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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Green County changing results reporting process for November

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Winnebago County shifted gears on Election Day

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

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

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

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

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

Some election security experts warn against modeming results

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Trump administration on Wednesday renewed its request to the U.S. Supreme Court to quickly decide a case over an executive order restricting voting, a day after a Massachusetts federal judge expanded an injunction on the order nationwide.

The Tuesday order from U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani that blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order from taking effect anywhere in the country makes the administration’s request to the Supreme Court more urgent, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote. 

“The district court’s new order confirms the urgent need for this Court to grant the stay of the permanent injunction and to explain its rationale for doing so,” Sauer wrote. 

Election Day is Nov. 3, less than three months away.

Decisions in two cases at district and circuit courts have reached different conclusions about whether the rulemaking could continue in the lead-up to this fall’s elections. 

That means the Supreme Court’s decision, now on its emergency docket, will likely determine whether the executive order can move forward. A decision could come any day.

The Trump executive order would limit vote-by-mail, the primary method of voting in several states, especially in the West. 

It would require states to send the federal government lists of voters who intend to vote by mail ahead of the election and restrict the U.S. Postal Service from delivering ballots to or from people not on the list, among other things.

The administration has sought to focus arguments on the narrow legal question of whether an executive order can be challenged before an agency, in this case the U.S. Postal Service and the Department of Homeland Security, issues a final rule. The government argues that the executive order only instructs the agencies to issue rules, and those rules are not yet final, and therefore cannot be challenged.

Trial court order

Talwani’s memorandum and order on Tuesday rejected that argument, and she expanded a previous injunction from just the 23 states and the District of Columbia that brought the suit to be effective nationwide. 

Talwani said — in her order published just 12 weeks before Election Day — she was only blocking the order with respect to the “fast-approaching” midterms. Further arguments over the merits of federal voting regulations could still happen, but federal law requires the status quo to be preserved this close to an election, she said. 

Because of the tight timeline and the assumption that a final rule will be similar to a June 2 notice of proposed rulemaking, Talwani said she could rule simply on the constitutionality of the executive order. It was an easy call, she said.

“The executive branch has no authority to regulate elections,” she wrote, citing the Constitution.

The administration has not shown how blocking the executive order would harm the public, as it has not documented any “illegal or fraudulent absentee voting,” while the voting rights organizations challenging the order have shown that voters with disabilities, in rural areas, who need translation help, attend college outside their home states and in other circumstances would be harmed, she said.

In fact, the organizations showed their members in states across the country are already being harmed by the uncertainty around what rules will govern the midterm elections, said Talwani.

“Where the (executive order) is presently causing confusion and threatening both increasing chaos and an erosion of trust in our democracy, the court finds that enfranchisement heavily outweighs the executive’s attempt to unconstitutionally insert itself into the domain of election regulation,” Talwani wrote. The proximity to Election Day “underscores the critical need for an injunction to prevent Defendants from changing election rules on the eve of the election.”

The Federal Voter Registration Act also prohibits states from purging voter rolls within 90 days of an election, Talwani wrote.

DOJ’s double bind

The nature of the argument puts Sauer and the U.S. Department of Justice in a seemingly difficult legal position, arguing both that the executive order cannot be challenged because it is not enforceable and that the administration must be allowed to put an enforceable rule in place before Election Day.

Sauer asked the court Wednesday to rule for the government and “make clear” that it was doing so “based on the uncertainty concerning the government’s future actions.”

But in the next paragraph, he said implementing the executive order was crucial to the public interest.

“In all events, it is critical that the Court act promptly on the pending stay,” Sauer said. “Otherwise, the district court’s erroneous orders will effectively run out the clock on the government’s ability to implement Section 3 of the Executive Order for the federal elections in November, thereby causing irreparable harm to the federal government, the public, and election integrity.”

Wisconsin’s August primary election takes place Tuesday, with voters across the state heading to the polls to choose their preferred candidate for dozens of races on the ballot in November’s midterm elections. 

Polls open Tuesday morning at 7 a.m. and close at 8 p.m. If there is a line at a polling place at 8 p.m., voters should remain in line because they’ll still be allowed to vote. Election officials said Monday that because primary elections typically have lower turnout than general elections, long lines aren’t expected. 

In 2018, the last time Democrats had an open primary for governor, primary turnout was 23% of eligible voters. That year’s general election saw 59.7% turnout. In 2022, when Republicans had an open primary for governor and there was a Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, primary turnout was 26.3% and the general election turnout was 57.2%. 

