

“This helps almost everybody who’s in the [federal health insurance] marketplace,” Zepecki said.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) said making the subsidies permanent “will be at the top of my list as something that helps working families across Wisconsin and across the United States” in the 2025 Congress. She said they will be part of “a very robust debate” about the tax code as Republican lawmakers seek to extend tax cuts enacted in 2017 during Donald Trump’s first term as president.

“I know we have some folks who are more focused, sadly, on tax breaks for the wealthy and big corporations,” Baldwin said. “I’m going to be fighting for working Wisconsinites.”

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In the early morning following Election Day in 2020, Claire Woodall, then Milwaukee’s elections chief, mistakenly left behind a USB stick carrying vote totals at the city’s central absentee ballot counting facility. Election conspiracy theorists quickly seized on the mistake, accusing Woodall of rigging the election. 

Their claims were baseless, but the mistake increased scrutiny on the city’s election staff and led Woodall to create a checklist to make sure workers at central count didn’t overlook any critical steps in the future.

This year, despite the checklist, Milwaukee election staff at central count made another procedural mistake — and once again left the door open to conspiracy theorists. 

Somebody — city officials haven’t said who — overlooked the second step outlined on the checklist and failed to lock and seal the hatch covers on the facility’s 13 tabulators before workers began tabulating ballots. For hours, while counting proceeded, the machines’ on-off switches and USB ports were left exposed. 

After election officials discovered the lapse, city officials decided to count 31,000 absentee ballots all over again, a choice that led to delays in reporting results.  

Results from the large and heavily Democratic city ultimately came in at 4 a.m. on Wednesday, only a few hours later than expected, but a time that conspiracy theorists implied was a suspicious hour for vote totals to change. Their posts echoed claims from 2020 that used sensationalized language like “late-night ballot dumps” to describe the reality that in big cities, absentee ballots take time — yes, sometimes late into the night — to collect, deliver, verify and count accurately.

In fact, the results in Milwaukee couldn’t have arrived much sooner. Under state law, election officials can’t start processing the hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots until the morning of Election Day. This year, they got a late start because of delays in getting workers settled, but were still expecting to be done around 2 or 3 a.m. Then it became clear the midday decision to redo the count would add more time to the process. 

But those explanations have done little to curb the false conspiracy theories that have been proliferating on the right, including from losing U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde.

Election officials have for years known that the slightest mistakes, or even perceived errors, can trigger false claims. In this instance, the failure to follow a critical security step occurred in the state’s most scrutinized election facility, despite new procedures meant to reduce such errors.

For people with a conspiratorial mindset, such an oversight can’t be explained away as just a mistake, said Mert Bayar, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public. The errors can provide conspiracy theorists a feeling of validation because those errors make a “conspiracy theory more realistic … more believable.”

For those people, he said, election errors are instead perceived as “part of a plot to steal an election.” 

Instead of considering the 2024 Milwaukee mistake a simple oversight, Bayar said, conspiracy theorists may think that the tabulator doors “cannot be left unlocked unless they’re trying something tricky, something stealth.”

Genya Coulter, senior director of stakeholder relations at the Open Source Election Technology Institute, said Milwaukee can still fine-tune its processes and checklists. 

“I don’t think anybody needs to be demonized,” she said, “but I do think that there needs to be some retraining. That would be helpful.”

Milwaukee error initially drew complaints, but not suspicion 

It was an election observer who first noticed the open tabulator doors and alerted election officials. Around 2 p.m., Milwaukee’s current election chief, Paulina Gutiérrez, went from tabulator to tabulator, monitored by Democratic and Republican representatives, to lock all of the doors. Two hours later, she made the call to rerun all ballots through the tabulators.

The tabulators had been in full view of partisan observers and the media, but behind a barrier that only election officials and some designated observers, like representatives for both political parties who accompany election officials during some election processes, can enter. Any tampering would have been evident, Gutiérrez said, and there was no sign of that.

For that reason, some Republicans at central count opposed recounting all the ballots and risking a delay. U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, who went to central count on Election Day to learn more about the error, said he didn’t think anything nefarious happened, though he said the election operation there was “grossly incompetent.”

Coulter said the decision to start the counting over again was “the right call for transparency’s sake.”

Hovde, who lost his Senate race in a state that Donald Trump carried, invoked conspiratorial language to describe what happened. 

“The results from election night were disappointing, particularly in light of the last minute absentee ballots that were dropped in Milwaukee at 4 a.m. flipping the outcome,” he said Monday in his concession speech. “There are many troubling issues around these absentee ballots.”

In an earlier video, Hovde criticized Milwaukee’s election operation and spread false claims about the proportion of votes that his opponent, U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, received from absentee ballots. That led to a skyrocketing number of posts baselessly alleging election fraud in Wisconsin.

One prominent conservative social media account questioned whether the tabulator doors being left open was a case of sabotage. 

In a statement, the Milwaukee Election Commission said it “unequivocally refutes Eric Hovde’s baseless claims regarding the integrity of our election process.”

Why Milwaukee’s results were late

There’s no proof of fraud or malfeasance in Milwaukee or anywhere else in Wisconsin on Election Day. But a few key factors combined to delay Milwaukee’s results until 4 a.m.

First, Milwaukee central count workers started processing and tabulating ballots around 9 a.m., long after the 7 a.m. start time allowed under state law. The delay was a matter of getting dozens of central count workers organized and at the right station in the large facility.

The more high-profile one was the failure to close the tabulators, which prompted the decision to count 31,000 absentee ballots all over again. 

But both of those slowdowns could have been less consequential had Wisconsin election officials been able to process absentee ballots on the Monday before Election Day, as some other states allow. Such a change could have allowed election officials to review absentee ballot envelopes, verify and check in absentee voters but not count votes. An effort to allow election officials to do so stalled in the state Senate this year.

Checklist change could ‘improve transparency’

Milwaukee election officials may have avoided the situation entirely — and could avoid similar situations in the future — by modifying their central count checklist, said Coulter, from the Open Source Election Technology Institute.

Currently, the checklist states that at the start of Election Day, the tabulator doors should be locked and sealed. It’s not clear why that step was skipped. Gutiérrez didn’t respond to questions for comment about who was in charge of the process or whether that person faced disciplinary action. 

But the step likely wouldn’t have been overlooked, Coulter said, if the checklist required the official in charge of locking the tabulators to be accompanied by a representative from each major political party.

“That’s a relatively painless change that … I think it would improve transparency,” Coulter said.

“There needs to be an emphasis on having two people from different political affiliations performing all duties that involve the tabulator,” she said.

Another pre-processing step on the checklist calls for people working at the tabulators to make sure the numbered seals pasted over the tabulator doors are intact. It doesn’t call for checking that the tabulator doors are locked.

To avoid a repeat situation, Coulter said, “they should also check to make sure that the door to the power button is properly locked, and what to do if it isn’t.”

Election officials recognize the scrutiny they face over errors, Coulter said, and they sometimes focus more on avoiding mistakes than running election operations.

“It’s like a racecar driver … If you focus on the wall, you’re going to wind up hitting that wall,” she said. “You have to train your mind to think about the curve and not the wall, but unfortunately, it’s really hard for election officials to do that, especially in high-pressure jurisdictions.”

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.

How Milwaukee’s Election Day mistake left the door open to more misinformation 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.

Eric Hovde speaks in a video posted on X Tuesday, Nov. 12, in which he questions how ballots were counted in his election loss to Sen. Tammy Baldwin that was called early Nov. 6. Hovde did not concede then, only doing so on Monday, Nov. 18.. (Screenshot | Hovde campaign on X)

Poor Eric Hovde. His protestations that the election was rigged against him have fallen on deaf ears. Hovde’s grudging concession to Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin, who beat him by 29,000 votes to hang onto her seat in the U.S. Senate, came as Republicans across the country rejoiced at winning control of the White House and both chambers of Congress. Like his Tom Selleck mustache, Hovde’s election denial is way out of style. 

Hovde’s baseless accusations during his very tardy concession speech about the questionable “legitimacy” of “absentee ballots that were dropped in Milwaukee at 4 a.m.” is so 2020. This year, Trump won all the swing states and, unlike last time, when he lost to Joe Biden, allegations of illegal voting, fraud, recounts, court challenges and death threats aimed at election officials have disappeared like morning dew in the Southern California sun.

Hovde heads home to Laguna Beach, California, a lonely, sore loser instead of storming the U.S. Capitol as a champion for MAGA grievance with his Trump-supporting friends. 

“I entered the race for the U.S. Senate because I love our country and I’m deeply concerned about its direction,” Hovde declared in his concession speech Monday. By then, the country’s direction had taken a sharp right turn. 

The top concerns that Hovde, an enthusiastic Trump supporter, said motivated him to run — government spending, border security and international relations — are now firmly in MAGA hands. 

“Lastly, as I’ve repeatedly expressed, I’m very worried about the political divisions and rhetoric that are tearing our country apart,” Hovde declared.

This last worry led him, Hovde said, to run a campaign that “focused on issues instead of personal attacks.” He followed this assertion by besmirching the integrity of Wisconsin election officials, denouncing his opponent as a liar and blaming Democrats for underhandedly stealing the election from him by allowing third-party candidates to run and by spreading rumors that he’s a California bank owner (a verifiable fact). For good measure, he added, “Equally concerning is the large segments of the press that don’t care to fact-check these lies and even helped propagate misinformation to help their preferred candidate.”

Anyone who watched the debate between Hovde and Baldwin might be surprised to hear Hovde congratulate himself for running a high-minded campaign rooted in the “values of integrity and morality.”

“The one thing you’ve perfected in Washington is your ability to lie,” Hovde sneered at Baldwin at the start of the debate. While Baldwin focused on her long record of detailed policy work, reaching across the aisle to pass bills that helped Wisconsinites, Hovde relied heavily on unsubstantiated accusations and repeatedly called out Baldwin’s girlfriend, a Wall Street investment adviser, demanding that she release financial information she is not required to disclose and unsubtly calling attention to the fact that Baldwin, an out lesbian, is in a same-sex relationship. 

This week, Baldwin is back in Washington doing what she does best — focusing on unsexy issues that matter to her constituents (see her Wednesday press release: “Baldwin Calls on USDA to Provide Emergency Aid for Gamebird Farmers Hit By Tornadoes”). Hovde, who admitted during the debate that he doesn’t know much about what’s in the Farm Bill and then griped afterward to rightwing talk radio host Vicky McKenna: “Like, I’m supposed to study [the bill] in depth?!” can’t imagine why Wisconsin chose Baldwin over him.

There was nothing nefarious about Baldwin’s win. She received a predictable boost from absentee voters in heavily Democratic Milwaukee, and as she has done in her previous statewide races, and she got a lot of votes in Republican-leaning areas of the state where she has spent a great deal of time listening to her constituents and championing their interests in bills that help Wisconsin agriculture and manufacturing. That’s the kind of work that made her the only Democrat to win the endorsement of the Wisconsin Farm Bureau.

Hovde distinguished himself, according to The New York Times, by becoming the first prominent Republican in the nation to suggest the election was rigged, parroting Trump’s 2020 conspiracy theories. 

Fortunately, this year Hovde’s complaints are just one man’s sour grapes. But in his incivility, his poor grasp of policy, and, most of all, in refusing to concede for so long and, even when he did, questioning the integrity of the election, Hovde made a divisive political environment more toxic.

As Sam Liebert, Wisconsin state director of All Voting is Local told Erik Gunn, “The rhetoric of questioning our democracy is more than just words. … It  contributes to chaos and confusion, which undermines public trust in our elections and the officials who administer them.” 

As Hovde himself might put it, the kind of campaign he ran is tearing our country apart. Fortunately for Wisconsin, in this case, it’s over. 

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Eric Hovde concedes the 2024 Wisconsin Senate race on social media Monday. (Screenshot | Hovde campaign X account)

Republican candidate Eric Hovde conceded Monday in the U.S. Senate race after losing to incumbent Sen. Tammy Baldwin, forgoing a recount while continuing to criticize the longstanding practice in which absentee ballots in Milwaukee were counted in the early morning hours after Election Day.

Hovde posted his concession speech in a video on social media.

Hovde conceded a few hours before the Wisconsin Elections Commission reported Monday that all 72 counties in Wisconsin had completed their election canvass, triggering a three-day window for Hovde to seek a recount in the race.

A developer and the owner of a West Coast bank, Hovde had declined to concede in the immediate aftermath of The Associated Press calling the race for Baldwin in the early morning hours of Wednesday, Nov. 6.

A week later, he posted a video in which he said he would await the completion of the canvass process while airing complaints about the vote count. His criticisms focused largely on the fact that about 108,000 absentee ballots that were not counted in Milwaukee until the early morning after Election Day changed the outcome of the election total.

Hovde’s remarks drew widespread criticism, with the Milwaukee Election Commission refuting implications of impropriety. Milwaukee’s absentee ballots are consolidated and delivered to the city’s central counting facility to be tabulated, and a bill to allow them to be processed starting the day before the election died after GOP leaders in the state Senate declined to put it on the calendar.

Republican analysts also said, both on Election Day and the next week, that the city’s late-night tabulation of the absentee ballots was standard practice and that its history of having a heavy tilt toward Democrats was predictable.

Nevertheless, Hovde reiterated his complaint Monday in the course of his concession speech.

“The results from election night were disappointing, particularly in light of the last-minute absentee ballots that were dropped in Milwaukee at 4 a.m., flipping the outcome,” he said. “There are many troubling issues around these absentee ballots and their timing, which I addressed in my last statement.”

Hovde said supporters had urged him “to challenge the election results,” but that “without a detailed review of all the ballots and their legitimacy, which will be difficult to obtain in the courts, a request for a recount would serve no purpose because you will just be recounting the same ballots regardless of their integrity.”

Hovde said he had decided instead to concede out of “my desire to not add to political strife through a contentious recount.”

Hovde also criticized Democrats’ support of two third-party candidates, one running on a platform of supporting Donald Trump and the other as a Libertarian, contending that without them he would have won the race.

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Wisconsin Republican Eric Hovde conceded defeat on Monday to Democratic incumbent Tammy Baldwin in their U.S. Senate race, saying he did not want to “add to political strife through a contentious recount” even though he raised debunked election conspiracies.

Hovde, who was backed by President-elect Donald Trump, could have requested a recount because his margin of defeat was less than 1 percentage point, at about 29,000 votes. He would have had to pay for it himself.

Baldwin’s campaign referred requests for comment on Hovde’s concession on Monday to her victory speech. In that address, Baldwin pledged to work with Trump when possible but also vowed to fight him to protect the national health care law and abortion rights.

Hovde, in his concession video, repeated claims he made saying there were “many troubling issues” related to absentee ballots in Milwaukee and when they were reported. Republicans, Democrats and nonpartisan election leaders all refuted the claims of impropriety Hovde made.