“For voters that are interested in voting tomorrow during the election in person at the polling place … it seems like [polls are busiest] earlier in the morning when the polls open, and then after work, you know once people are kind of headed home and in the evening hours, and so voters may want to consider times that are off some of those peak times,” Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe said at a Monday news conference. “But again, I really don’t expect that tomorrow will be outside of the norm …  it’s typically 22 to 25 percent, which is a much much smaller turnout than you’d see in a general election. And so we typically don’t see waits and things like that in a partisan primary.”

With the lower turnout in a primary election, the counting of votes is usually faster than in a higher turnout general election. But, Wolfe said, results can still take time to be determined and she urged patience while election officials work to count ballots. 

“Election officials will always prioritize accuracy over speed,” she said.

As voters have increasingly turned to absentee voting since 2020, hundreds of thousands of people have already cast their votes in the election. WEC data from Monday morning shows that 368,000 people have requested absentee ballots and 268,000 have been returned. 

There were about 27,000 more absentee ballots returned ahead of the 2022 primary. 

It is too late  to put absentee ballots in the mail. But voters who requested absentee ballots and have not returned them yet can bring them to their  polling place, their local municipal clerk’s office or, in communities that use them, to an absentee ballot drop box. 

In Wisconsin, voters don’t need to register as a member of a party to vote in that party’s primary election. But, each voter must choose which primary they’re voting in at the polls and can only choose one. 

“If a voter does choose to not follow the directions and vote in more than one party’s primary, then their votes would not be counted for those contests,” Wolfe said.

Eligible voters who are not registered to vote can register at the polls on Election Day. To register, voters need to provide their name and place of residence to the poll worker. A valid Wisconsin ID can be used if it shows a voter’s current address but voters can also use a property tax bill, lease document, utility bill, a college identification card or bank statement. 

What’s on the ballot

State and national attention is focused  on the Democratic primary for governor in which four candidates are vying to be the party’s nominee — former Department of Administration Secretary Joel Brennan, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, state Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison) and state Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison). 

While those four are the candidates still actively running, the names of three Democrats who have dropped out of the race will also appear on the ballot: former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, former WEDC CEO Missy Hughes and Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez. 

“All of the candidates that filed their paperwork and were granted ballot access appear on the ballot,” Wolfe said. “Every single voter in Wisconsin, whether you voted right when absentee ballots went out in June or you’re voting at the polls on Election Day, will see the same ballot. And so, when a candidate chooses to drop out of a race, that actually has no impact on the official ballot, and any votes for that candidate would still be counted.” 

Further down the ballot, voters will decide the nominees in statewide races for lieutenant governor, state treasurer and secretary of state. All but one of Wisconsin’s eight congressional seats have contested primaries. There are also legislative races in every corner of the state and primaries for local partisan offices such as county sheriff.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Dane County judge on Wednesday rejected a request from Democratic voters to allow people to “spoil” and re-cast their absentee ballots for any reason. 

Under state law, voters can spoil ballots that are damaged or if they believe they made a mistake in filling out the ballot. Earlier this month, the Wisconsin Elections Commission voted 4-2 to publish guidance stating that the process wasn’t available to people who simply wished to change their vote. 

The Democratic voters argued the guidance should be thrown out to accommodate people who may have already cast a vote in this year’s August primaries before their preferred candidate dropped out. The ballot for the Democratic primary for governor includes two candidates, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez and former Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation CEO Missy Hughes, whose names appear even though both have suspended their campaigns. 

In a ruling Thursday, Judge David Conway rejected the injunction request from the voters, finding that “the unambiguous language of the statute does not allow a voter to spoil an absentee ballot after it is returned.”

WASHINGTON — Suddenly there’s evidence that noncitizens were on voting rolls in New Jersey, and there are new questions about the credibility of Alaska’s voter data. Republicans say that’s a big deal and an important boost for their so-far stuck election integrity drive.

But look more closely. Congressional lawmakers and independent experts said this week none of those disclosures are enough to give a meaningful boost to the Trump administration’s relentless quest to purge noncitizens from voter rolls.

New Jersey found 6,600 noncitizens on its voter rolls in 2023 and 2024, with less than 400 actually voting. Alaska officials are raising questions about a few thousand voters, though it hasn’t proven they were not entitled to vote. President Donald Trump won Alaska in 2024 by 44,000 votes.

“The answer is no,” said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, when asked if the news would boost support for the SAVE America Act.

“They simply don’t have the votes in the Senate,” Becker said. “Even if it did pass,  we’re less than three months from the election.”

The House passed the SAVE America Act in April, and last week it approved legislation that would give states $10 billion to tighten election laws. 

But any effort to advance those measures is stuck in the Senate, where most measures will need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. The Senate has 53 Republicans, but not all support the Trump plan.

Majority Leader John Thune saw a difficult path forward.

The South Dakota Republican said Monday it was up to Trump to persuade wavering senators to go along. “If he can change the facts and start moving some of those senators from nos to yeses, then we’ll have a different conversation. It’s just the reality,” Thune told reporters.

The SAVE America Act, arguably Trump’s top legislative priority this year, would require voters to show proof of citizenship when they register and a photo ID when they vote. Noncitizens are already barred from voting in state, federal and almost all local elections.

New Jersey, Alaska problems

What triggered the latest Republican drive was New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s disclosure last week that about 6,600 noncitizens had been registered to vote in the state because of a software problem with the state Motor Vehicle Commission automatic voter registration system.

About 400 actually voted. Sherrill said the mistake began in 2023 and took a year to fix. She said there was no evidence it affected election results. Sherrill took office in January 2026.

“It’s unacceptable that the vendor released software with such a glaring error. It’s unacceptable that the MVC took a year to get this issue fixed, and it’s unacceptable that no one, in the previous administration, brought this to light, demanded accountability,” she said, the New Jersey Monitor reported.

Alaska last week also reported problems with its Division of Motor Vehicles registration. Officials said the state has removed 3,048 people from its voter rolls, saying they may not be citizens.

Carol Beecher, Division of Elections director, told state lawmakers that someone identified as a noncitizen should contact her agency and say whether or not they are a citizen, the Alaska Beacon reported.

“It is not an onerous request from the division to simply contact us and confirm, and that is what we have asked them to do. We don’t require paperwork. We’re not requiring documentation. Nothing like that,” she said.

Motor voter law

The federal motor voter law of 1993 had largely been regarded as a bipartisan success, a way of making it easier for people to register to vote. 

It requires that states offer registration at their motor vehicle agencies, including by mail. Applications for registration must be included in renewals and new applications for a drivers’ license.

The 1993 law applies to 44 states and Washington, D.C. Idaho, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Wyoming are exempt because when the law took effect, they had no registration requirements or had same-day election registration at polling places. 

A 2002 law requires voters to show identification, usually a driver’s’ license, before they can register. 

Noncitizens cannot vote in federal or state elections, but they can apply for driver’s licenses. 

It’s unclear exactly why noncitizens showed up on New Jersey and possibly Alaska vote lists. Was it a software glitch? Were officials lax? Is there a problem other states should be aware of?

“We don’t know a lot about this yet,” said Becker.

Proof of fraud?

The Trump administration claimed earlier this month that as many as 250,000 noncitizens were registered to vote in New Jersey, California, Pennsylvania and Nevada.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said as many as 35,152 “potential noncitizens” may be registered to vote in New Jersey.

No concrete evidence supporting that number has surfaced, and voting rights analysts have raised questions about how that number was calculated.

To SAVE Act supporters, the New Jersey and Alaska disclosures last week were — finally — solid proof things were going wrong. Since the disclosures, there have been these developments:

• The Justice Department wants the names and other information for those improperly registered. Sherrill said she won’t release the data.
• U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a New Jersey Republican who heads a House Judiciary subcommittee, and 18 other House Republicans sent a letter to Sherrill demanding details about what happened.  They want to know by Aug. 21 why the state failed to identify the error, and why it took so long. “New Jersey should end automatic voter registration at the Motor Vehicle Commission, clean up its voter rolls, and require proof of citizenship to register to vote. These are basic safeguards that should already be in place,” Van Drew said in a statement. 
• Trump and some Republicans called for the Senate to stay in session. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, wants to keep senators in Washington past the start of their summer recess late next week so they can work on election reform. “The Senate doesn’t need a summer vacation as much as the country needs the SAVE America Act. Let’s cancel recess,” he tweeted Sunday. Joining him was Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Jim Banks, R-Ind.
• Republicans blamed Democrats. On the Senate floor, Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., tied the mess to Democratic views on undocumented immigrants. “Democrats can’t throw open the borders, hand illegal immigrants driver’s licenses, and then pretend to be shocked–shocked (as)  Democrats claim to be when these illegal immigrants end up voting.  Illegal immigrants must not be allowed to vote in American elections,” he said.

Democrats scoffed at such rhetoric.

“Give it up, Donald. The SAVE Act ain’t going to happen,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., in a floor speech this week aimed at Trump.

To Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a senior Senate Judiciary Committee member, the situation is tinged with sadness.

“It all creates more suspicion there are problems with the voting rolls. I’m sure there are on an anecdotal basis,” he said of the New Jersey news. “The more you cast the validity of the voting system in doubt it discourages more people from participating.”