“Without a detailed review of all the ballots and their legitimacy, which will be difficult to obtain in the courts, a request for a recount would serve no purpose because you will just be recounting the same ballots regardless of their integrity,” Hovde said Monday.

Although there is no evidence of wrongdoing in the election, many Hovde supporters questioned a surge in votes for Baldwin that were reported by Milwaukee around 4:30 a.m. the morning after the election. Those votes put Baldwin over the top.

The votes were the tabulation of absentee ballots from Milwaukee. Those ballots are counted at a central location and reported all at once, often well after midnight on Election Day. Elections officials for years have made clear that those ballots are reported later than usual because of the sheer number that have to be counted and the fact that state law does not allow for processing them before polls open.

Republicans and Democrats alike, along with state and Milwaukee election leaders, warned in the days and weeks leading up to the election that the Milwaukee absentee ballots would be reported late and cause a huge influx of Democratic votes.

Hovde also repeated his complaint about the candidacy of Thomas Leager, who ran as a member of the America First Party. Leager, a far-right candidate who was recruited by Democratic operatives and donors to run as a conservative, finished a distant fourth.

Republicans supported independent presidential candidates Cornel West and Jill Stein in efforts to take votes away from Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris. And Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tried to get his name removed from the ballot in Wisconsin and other swing states after he backed Trump.

In the Wisconsin Senate race, Leager got about 400 fewer votes than the margin between Baldwin and Hovde. But Hovde claimed on Monday that he would have won the Senate race if Leager had not been on the ballot.

Baldwin declared victory after The Associated Press called the race for her on Nov. 6. She outperformed Harris, who lost Wisconsin by about as many votes as Baldwin defeated Hovde.

The Baldwin win came in the face of Democratic losses nationwide that allowed Republicans to take control of the Senate.

Her win was the narrowest of her three Senate races. Baldwin won in 2012 by almost 6 percentage points and in 2018 by nearly 11 points.

Hovde, a multimillionaire bank owner and real estate developer, first ran for Senate in 2012 but lost in the Republican primary. He poured millions of dollars of his own money into his losing campaign this year.

Hovde on Monday did not rule out another political campaign in the future. Some Republicans have floated him as a potential candidate for governor in 2026.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.

Eric Hovde concedes defeat to Tammy Baldwin in US Senate race in Wisconsin is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Flanked by Sam Liebert, left, and Scott Thompson, center, Nick Ramos of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign addresses reporters Thursday outside a Wisconsin state office building. The three criticized Republican Senate candidate Eric Hovde for not conceding after vote tallies reported that Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin finished the election with 29,000 more votes than Hovde. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)

Voting rights advocates joined the calls Thursday for Republican Senate candidate Eric Hovde to back away from accusations he made earlier this week that something went wrong with vote-counting in the election Hovde lost to Sen. Tammy Baldwin.

“This is a direct attempt to cast doubt on our free and fair elections. And this is not only disappointing, it’s unnecessary,” said Sam Liebert, Wisconsin state director for All Voting is Local at a news conference Thursday morning. The nonpartisan, nonprofit organization advocates for policies to ensure voting access, particularly for voters of color and other marginalized groups.

“The rhetoric of questioning our democracy is more than just words, but it contributes to chaos and confusion, which undermines public trust in our elections and the officials who administer them,” Liebert said.

The news conference, held outside the state office building that houses the Wisconsin Elections Commission, was organized by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a nonpartisan voting rights and campaign finance reform advocacy group.

Speakers emphasized Wisconsin’s history of ticket-splitting and the near equal division of Republican and Democratic voters. For that reason, they said, victories last week by Republican Donald Trump in the presidential race and Baldwin, a Democrat, in the Senate race shouldn’t be viewed as remarkable or suspicious.

“Donald Trump won, Tammy Baldwin won, Kamala Harris lost, and Erik Hovde lost,” said Scott Thompson, an attorney with the nonprofit voting rights and democracy law firm Law Forward. “The people of Wisconsin know it, and I think Eric Hovde knows it too.”

“What you’re doing is creating divisions, and that cannot be accepted here in Wisconsin,” said Nick Ramos, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.

During the campaign, Hovde “said all the right things — he talked about how he would honor the election results, talked about … there’s no time for us to continue these types of conspiracies and lies,” Ramos said. But since the election, he added, Hovde has shifted his attitude.

Hovde so far has declined to concede the U.S. Senate election, although The Associated Press called the race for Baldwin, the Democratic two-term incumbent, early Wednesday, Nov. 6. With 99% of the vote counted, Baldwin had a 29,000-vote lead over Hovde, a margin of slightly less than 1%. She declared victory after the AP call.

Hovde’s first public statement came a week after Election Day. In a video posted on social media Tuesday, he said he was waiting for the vote canvass to be completed before he would comment on the outcome.

“Once the final information is available and all options are reviewed, I will announce my decision on how I will proceed,” Hovde said.

Nevertheless, Hovde questioned the vote totals that were reported from Milwaukee’s central count facility, where the city’s absentee ballots are consolidated and tallied.

About 108,000 absentee and provisional ballots were counted in the early hours last Wednesday, with Baldwin garnering 82% of those votes, according to the Milwaukee Election Commission. In Milwaukee ballots cast in-person Tuesday, Baldwin won 75% of the vote.

Both Republican and Democratic analysts have pointed out that Democrats have disproportionately voted absentee over the last several elections and that the outcome Milwaukee reported last week was in line with those trends.

In his video, however, Hovde highlighted the late-counted ballots. He falsely called Baldwin’s lead in that tally “nearly 90%,” claiming that was “statistically improbable” in comparison with the in-person vote count.

Hovde said that because of “inconsistencies” in the data, “Many people have reached out and urged me to contest the election.”

Ramos pointed out Thursday that Wisconsin lawmakers had introduced a bill with bipartisan support that would have allowed election clerks to begin counting absentee ballots the day before Election Day — ending the late-night tally change  from absentee votes that have become a regular feature in Milwaukee.

The legislation passed the Assembly but died in the state Senate. “We have folks in the state Legislature that would rather play political games and would rather see moments like this than actually fix the problem,” Ramos said.

While Hovde spoke skeptically about the vote count in his video, in a talk radio interview after it was posted he described the election outcome as a “loss.”

Hovde is “talking out of both sides of his mouth right now,” Ramos said. “And so, on the one hand, we get to hear him say things like, you know, ‘It’s going to take me a while to get over this loss,’ and then we get to watch a video that gets broadly disseminated across X and Facebook and Instagram, where … he’s literally talking about how he does not believe what happened in Milwaukee and how the numbers shifted [in the ballot counting] aren’t accurate.”

In his video Hovde said that “asking for a recount is a serious decision that requires careful consideration.”

Counties must send their final vote canvass reports to the Wisconsin Elections Commission by Tuesday, Nov. 19. Candidates then have three days to make a recount request.

State law allows candidates to seek a recount if they lose by a margin of less than 1%, but it requires the candidate to pay the cost if the margin is more than 0.25%.

“He certainly can pursue a recount, although it looks like he’s going to have to pay for it himself,” said Thompson. “[But] Eric Hovde does not have the right to baselessly spread false claims and election lies.”

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Ben Wikler, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, introduces Sen. Tammy Baldwin at her victory celebration Thursday. (Erik Gunn | Wisconsin Examiner)

In the midst of a barrage of absurd and appalling news pouring out of Washington, where President-elect Donald Trump keeps topping himself with new, unqualified cabinet appointments, Democrats are looking for hope in Wisconsin.