Asked if the revelations changed any Senate votes on the SAVE America Act, he said flatly, “No.”

A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the federal government can continue implementing President Donald Trump’s executive order limiting vote-by-mail, reaching the opposite conclusion that another appeals panel decided over the weekend.

The conflict appeared to make it even more clear the issue will have to be settled by the U.S. Supreme Court, which already has been asked for its opinion on Trump’s sweeping order that would have a huge impact on states just a little more than three months before the midterm elections.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said Tuesday the executive order, which directs the U.S. Postal Service to collect from states lists of eligible voters who intend to vote by mail at least two months before an election and the Department of Homeland Security to compile lists of voting-age citizens in each state, can proceed because the agencies have not yet written rules implementing the order.

A D.C. trial judge in May denied several voting rights groups’ request to block the order, saying the groups had not yet been harmed.

Judges Patricia Millett and Robert Wilkins, who were appointed by President Barack Obama, and Gregory Katsas, whom Trump appointed, affirmed the decision.

They wrote that the executive order, which Trump signed March 31, is not self-executing and specifically tells the USPS and DHS to write the prescribed rules in a way that is consistent with the federal laws the groups say the order violates.

“We affirm because, while Plaintiffs have identified a number of serious questions concerning the lawfulness of proposed actions if implemented on the threshold of the upcoming federal election, this case likely is unripe for review in its present posture,” they wrote.

Their order directly contradicts a ruling the U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals published Saturday in a case brought by Democratic officials from 23 states and the District of Columbia. 

That opinion held that states would be harmed if the order was allowed to proceed because state elections officials would immediately have to shift significant resources to prepare to meet the order’s requirements, even without final rules from USPS or DHS.

The Trump administration appealed that ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the justice assigned to the 1st Circuit, requested briefs on whether the court should hear the case by Aug. 3. 

In a social media post, the news outlet Democracy Docket, which covers voting and elections and is not affiliated with the case, called Tuesday’s ruling “a loss for voters” and said the administration under it could build a citizenship roster and withhold mail-in ballots from states that do not share citizenship data.

WASHINGTON — Political party poll watchers are showing up more and more, usually outside polling places.

They have a different mission than the nonpartisan election observers long regarded as bulwarks of credibility, and there’s concern that voters will be confused who’s there to influence them and who’s there to protect them.

The growing presence of partisans creates the possibility of even more conflict in the November midterm elections, voting rights advocates worry. They fear confusion between the two groups will contribute to an ongoing breakdown of voter trust in the process.

“This is a polarized country. There is the risk that people will see other poll monitor programs designed for intimidation and lump us all together,” said Dan Vicuna, senior policy director for voting and fair representation at Common Cause. 

His organization is part of a coalition of voting rights advocates that trains and sends nonpartisan workers to the polls. They ensure voters won’t be intimidated and that counting and recounting will proceed properly.

The political parties, which have their own poll watching programs, each maintain the other side is to blame for any confusion.

“The Trump administration has sought to break longstanding norms surrounding observers and monitors,” said Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., the House elections subcommittee’s top Democrat.

Republicans argue that election integrity has been under assault for years and despite virtually no evidence, they maintain results in key state and presidential races were subject to fraud.

President Donald Trump in his address to the nation on July 16 claimed “evidence shows that the election system we have dangerously exposes and really exposes, like levels never thought possible, to hacking, exploitation, and foreign interference.”

The result so far is a Trump-inspired redrawing of congressional lines in some states to favor Republicans, a so-far unsuccessful push to have Congress pass a law requiring voters to provide proof of citizenship and show ID at the polls, and the Supreme Court’s weakening of Voting Rights Act protections against poll intimidation.

Many eyes on the process

Poll watching takes many forms, depending on state laws and policies. Poll watchers and workers are often outside the polls, promoting their interests. 

Monitors, on the other hand, are trained observers.

Common Cause explains that poll monitors are “people who are assigned to observe the polls on behalf of a campaign or political party and certified by the election officials – often inside the polling place.” In certain states they can challenge voter eligibility

Some poll watchers are stationed outside polling places. “They may be explicitly partisan and for a particular candidate or party. These individuals do not have the right to enter the polling place,” Common Cause explains.

Common Cause is part of an Election Protection program that concentrates on helping voters and election officials in areas where turnout could be low or there’s concern about voter intimidation.

“The focus of our program is to be nonpartisan problem solvers,” said Vicuna. Depending on a state’s laws, it can redirect people to the correct polling place. 

Monitors, who go through a training program, can make sure a partisan poll worker does not try to overstep their authority or that a voter is not showing up because they fear immigration officials could be present.

Another highly regarded system is the “observer” program Congress approved two years ago by a 413-1 vote in the House and by voice vote in the Senate.

“The purpose of the program is to have House of Representatives staffers, designated and credentialed by the (House Administration) Committee, on-site at the election office or facility in close or difficult elections to observe the election procedures to ensure the certified winner was chosen in a free and fair election,” says a House Administration Committee fact sheet.

It stresses “election observers are not campaign staff and may not advocate or represent any candidate or position.”  

The program has enjoyed broad bipartisan support and won plaudits recently from Rep.Laurel Lee, R-Florida, chair of the House elections subcommittee. 

“It promotes transparency, gives election officials another set of eyes on the process, and helps candidates and voters better understand how elections are conducted,” she said of the program. “Together, these benefits strengthen public confidence in our elections.”

A system that works?

The subcommittee held a hearing on July 15 on poll activities. Despite the fierce battles over voting rights, the hearing was a calm, policy-driven session.

It featured two local election officials, Wesley Wilcox of Marion County, Florida, and Lance Reed of Summit County, Ohio, describing how they strive to avoid any show of partisanship or efforts to influence voters.

Summit County, which includes Akron, is heavily Democratic. Marion County is heavily Republican.

“We have a perfect opportunity to counter many of the false narratives that circulate online. We can educate people about how elections actually work,” Wilcox said.

Reed described how officials in his county had a “positive experience” with the congressional program and were unaware of the observers’ political opinions.

Sewell expressed a broader concern, that the combination of Republican efforts to dispatch poll watchers, combined with court decisions that have arguably weakened the Voting Rights Act, could lead to more intimidation of minority voters by the GOP.

She asked Reed where he saw the line “between a legitimate election observation and conduct that risks intimidating voters and interfering with or disrupting the work of election officials?” And, she asked, what safeguards could be most effective in preventing observers from promoting partisan views?

“Luckily, we haven’t run into any issues along those lines,” he said, adding many of the local observers are people election officials know well who have done the job for years.

Suspicious political parties 

Beyond the calm congressional talk and nonpartisan Election Protection efforts, the two parties are increasingly suspicious of one another’s activity at the polls.

Republicans in 2024 sent poll watchers to many states, part of a massive effort that officials said would assure election integrity.

“Every ballot. Every precinct. Every processing center. Every county. Every battleground state. We will be there,” said Lara Trump, who at the time was a Republican National Committee co-chair. The party sent thousands of volunteers to keep an eye on polls in 18 potential swing states.

Republicans sent congressional observers to Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Madison, Wisconsin, that year, said Rep. Joe Morelle, D-New York, the House Committee on Administration’s top Democrat. He said no congressional Democratic observers were sent. 

“Their departure from the long-established norms suggested an unprecedented attempt to use the program for partisan gain,” Morelle said. The Republican National Committee has not responded to a request for comment.

Trump praised the GOP’s election watch effort and vowed to keep it going this year.

He recalled in a May Truth Social post how “the Republicans had an Election Integrity Army in every single State to preserve the sanctity of each legal vote.”

He said, “We will be doing the same again in 2026, but it will be much bigger and stronger. All Americans should have their voices be heard by casting a vote. Be assured this Election will be fair!”

So far, “The RNC‘s already on the ground, deploying staff in 17 states, registering voters, and aggressively fighting to win in November – and we will not stop until we do,” said Chairman Joe Gruters in a May post on X. The states have not been identified.

Democrats are fighting back with their own poll watching programs.

The Democratic National Committee says it is working to “develop comprehensive counter-programming to potential GOP voter intimidation and election subversion.”

It plans to do this using “poll observer deployment, constitutional observers, escalation protocols, and coordinated legal and operational support.”

The DNC would not provide details.  

In addition, Senate Democratic leaders last month announced a new program they said would “train Senate staff to serve as official election observers and protect against any meddling in the 2026 midterm elections.”

They said in a statement “Their role will be to observe, document, and report objective information to assist the Senate in addressing any potentially contested Senate elections and to inform future legislation and oversight work related to federal election administration.”

Voters seem to agree on one thing. “I guess at the end of the day, public trust is paramount, and public trust right now is on the edge,” said Rep. Julie Johnson, D-Texas, an election subcommittee member. “It’s the most fragile it has been in our electoral system in quite some time.” 

The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin filed a lawsuit Thursday against Wisconsin Elections Commission guidance that bars people who request an absentee ballot from casting an in-person ballot if the mail ballot will not arrive by the time polls close on Election Day. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Gov. Tony Evers sent a letter Thursday raising concerns about “severe delays” in the U.S. mail system threatening the delivery of absentee ballots during Wisconsin’s August and November elections. 