Two bright lights from our state made headlines after Nov. 5. U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin bucked the red wave to win a third term, and Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler was reported by Politico to be in the running to lead the national party. Baldwin and Wikler share an approach to politics that could help guide Democrats out of the wilderness. 

After losing the White House and failing to capture control of either the U.S. Senate or the House (not to mention the likelihood of two new Trump appointments on the U.S. Supreme Court that could create an enduring far-right supermajority), Democrats would do well to look to Wisconsin for a new approach to politics.

In Wisconsin, Trump’s margin of victory — 0.9% of the vote — was the narrowest among the seven swing states he carried. Baldwin, as she has consistently done, made inroads in rural, Republican-voting counties. And Wikler deployed an approach to organizing across rural and urban areas of the state that took no vote for granted.

While extreme polarization and losing touch with working-class swing-state voters are widely counted as prime reasons Democrats lost the 2024 election, Baldwin and Wikler have a recipe for addressing those problems.

“It’s a state where showing up, being present in all different communities, rejecting the kind of false choices that cable pundits might like to inflict on a state like Wisconsin, and rolling up your sleeves can make the difference,” Wikler told me back in 2019, shortly after he moved back to Wisconsin to reenergize the state party. At that moment, Republicans had just lost complete control over all three branches of state government, with the election of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in 2018. Since then, Wikler has overseen a scrappy fight to claw back power in a state where Republicans, until recently, still dominated politics.

Wikler followed his own advice, opening new field offices across the state. He remained tenaciously upbeat as he steered his party through the rough waters of the pandemic and, in addition to helping elect President Joe Biden and reelecting Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, helped shepherd in a new liberal majority on the state Supreme Court that ended the worst partisan gerrymander in the nation, which had protected a wildly disproportionate Republican legislative majority. 

I was impressed by Wikler’s optimism back in 2019, when the gerrymandered maps seemed insurmountable. 

He pointed to grassroots organizers all over Wisconsin who were building the case for fair maps, and “getting every elected group of human beings in the state to pass resolutions condemning gerrymandering.”

“All of that needs to clearly lead to electoral accountability for anyone who smashes the idea of representative democracy in the state,” Wikler said at the time. It sounded wildly optimistic. Yet here we are.

Commenting on the eternal debate about whether Democrats need to drive their base to turn out or persuade disaffected centrist Republicans and independents to vote for Democrats, Wikler told me, “in Wisconsin we have to do both.”

“The thing I’m frustrated by every day is the idea that you can’t fight for both white working class voters and voters of color,” he added. “Guess what? There are people of all races in the working class. And all of them want schools and jobs and safe communities and air they can breathe. And none of them like the effects of Trump’s actual policies—even if some of them think they might like Trump as a guy.”

That philosophy is very similar to the politics practiced by Tammy Baldwin, who consistently amazes pundits by winning rural and working class voters even though she is an out lesbian with a strongly progressive voting record. Listening carefully to her constituents and delivering for them, whether through the provision she wrote into the Affordable Care Act that lets children stay on their parents’ insurance until they turn 26, or federal investments in Wisconsin farming and manufacturing, or “Buy America” rules, Baldwin connects with her constituents across the ideological divide. 

As Baldwin puts it, “People across Wisconsin want solutions to their challenges and are not all that interested in Republican versus Democrat—they’re interested in who you’ll stand up to, and who you’ll stand up for.”

Wikler agrees: “The key thing to understand is that Wisconsin voters are less centrist than they are conflicted. There’s a populist streak that has both left-wing and right-wing flavors that runs through the state. And the fundamental question that voters are asking is: ‘Is this person on my side?’”

That’s a clarifying vision that could lead Democratic politicians and voters toward a brighter day. 

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Eric Hovde speaks in a video posted on X Tuesday in which he questions how ballots were counted in his election loss to Sen. Tammy Baldwin. Hovde has not conceded despite the race having been called for Baldwin early Nov. 6. (Screenshot | Hovde campaign on X)

Breaking a six-day silence after unofficial returns showed him losing to Sen. Tammy Baldwin, whom AP declared the winner of the Wisconsin U.S. Senate race by less than 1 percentage point, Republican Senate candidate Eric Hovde on Tuesday criticized the counting process and said he would wait to decide whether to seek a recount.

In a subsequent talk radio interview, however, Hovde appeared to acknowledge that he had lost the election.

“It’s the most painful loss I’ve ever experienced,” Hovde told Jessica McBride, the guest host on Mark Belling’s show on Milwaukee station WISN 1130. The remark was first reported by the Associated Press.

There has been no evidence of irregularities in the vote count for the Nov. 5 election, which Baldwin won by about 29,000 votes according to unofficial totals reported by Wisconsin’s 72 counties. Counties are currently reviewing the ballots and will submit their official results to the Wisconsin Elections Commission by Nov. 19. The commission completes its certification of the vote by Dec. 1.  

Prior to his talk show appearance Tuesday, Hovde posted a video on X, formerly Twitter, in which he said that he hadn’t spoken about the outcome since election night because “I believe it’s better not to comment until I have the facts.”

Supporters “have reached out and urged me to contest the election,” he said. “While I’m deeply concerned, asking for a recount is a serious decision that requires careful consideration.”

Hovde said differences between the count of registered voters and ballots cast in some Milwaukee wards raised questions, and he also questioned a batch of absentee ballots counted in the early hours Wednesday that heavily favored Baldwin.

Records of registered voters as of Election Day don’t include people who register at the polls, however. In addition, absentee ballots in Milwaukee often get counted later in the process and historically have included a large proportion of  Democratic voters.

Hovde also claimed the state has “almost 8 million registered voters on our voter rolls with only 3.5 million active voters.”

The Wisconsin Elections Commission website includes an explanation of the state’s voter registration database, which is separated into two sections, one for inactive voters and one for active voters.

Only active voters are included in the poll books that go to Wisconsin election clerks and poll workers.

The list of inactive voters, which the commission is required by state law to maintain, includes people who “die, move and register in another state, are convicted of a felony, are adjudicated incompetent to vote, or are made inactive through statutory voter list maintenance processes,” according to the elections commission. The inactive voter list is “a historical public record, and cannot be deleted.”

Democrats, Republicans join in pushing back

Hovde’s comments were met with a barrage of criticism.

“The Milwaukee Election Commission (MEC) unequivocally refutes Eric Hovde’s baseless claims regarding the integrity of our election process,” the commission said in a statement Tuesday, asserting that its operations were transparent and followed established laws and procedures. 

Because Wisconsin does not allow absentee ballots to be processed before Election Day, “large numbers of absentee ballots” are reported late at night. At the same time, according to the statement, with same-day registration, “this historic election saw record-breaking turnout as many newly registered voters exercised their right to support their preferred candidates.”

Criticism also came from Baldwin and Democrats as well as prominent GOP figures, nonpartisan analysts and a bipartisan pro-democracy organization.

“Eric Hovde is spreading lies from the darkest corners of the internet to undercut our free and fair elections,” Baldwin posted on her campaign account on X. “Wisconsin voters made their voices heard. It’s time for Hovde to stop this disgusting attack on our democracy and concede.”

“Mr. Hovde is well within his rights to request a recount and ensure that the vote count is indeed accurate, but questioning the integrity of Wisconsin elections is an avenue that only sows distrust in the system moving forward,” declared the Democracy Defense Project, made up of Republican and Democratic political veterans

The statement was attributed to former Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, a Democrat; former Attorney General JB Van Hollen, a Republican; former U.S. Rep. Scott Klug, a Republican; and former Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate — the joint leaders of the Democracy Defense Project’s Wisconsin branch.

Joe Handrick, a Republican election analyst, predicted on Election Day a late-breaking boost to Democrats in Milwaukee, and reiterated that in a follow-up post Monday on X.

Bill McCoshen, a GOP lobbyist whose political career dates to the administration of former Gov. Tommy Thompson, said Tuesday morning on X that differences like the one between the number of votes for former President Donald Trump, who carried Wisconsin, and for Hovde are “not uncommon.”  

The gap of just under 54,000 votes between the two is easily explained by people not voting all the way down the ballot and by third-party candidates, of which there were two in the Senate race, McCoshen wrote. “It’s neither complicated, nor a conspiracy.”

Barry Burden, who directs the UW-Madison’s Election Research Center, said Hovde’s decision to not yet concede represents a new but troublesome trend.

“It’s been happening in the United States over the last few years, of candidates not conceding immediately or graciously as often as they did in the past,” Burden told the Wisconsin Examiner. Donald Trump’s refusal to concede his reelection loss in 2020 “provided a model for some candidates.”

Wisconsin law qualifies Hovde to seek a recount since he finished less than one percentage point behind Baldwin. Nonetheless, “the margin seems so large that I can’t imagine a recount reversing the outcome,” Burden said. “There’s probably no election in U.S. history where that has happened — elections need to be very close for a recount to produce anything different.”

An explicit concession “is one of the things that shows us that democracy is working,” according to University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist Mike Wagner. “Democracy is for the losing side because they get a chance to try again in the next election, and admitting when you lose is a critical factor required for the maintenance of democracies.”

Wagner is faculty director of the UW-Madison Center for Communication & Civic Renewal. How the ballot counting unfolded Tuesday night and early Wednesday was no surprise, he said, and absentee ballots are counted according to state law.

“It’s sad when a candidate for office raises unfounded questions about the Integrity of an election,” Wagner said.

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Sen. Tammy Baldwin gives a victory speech Thursday at the Steamfitters Local 601 hall east of Madison after winning a third term Tuesday. (Erik Gunn | Wisconsin Examiner)

While a majority of Wisconsin voters helped elect Republican Donald Trump as president this week, one statewide candidate managed to defy the odds that favored the GOP.

Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin squeezed out enough votes to overtake Republican Eric Hovde and return to Washington, D.C. for a third term.

Although the victory was much narrower than her last reelection in 2018, the outcome preserved Baldwin’s winning streak.

“2024 marks a continuation of Tammy Baldwin’s record of undefeated elections,” Ben Wikler, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, said Thursday at a brief Baldwin victory celebration.

“The way we won this race is the way I’ve always approached this job,” a smiling Baldwin said in her 10-minute victory speech. “We did everything, everywhere, all at once. I traveled to red, blue, purple, rural, suburban, urban parts of our state. I listened to people. I really listen to people and then deliver for them, and in turn, these Wisconsinites showed up for me, and I’m so grateful.”

Baldwin is “uniquely good at cultivating her own brand and separating it from the national Democratic Party brand,” said Marquette University political scientist Julia Azari in an interview Thursday.

Democrats in Wisconsin often seem to do better in midterm elections, “where it is a little bit less nationalized and the candidates can cultivate their kind of personal and localized brands,” Azari said. “Baldwin has been pretty successful and she’s running ahead of Democrats statewide in a lot of contests.”

Baldwin got her political start on the Dane County Board, graduated to the Wisconsin Legislature and was elected to the U.S. House in 1998, the state’s first female and first gay member of Congress. After 14 years in the House, she was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2012, the year Barack Obama won his second term.

In 2018, running against a Republican state senator, Leah Vukmir, Baldwin easily won reelection by nearly 11 points, while her fellow Democrat, Tony Evers, won his first term as governor by 1 percentage point.

“She addresses more sort of state priorities, and has become well known in rural parts of the state that we don’t really associate with Democrats,” Azari said. Baldwin’s much narrower 2024 victory came in “a very difficult national environment for Democrats.”

Baldwin held her event Thursday at a Steamfitters union apprenticeship training center on the East Side of Madison.

Steamfitters Local 601 business manager Doug Edwards called Baldwin “a homegrown roots type of person” who has been “just fabulous for working families in Wisconsin” and a staunch union ally.

“Tammy has just been a good advocate for all the people in Wisconsin, and I think that’s what put her over the top, even though it was close,” Edwards said in an interview.

In her victory speech, Baldwin recapped the broad range of issues that she’s made her own as a lawmaker, along with the people behind those issues who have been her supporters.

“It’s the farmers in the dairy industry who I fought alongside, earning the endorsement of the Wisconsin Farm Bureau,” Baldwin said. “It’s the workers on foundry floors who are getting more business because of my Buy America rules — big shout-out to labor.” 

Baldwin has successfully pushed congressional colleagues to include provisions favoring domestic suppliers and manufacturers in bills such as the bipartisan infrastructure law.

“It’s the LGBTQ families who saw through the nasty attack campaigns and knew that I had their back, and it’s the women who’ve had our rights stripped away and saw me on the front lines fighting for their freedom,” she added.

Baldwin has championed legislation to restore a federally protected abortion rights, ended in 2022 when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 ruling Roe v. Wade. The bill she authored has stalled in both houses.

Also in 2022, however, Baldwin argued that the loss of Roe meant that the Court’s 2015 ruling legalizing same-sex marriage could be at risk. She spearheaded a successful bill that gained bipartisan support affirming same-sex marriage as well as interracial couples.

Baldwin also highlighted her involvement in the Affordable Care Act, for which she wrote a provision that allows children to remain on their parents’ health insurance plans until they reach the age of 26.

After four years in the Senate as a member of its Democratic majority, in January Baldwin will begin her third term as a member of the minority party. Throughout her tenure in Congress, however, Baldwin has repeatedly joined with Republicans on bills that have aligned with her own stances.

On Tuesday, her margin of roughly 30,000 votes was about the same as the margin by which Harris lost to Trump in Wisconsin. And the senator’s final tally was about 5,000 more than Harris’ — suggesting that some Wisconsin voters who picked Trump split their tickets to vote for Baldwin.

Baldwin diplomatically acknowledged the presidential contest outcome Thursday.

“While we worked our hearts out to elect Kamala Harris, I recognize that the people of Wisconsin chose Donald Trump, and I respect their choice,” Baldwin said.

“You know that I will always fight for Wisconsin, and that means working with President Trump to do that, and standing up to him when he doesn’t have our best interest at heart.”

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After Democrat Tammy Baldwin won reelection to her U.S. Senate seat in Wisconsin, conspiracy theorists skeptical of the outcome pointed to a misleading results table to claim that there were more ballots cast than registered voters in some wards of Oak Creek, a Milwaukee suburb.

The table on Milwaukee County’s results website appeared to show four Oak Creek wards where more than 100% of registered voters cast ballots, including one with 1,256 registered voters and 1,271 ballots, and another with 1,006 registered voters and 1,019 ballots.

Turnout in Oak Creek “was impressive late at night for Senator Baldwin,” said a social media post from Seth Keshel, a prominent conspiracy theorist who has hundreds of thousands of followers across social media. The post, which was accompanied by an image with data from the county’s table, has already received hundreds of reactions and shares.