The letter to Postmaster General David Steiner and members of the USPS Board of Governors noted that many absentee ballots cast during the state’s April elections arrived to local clerks after Election Day and therefore went uncounted. The letter also pushes the board to reverse course on implementing President Donald Trump’s executive order to create a federal mail-in voting list that includes the personal information of absentee voters. 

Trump and Republicans have become increasingly hostile to mail-in voting in recent years — mostly due to unfounded complaints that they were the source of fraud that swung the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden. 

Earlier this month, Evers also joined the governors of Illinois, California, Connecticut, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Washington in writing a letter to the USPS leadership to oppose the Trump absentee voting order. 

The pair of Democrats noted that in 2024, 500,000 Wisconsin voters, 15% of all voters in the state, used mail-in ballots. Because Wisconsin is a swing state with especially close elections, they wrote, any delays “could very well tip the scales of the election.” 

“The Postal Service has a critical responsibility to ensure that election mail is handled with the urgency and reliability that voters, election officials, and the public rightly expect,” they wrote. “To meet this responsibility, USPS must address delays we saw in Wisconsin’s Spring Election and not move forward with the rule restricting vote by mail. Ensuring the timely delivery of election mail is essential to protecting every eligible Wisconsinite’s right to vote and maintaining public confidence in our elections. When ballots fail to arrive in time to be counted, voters are denied the opportunity to participate in our democracy through no fault of their own. These failures not only disenfranchise individual voters, but also erode trust in the reliability and fairness of our elections.”

They also noted that delays disproportionately affect rural voters in communities with fewer poll locations and absentee ballot drop boxes. 

Earlier this month, the Wisconsin Elections Commission released a list of best practices for absentee voting which included the recommendation that if voters are going to return their ballot by mail, it should be sent at least 10 days before the election. Ballots can also be returned directly to a voter’s municipal clerk’s office, to the voter’s polling place on Election Day or to an absentee ballot dropbox — in communities that use them. 

The Evers, Baldwin letter also notes that WEC sent a similar letter to the Postal Service leadership in May about the mail delays during the spring election. In that letter, the commission relayed the results of a survey of the state’s local election officials, which found that two-thirds of them reported problems with the mail. 

Wisconsin’s early in-person voting process also allows voters to request, fill out and return their ballots all at once at designated locations. For the August primary elections, early in-person voting begins July 28. For the November general election, early voting begins Oct. 30. 

Voters can request  absentee ballots sent to them by mail online at MyVote.WI.gov or by sending a letter or email to their local clerk that includes their full name, voting address, mailing address, the election in which they are voting and a copy of their photo ID.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WASHINGTON — Mass voter challenges are likely to occur in the 2026 midterm elections, the Brennan Center for Justice warned Tuesday, with the potential to “undermine the democratic process.”

President Donald Trump and the Republican Party have been laying the groundwork for questioning the election process in state after state, as Trump has made “election integrity” the centerpiece of his recent domestic policy initiatives, including in a July 16 address to the nation. 

The center, at NYU School of Law, found in a report Tuesday that more than 185,000 challenges to voter eligibility were filed by private citizens in 2024, though “the real number is likely higher” since many election officials either were not contacted or sent incomplete responses to an inquiry. The center is regarded as left-leaning.

Mass challenges are a fairly recent development, spurred by improvements in election technology and transparency. Thousands of votes now can be challenged at once.

They’ve rarely been successful, but experts worry they create voter doubts about whether elections are being conducted fairly. Historically such challenges have also often been used to suppress the votes of people of color, a separate brief said.

“Eligible voters facing challenges sometimes don’t vote simply because the process is too confusing. Responding to a challenge requires numerous steps that can trip up voters. They may not understand their options for verifying their identity,” said the report by Brennan Center Counsel Andrew Garber.

Garber found that “mass voter challenges have become a key element in the campaign to use election integrity as a pretext for voter suppression.”

In 2024, he found, election deniers lodged challenges, “in addition to spreading lies about widespread voter fraud, refusing to certify elections, discrediting voting machines, engaging in bad faith poll watching, filing frivolous lawsuits, and threatening election officials with physical harm or criminal penalties.” 

This year, Garber warned, such challenges are likely to be an “integral strategy in the playbook to undermine the democratic process.”

Mass challenges, he said, “add basically zero value to elections while creating new costs.”

One big worry, though: “There are instances of eligible voters being removed from the rolls and learning of their removal after the deadline to register and vote in the next election,” the report said. “As is often the case with voter suppression, vulnerable individuals frequently suffer the effects.”