But the claim that the numbers show a questionable pattern isn’t true, election officials said, and is easily disprovable. 

The table’s turnout percentages, which were based on numbers on the page showing the county’s unofficial results, were based on the number of registered voters these wards had the day before Election Day. They didn’t take into account the number of people who registered to vote on Election Day, City Clerk Catherine Roeske said. 

Oak Creek hadn’t yet officially tallied the number of same-day registrants, but Roeske estimated that it was about 2,700. 

After Votebeat told Michelle Hawley, Milwaukee County’s election director, about the increasingly viral claim, the county added a note to its results page to clarify that “the number of registered voters displayed are as of the day before the election. In Wisconsin, state law allows voters to register on election day, and as a result, it is possible for a ward to have over 100% participation.”

Turnout in many Milwaukee County municipalities was “super impressive,” Hawley said, surpassing most elections before it.

There’s another flaw in the premise of the social media posts that some kind of malfeasance in Oak Creek helped put Baldwin over the top: Her Republican opponent, Eric Hovde, is the one who carried the city. He got roughly 550 more votes than Baldwin — about 10,700 to 10,150 — according to unofficial results, and topped her total in one of the four wards that were listed with more than 100% turnout.

Oak Creek was among the last few municipalities in Wisconsin to report election results, along with neighboring Milwaukee, Green Bay, Oshkosh, and Racine. Conspiracy theorists often use late-arriving results that cause a swing as a pretext to circulate false claims about election fraud.

Before those cities’ numbers came in, early and unofficial results showed Hovde leading Baldwin by about 63,000 votes. Still, at that point, conservatives already recognized that Hovde was unlikely to win, given that the outstanding votes were from cities that mostly lean Democratic. 

The largest chunk of still-unreported votes that would deliver Baldwin a win would come from Milwaukee, which she won by about 143,000 votes. Milwaukee County posted the city’s results at around 4:30 a.m., after a delay caused by a recount of absentee ballots. 

At that time, Oak Creek’s results were still outstanding, even though it had far fewer ballots to count.

Oak Creek’s central counting site processed over 12,700 absentee ballots and was adequately staffed, Roeske said, but as work went late into the night, the city lost many of its poll workers to fatigue. She also cited rules that prevent election officials from pre-processing absentee ballots.

Some “amazing” staff lasted late into the night though, Roeske said. 

Once Oak Creek and the other cities’ results were in, unofficial results showed Baldwin in front by just under 30,000 votes. The Associated Press called the race for Baldwin just before 1 p.m. on Wednesday. Hovde had not conceded as of early afternoon Thursday. Unofficial results showed him within the 1% margin to request a recount.

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.

No, Milwaukee’s Oak Creek suburb didn’t have more ballots than 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.

Boxes of ballots wait to be counted at Milwaukee's central count on Election Day 2024. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin was declared the winner of Wisconsin’s Senate race by The Associate Press on Wednesday, earning her third term in the chamber. But her opponent, Republican businessman Eric Hovde, remains within the margin allowed under state law to request a recount. 

Under state law, candidates who lose by a margin of less than 1% are able to request a recount of both the whole state and individual counties. If the margin is less than 0.25%, the state pays for the costs of the recount — which include staff labor, space, transportation, rentals and supplies — but if it’s more than 0.25% the candidate’s campaign pays for those costs. If the recount changes the result of an election, the counties and state are responsible for the costs. 

In 2020, Donald Trump paid $3 million for recounts in Dane and Milwaukee counties. 

While official results won’t be ready for weeks, unofficial results show Hovde trails Baldwin by 0.9%. 

Wisconsin’s election certification process begins at the local level when  boards of canvass in 1,850 communities meet to validate and certify the results of the election. The local boards of canvass, which consist of the municipal clerk and two appointed members from each community, must meet and certify the local election results no later than 9 a.m. on the first Monday after the election. 

The certification then moves to the county level, where similarly constructed county boards of canvass meet to validate and certify the results. Results from the county boards of canvass must be transmitted to the Wisconsin Elections Commission within 14 days after a general election. This year that deadline falls on Nov. 19. 

At each level, and for the final state certification, the action of the boards of canvass is ministerial, meaning the board has no discretion to not certify a result it doesn’t like. If all the votes were accounted for and legally cast, the board must certify the results. 

After the county boards of canvass are complete and the final county sends its results to the state, a candidate within the recount margin can request a recount. Presidential candidates must file their request within one business day after the final county canvass. Other candidates, including Hovde, have three business days. That gives the Hovde campaign until Nov. 22 to request a full or partial recount. 

When a recount is called, it is the responsibility of the county to hold it. The recount is a public process and in 2020 the recounts were livestreamed. Representatives from the two parties are involved in the process as election inspectors from each recounted  county’s municipalities goes through the ballots again, making sure they were tabulated correctly. Each party is able to challenge individual ballots and each challenge is adjudicated by a bipartisan recount court. 

“It’s a very, very public process that has a lot of involvement from the party representatives and the political parties as well,” WEC Administrator Meagan Wolfe said at a Wednesday news conference. 

Counties have three days to begin their recount after it is ordered and a recount must be completed by Nov. 30 because the state’s deadline to certify the election results is Dec. 1.

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U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, Democrat of Wisconsin (Screenshot | Democratic National Convention YouTube channel)

Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin has won a third term, defeating Republican California bank owner and part-time Wisconsin resident Eric Hovde in a contest characterized by relentless attacks on the part of both candidates.

With 99% of the ballots counted, Baldwin won with 49.4% of the vote and a margin of just under 30,000 votes, less than 1 percentage point ahead of Hovde, who finished with 48.5%. The Associated Press called the race for Baldwin at 12:42 p.m. Wednesday.

Baldwin declared victory eight hours earlier. “It is clear that the voters have spoken and our campaign has won,” she said in a statement released at 4:30 a.m. Wednesday.

Baldwin built on a continuing track record of success across Wisconsin, including carrying counties generally dominated by Republicans. In this year’s campaign, she also became the first statewide Democratic candidate to receive the endorsement of the Wisconsin Farm Bureau.

Tuesday’s election concluded a grueling campaign dominated by attacks in which Baldwin started with a lead of about 7 percentage points that dwindled in the final months. 

Democrats early on painted Hovde, who was raised in Madison, as a California carpetbagger, pointing to his ownership of a bank based in Orange County and a multimillion-dollar mansion in Laguna Beach. Team Baldwin also highlighted numerous past statements from Hovde that they portrayed as denigrating nursing home residents, college students and farmers, among others.

Hovde, meanwhile, characterized Baldwin as a career politician with little to show for her two terms in the Senate and a tenure that included more than a decade in Congress and before that in the Wisconsin Assembly and the Dane County Board.

Baldwin was also likely helped by one of her core messages, focusing on reproductive rights in the post-Roe era. Baldwin has authored a bill to codify federal protections for abortion. Her campaign highlighted Hovde’s past anti-abortion statements and his championing the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that ended the federal right to abortion that had been declared in the landmark decision Roe v. Wade.

This report has been updated.

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U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Gov. Tony Evers address a group of about three dozen members of the Jefferson County Democratic Party on Election Day. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

In Fort Atkinson, more than three dozen members of the Jefferson County Democratic Party — as well as a few joining from the neighboring Dodge and Walworth counties — packed into the small county party office to welcome U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Gov. Tony Evers before kicking off some last minute canvassing.

Full of excitement at the prospect of electing Democrats Melissa Ratcliff and Joan Fitzgerald to its seats in the state Senate and Assembly (both in attendance at the event) after years of Republican representation under the old legislative maps, the Democrats from a rural county nearly mid-way between the urban centers of Madison and Milwaukee said they were expecting wins on Tuesday.

“I think our country has weathered the storm, and grown in the process,” Fort Atkinson Democrat Jim Marousis says.

Baldwin is running for re-election in one of the country’s most closely watched Senate elections, with Democrats needing her to win in order to retain control of the chamber.

“We are the battleground state,” Baldwin told the gathered group of supporters. “We will decide, most likely, who the next president is, what party controls the United States Senate, what party controls the House of Representatives. All could be decided right here in our state.”

At the beginning of Baldwin’s remarks, the crowd sang happy birthday to Evers, who is celebrating his 73rd birthday on Tuesday. Evers touted the work Baldwin has done in Wisconsin to secure supplies for the state during the COVID-19 pandemic and convince the federal Small Business Administration to provide loans to northern Wisconsin businesses last winter when a lack of snowfall shut down many winter recreational activities.

Evers said that the ground game of Wisconsin Democrats is going to make the difference for the party up and down the ticket on Tuesday, adding that he was hopeful the party would win control of the state Assembly.

“People all across the Wisconsin Democratic Party are doing the things that make the difference,” he said. “Wisconsin has the best ground game. Nothing compares to here.”

With about five hours until polls close on her second re-election campaign, Baldwin said she was optimistic at her chances.

“As of the time that early voting started two weeks ago, and certainly my travels today give me great hope and optimism,” she told the Wisconsin Examiner. “I feel like we have the momentum. I feel like people are stepping up to volunteer. Some have never volunteered before, and it’s not necessarily easy to go knock on a stranger’s door. And also the news of new registrations leading up to Election Day is heartwarming. I’m hearing early readouts now from the clerks in various communities about really motivated voters. So anyways, I’m feeling great.” 

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Has Tammy Baldwin taken steps to lower prescription drug prices? 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.

Vice President Kamala Harris addresses union supporters Friday at a rally held in the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union hall in Janesville, Wisconsin. (Erik Gunn | Wisconsin Examiner)

If the speech Vice President Kamala Harris delivered one week before Election Day on the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., was her presidential campaign’s closing argument, her talk Friday to a packed Wisconsin union hall was a sequel — a closing argument directed at the working class.

Harris made an unapologetic pro-union message that equaled the one President Joe Biden has delivered  throughout his four years in the White House. In the process, she set herself — and the Democratic ticket — apart from Republican former President Donald Trump.

“We have an opportunity in this election to turn the page on a decade of Donald Trump, who has spent full time trying to have the American people point fingers at each other. Full time trying to divide us, have people be afraid of each other. And folks are exhausted with this stuff,” Harris said.

The shoulder-to-shoulder crowd inside the headquarters of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 890 in Janesville clapped and cheered.

“That’s who he is — that’s not who we are,” Harris continued. “Nobody understands better than a union member that as Americans we all rise or fall together.”

By the time Harris took the stage, just before 3 p.m, the standing-room-only audience was thoroughly warmed up.

Peter Barca, the Democratic candidate mounting an uphill challenge to U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, the Republican 1st District congressman, urged the crowd not to be  complacent.

He reminded the union members of Act 10, former Republican Gov.  Scott Walker’s surprise attack on labor that stripped public employees of most union rights. And he warned that Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation proposal for the next Republican administration, threatens to end unions for public workers nationwide and cripple private-sector unions.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers also spoke, giving a shout-out to union workers who built Milwaukee’s baseball stadium 25 years ago and who are refurbishing it with state funds. He highlighted new legislative maps — drawn by Evers’ team and enacted by Republican lawmakers — that have undone a 13-year GOP gerrymander in Wisconsin and which will get their first test at the ballot box on Tuesday.

“We can flip the state Assembly,” Evers declared, adding that a Democratic resurgence would set the stage for undoing Act 10 and other union-restrictive legislation enacted when Republicans controlled all the branches of state government. Evers urged the audience to call, text or otherwise connect to friends and family “and tell them your ‘why’” for making their choices at the polls.

Following Evers in the Janesville union hall, Sen. Tammy Baldwin, in a close race for reelection, evoked Wisconsin’s “long and rich history as a pro-union stronghold of the Midwest” where unions and workers are now fighting to restore labor rights lost in the last decade. Baldwin pointed to her push for “buy American” requirements in legislation such as the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law.

“Now, when we’re building roads all across this country, we’re using American steel and American concrete to do it,” Baldwin said. “That means union jobs in our state — but all of that progress is absolutely on the line right now with this election.”

A full-throated pro-union message

When Harris addressed the crowd in Janesville, she held up union members as leaders for fair pay, benefits, workplace safety, the five-day work week, paid vacation and family leave, “because it is union members that work and put blood, sweat and tears into raising the conditions of the American worker, wherever they work.”

In contrast to “the disparity in power” between workers with no unions and their employers, collective bargaining enables workers “to join together, as a collective, and then negotiate to better ensure one simple thing — that the outcome is fair,” Harris said.

Harris outlined an industrial policy agenda building on themes that have been central to the Biden administration’s economic policy: continuing federal investment in domestic manufacturing, with local hiring and union participation, particularly to build up technology and clean energy.  She vowed to strive for “good paying jobs that do not require a college degree,” to remove by executive order “unnecessary degree requirements for federal jobs” and to challenge private employers to do likewise.

Harris reiterated her promise to sign the PRO Act, legislation that unions have been seeking to remove obstacles to union organizing, and to oppose threats to retirement benefits.

She cited economic analyses that have said Trump’s economic plans “would bankrupt Social Security in the next six years.” And she contrasted Trump’s claim when he ran in 2016 that he would restore American manufacturing jobs with his record in office.

“America lost nearly 200,000 manufacturing jobs when he was president, including thousands of jobs right here in Wisconsin,” Harris said. “And let’s be clear — those losses started before the pandemic, making Donald Trump one of the biggest losers of manufacturing jobs in America.” The crowd hooted and cheered.

Those losses, Harris observed, included six U.S. auto plants, after Trump had run promising the industry “would not, quote, lose one plant during his presidency.”

She paused. “Janesville” — where General Motors shut a plant in 2008 that had been the city’s industrial mainstay for 90 years — “you know what those closures mean,” she said, describing the loss of well-paid union jobs and the ripple effects bringing down small businesses in the community.

‘Union-buster his entire career’

Harris mocked the Foxconn project in Mount Pleasant that failed to live up to Trump’s promotion and charged that the 2017 tax cut Trump signed “cut taxes for corporations that shipped 200,000 American jobs overseas during his presidency.”

Trump “has been a union-buster his entire career,” she said, mentioning a Trump description of union leaders as “dues-sucking people,” his support of right-to-work laws that weaken unions, and a conversation Trump had with Elon Musk in which Trump affirmed Musk’s suggestion that striking workers should be fired.

“While he was president, he lowered labor standards and made it easier for companies to break labor laws and then get federal contracts,” she added.

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Harris tacitly acknowledged that Trump’s supporters appear to include a swath of working-class voters, some of them union members.

 “And so part of why I’m here is to ask all the leaders here — let’s remind all the brothers and sisters of Labor about who Donald Trump really is. Because he’s got a lot of talk, but if you pay attention to what he’s actually done, if you pay attention to who he actually stood with when people needed a defender and a friend, you’ll see who he really is. And we’ve got to get the word out about this,” Harris said.