Mullin threats

The Trump administration is pushing state officials to examine their voter rolls and tighten their election security, thus opening the door for the help of the federal government in conducting mass challenges, the report predicted.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said last week that hundreds of thousands of noncitizens are registered to vote in California, New Jersey, Nevada and Pennsylvania and threatened to prosecute election officials in states that don’t “participate in securing the elections” ahead of the November midterms. He has not specified the source of his data.

Trump has demanded Congress require people to show proof of citizenship when they register to vote and photo IDs at the polls. So far, lawmakers have so far been reluctant to approve the SAVE America Act that in various versions would restrict voting, and it remains stalled in the U.S. Senate. 

Trump and his allies have maintained for years the 2020 election was marred by voter fraud. No evidence of any widespread fraud has been found.

Election officials have largely maintained their rolls are accurate and up to date.

“In most states, list maintenance practices tend to keep pace with natural changes in voters’ lives, such as moving,” said a report this month by the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research.

Mass challenges

Recent mass challenges have rarely been successful.

The report cited efforts in Georgia, Michigan, Texas, Florida and Iowa in 2022.

“These challenges were widely rejected for lack of evidence or failure to comply with state law,” the Brennan Center found.

In 2024, Brennan’s research found that private citizens filed at least 185,232 voter challenges in the states studied. Of those, the center found officials accepted at least 5,477. That means they may have removed the voter from the rolls, declared them inactive or taken other steps to make it difficult for them to vote.

Researchers sent requests to Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas and to numerous counties in those states, the report methodology said.

“One takeaway is evident: With only around 3 percent of challenges clearly accepted, challenges contributed little to list maintenance in 2024,” Brennan found.

For instance, Georgia got in touch with about 875,000 voters in 2023 who had moved or had not voted for several years. That was more than a hundred times the number of Georgia voters who were successfully challenged the next year.

The center compiled the report by sending public records requests to 42 state and local government entities. It asked for any documents involving voter challenges in 2024 and how officials dealt with those challenges. It also looked at court filings, public reporting and election board meetings.

“Acquiring a complete record of challenges is impossible: They are often made ad hoc, officials may have no obligation to track them, and the records produced are often incomplete,” the center noted, adding that some officials refused to provide records or said they got no challenges.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s latest shot in a relentless war on how elections are conducted has triggered enormous concern among voting rights activists.

As of Thursday night, the U.S Election Assistance Commission has no members. The White House in an email dismissed Democrats Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland. Republican Christy McCormick resigned, and GOP member Donald Palmer left earlier this year.

Trump’s move guts, for now, a four-member board created in 2002 after the chaos that dogged the 2000 presidential election. That result came down to the vote count in Florida, where the question was debated of whether “hanging chads” on ballots counted or not.

The commission legislation, signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2002, is designed to have the panel help states establish credible voter registration and voting systems.

Activists saw Trump’s sudden firings as the latest, and perhaps most ominous, chapter in his efforts to influence elections in a way opponents say is meant to help his party in the fall midterms.

To them, it becomes part of a growing list that includes extraordinary congressional map-drawing in Republican-leaning states, a fierce effort to require voters to provide photo ID and proof of citizenship and the Supreme Court’s curtailing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

“Here we go again,” said a joint statement by Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., and Rep. Joe Morelle, D-New York., after the commission decision became public. They’re the top Democrats on the congressional committees that deal with election law.

“Purging commissioners just months before the midterm elections and further gutting support for our state and local elections officials is a blatant part of his plan to politicize our elections and enable more unlawful and dangerous election interference,” they said.

The White House insisted it is interested only in a fair election.

“The Administration from the start has been working across all agencies and local partners to safeguard elections from fraud and abuse, and investing in a strong infrastructure to sustain that mission especially in the midterm elections,” a White House official who asked not to be named told States Newsroom in an email.

Trump’s election orders

To skeptics, Trump’s latest action was part of an ongoing push to influence election procedures – an effort unheard of in modern times for an incumbent president – that shows no signs of abating.

The election commission would not alter the national voter registration form as Trump wanted so that it would include proof of citizenship. Trump issued an executive order requiring proof of citizenship for voters, but a federal judge blocked the effort, saying states and Congress had that authority.

He is also attempting to restrict voting by mail. The Supreme Court last month rejected a bid to bar mail votes from being counted after Election Day. The votes can count as long as they are postmarked by that day.

But the administration is trying another court challenge, aimed at preserving Trump’s executive order telling federal agencies to come up with a national list of documented adult U.S. citizens who could then vote.

The order would also have the U.S. Postal Service establish a system for dealing with mail-in votes from the approved lists. A federal judge has blocked the order. The case could wind up at the Supreme Court later this year.