“Donald Trump’s track record is a disaster for working people and he is an existential threat to America’s labor movement.”

After the rally, Stacy Farrington, a Rock County employee, said acknowledgement of how public sector union rights had been lost resonated with her. “We don’t have a voice,” she said, adding that the rally invoked “hope that we have to get back to that.”

Tom Brien, who worked for 43 years at the Janesville GM plant until its 2008 shutdown, said the warnings about Trump’s likely labor agenda were important to hear.

“Kamala supports unions, and we’ll be a whole a lot better off with her versus her opponent,” Brien said. Nevertheless, he’s cautious about the outcome.

“It’s definitely going to be close,” Brien said. “I don’t think it’s going to be a runaway. But we’ll hope for the best.”

Cortaisha Thompson knocks on doors on Milwaukee's southside. (Photo | Isiah Holmes)

A strong, warm fall wind accompanied Cortaisha Thompson as she walked through a south-side Milwaukee neighborhood. “I like to be out talking in the community just like, interacting with people,” the 26-year-old told Wisconsin Examiner. About 20 canvassers from Leaders Igniting Transformation (LIT), including Thompson, have spent months knocking on doors throughout Milwaukee ensuring voters have what they need in the election on Tuesday, Nov. 5.  

Calmly walking up a staircase leading to a front door, Thompson knocked and waited. After about 30 seconds without an answer, she left a piece of voter education literature in the door and moved on. At the next house a woman answered the door, saying that she planned to vote on Election Day, but that she didn’t know that early voting was an option. Early in-person voting at polling places in Milwaukee began on Oct. 22 and will run until Nov. 3. 

Whether anyone answers the door when she knocks is a toss up, Thompson said. In some neighborhoods, doors stay shut the majority of the time. Sometimes it depends on the time of day and whether most people are at school or work. Thompson, who lives closer to Racine, has also noticed how different neighborhoods in Milwaukee have different vibes. On the South Side, canvassing walks can be quieter. When Thompson canvassed the North Side, she encountered more residents willing to talk about their political views. 

“I feel like I get more contacts and more energized people that’s willing to open the door and actually talk,” said Thompson said of North Side neighborhoods. Since LIT’s goal is simply voter education and not candidate endorsement, Thompson doesn’t try to  convince people to vote one way or another. Especially in Milwaukee, one of America’s most segregated cities, Thompson sees how people can feel pigeon-holed. “They feel like they have to vote for Trump, or they have to vote for Kamala,” said Thompson. “I just tell them like, we’re not here to tell you who to vote for or anything. We just want to make sure you get out to vote, and get your opinion out there.”

Signs for both former President Donald Trump and Vice  President Kamala Harris sprinkled the diverse neighborhood. Some homes were adorned with colorful decorations. As Thompson approached a couple of doors, where no one answered, she noticed local police association stickers. She said she enjoyed her time in Milwaukee, and even is considering moving to the city.

Each day she canvassed a different neighborhood or part of town. When Thompson canvassed in wealthier neighborhoods with residents “in those super big houses,” people often reacted with hostility to LIT, she said, “cussing at us and stuff like that.” On the South Side she felt more welcome. 

Periodically, Thompson would stop to check her phone to see what house is next on the list. Every canvasser is expected to knock on 175 doors a day. A couple months ago, the daily metric shot up to 275, which limited the amount of time canvassers could spend at each door. LIT has a goal to knock on 650,000 doors before election day, and has already reached more than  620,000. 

Thompson sees “a big mix of support” for different candidates neighborhood by neighborhood. “I haven’t gotten that yet, an area that’s strictly for her, or strictly with him,” said Thompson. A Marquette University poll released on Wednesday shows Harris and  Trump in a virtual dead heat, 50% to -49% among likely voters. 

Similarly, the race between Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Republican challenger Eric Hovde showed Baldwin leading 51% to 49%, a big drop from the seven-point lead Baldwin held in September. 

Many voters Thompson has encountered also seem squarely focused on the presidential election. There’s also the Republican-backed constitutional amendments on the ballot this year, which LIT is also informing voters of. “There’s people that say they don’t even go out and vote for no election if it’s not the presidential one,” said Thompson. LIT heard the same thing from voters  when knocking on doors for school referendums, mayoral races, and other elections. “None of it.” 

That attitude can change, though, when voters are asked about issues instead of about candidates. Thompson recalled speaking to a woman about health care access. “Her daughter got into a car accident and was in a coma and all type of stuff and they didn’t have the money to pay for her treatment,” said Thompson. “And then she started crying talking to me about it so I was like, kind of sad about it…There’s really people out here affected by not having that type of stuff. Majorly affected.” Reproductive rights was another recurring issue Thompson has heard while canvassing. Shortly after telling the story Thompson walked into a local convenience store for some water. When the store manager  he realized Thompson was out canvassing voters, he offered the water for free. 

Prior to getting involved in LIT, Thompson said she never paid much attention to politics. Older relatives of hers, however, were politically active and pushed her to get involved. When she did, and then started working with LIT, her whole perspective changed. “They bring a lot of stuff to your attention to make you realize, like, your vote really matters, and it really counts,” said Thompson. “Especially in times like this where it’s like if it don’t go the way you want it to go, you don’t know how it’s going to go afterward.”

This article has been edited to update the numbers of doors knocked by LIT, and to correct a misspelled name. 

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Marquette University Law School Poll logo

The latest Marquette Law School poll released Wednesday found that the race between Vice President Harris and former President Donald Trump remains extremely close in Wisconsin. 

Harris received 50% of support among likely voters, while Trump received 49%. The previous Marquette poll, conducted in late September, found that Harris received 52% of support and Trump received 48% among likely voters.

The poll, which was conducted between Oct. 16 and 24, surveyed 834 Wisconsin registered voters of whom 753 are considered likely to vote based on 2016 voting records.

“The race has tightened a little bit,” Charles Franklin, the director of the Marquette Law School poll, said in a public forum where he presented the poll results Wednesday. 

When third party candidates including Robert F. Kennedy and Jill Stein were included in the poll, Harris received 46% of support while Trump received 44% of support. Franklin said voters who are undecided and leaning toward voting for a third-party contribute to the uncertainty in this election. 

“They could so easily tip the scales one way or the other,” Franklin said. “If I haven’t made it clear by now, it should not surprise anyone if Donald Trump wins, and it should not surprise anyone if Kamala Harris wins. The polling averages for the state… are just so close that polling is not going to help us at all to have confidence in who is the likely winner.” 

The poll also found a large gender gap among voters with men favoring Trump 56% to 44% and women favoring Harris 57% to 43%.

Enthusiasm is also high with 66% of those polled saying they are very enthusiastic. Democrats had a slight enthusiasm advantage with 75% of Democrats saying they are “very enthusiastic” to vote compared with 66% of Republicans.

In the Wisconsin U.S. Senate race, Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, who is running for her third term in office, polls slightly ahead of Republican Eric Hovde, a banker from California.

Among likely voters Baldwin received 51% of support while Hovde received 49%. The results are a big change from the last poll in September, which found that Baldwin had a lead of 7 percentage points over Hovde.

Baldwin was seen favorably by 45% of poll respondents, while her unfavorable rating was 50%; 5% said they haven’t heard enough to form an opinion. Hovde was seen as favorable by 36% and unfavorable by 48% of those polled, with 15% saying they haven’t heard enough.

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