Can the SAVE America Act be saved?

On Capitol Hill, when Congress returns to work Monday from the Fourth of July recess, House lawmakers will confront how or whether to proceed with the SAVE America Act, Trump’s bid to require voters to show identification and proof of citizenship.

The legislation is expected to go nowhere, since it needs 60 votes in the Senate, which has 47 members who caucus with the Democrats.

Trump, though, has put enormous pressure on supporters to move the bill. “THE SAVE AMERICA ACT’S non-passage is CRAZY, and a serious threat to any politician who votes against it!” he wrote on Truth Social Friday. He explained he will not sign a housing reform bill, which passed Congress by big bipartisan margins last month, in protest. Without his signature, the bill will become law anyway at 12:01 a.m. Saturday.

The SAVE America Act has paralyzed the House, as supporters refused to let members consider any other legislation until the chamber passes the act.

Trump has been moving on other fronts. His administration backed a successful challenge to a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a law that tore down decades-old barriers that kept minority voters in the South from voting and gaining political clout. 

The president also energized movements across conservative states to redraw congressional district lines, normally done after censuses in years ending in zero.

Instead, eight states, including Texas, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee, Ohio and Missouri have adjusted their maps this year in ways expected to help Republicans.

California and Utah have redrawn maps to create more potential Democratic seats. But all the changes, said the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, have created “a Republican advantage of some size.” 

Trump’s initiatives have sparked bitterness for and against.

“Democracy doesn’t disappear overnight, it erodes piece by piece. SCOTUS weakens voting rights. Trump guts the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission and pushes the SAVE America Act to choke voter registration and fair elections. We cannot stay silent. We must resist,” Rep. Analilia Mejia, D-N.J., said on X.

Rep. Abe Hamadeh, R-Ariz., applauded Trump’s latest action.

“President Trump is right to clean house at the Election Assistance Commission,” Hamadeh said on X.

“For too long, it has enabled weak standards & defended vulnerable machines that fueled irregularities in 2020 & 2022. Rather than address legitimate concerns with transparency & accountability, the EAC circled the wagons & politicized a sacred nonpartisan process,” he said.

Rigged elections?

At the heart of all these efforts is Trump’s long-held view that elections are too often rigged. He made that claim after losing in 2020, despite no evidence of much if any fraud.

Most recently, he alleged rigging in the Los Angeles mayoral primary, where Republican Spencer Pratt failed to advance, topped by two Democrats. Again, there’s been no evidence of wrongdoing.

The independent Election Assistance Commission that Trump gutted helped in establishing the credibility of elections by, in its description, “advancing Safe, Secure, Accurate, and Accessible Elections.”

The Center for Election Innovation & Research has found that over the past 25 years, “states have implemented several innovative policies that streamline the process of voter registration, promote voter list accuracy, and create more options for eligible citizens to register or update their voter registration.”

Among the changes: more online voter registration, same-day voter registration, and automatic voter registration. Forty-six states and Washington, D.C., use at least one of these methods, up from seven states in 2000.

Next steps

The commission’s ability to effect change now appears stymied.

“Congress deliberately structured the Election Assistance Commission as a bipartisan agency to help states administer free, fair, and secure elections,” said Michael Waldman, president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law.

“These removals leave the agency without leadership and unable to carry out its major responsibilities,” he said.

Trump is using the authority that the Supreme Court appeared to give him in a decision last week allowing him to remove members of independent agencies, except for Federal Reserve governors.

Trump would have to appoint two Democrats as well as two Republicans to the EAC, but they would need Senate confirmation.

Asked if the president planned appointments anytime soon, the White House official said, “The Administration from the start has been working across all agencies and local partners to safeguard elections from fraud and abuse, and investing in a strong infrastructure to sustain that mission especially in the midterm elections.” 

The Wisconsin Elections Commission on Thursday ordered an investigation into Green Bay’s city clerk for accidentally sending some voters more than one absentee ballot during April’s spring election and for the upcoming August primary. 

During the spring election, duplicate absentee ballots were issued to at least 152 Green Bay voters. While the complaint about the first incident was pending, the clerk’s office mistakenly sent 244 extra ballots. 

Commissioners were very critical of the clerk, Celestine Jeffreys, for the repeated errors.  Democratic Commissioner Ann Jacobs said it was “unconscionable” that the same mistake could be made in consecutive elections. 

“I am really concerned that, first of all, it happened once, but then for the exact same error to happen a second time weeks later is unconscionable,” Jacobs said. “And we need, I think, as an organization, to investigate exactly what was going on in Green Bay, so we know how this error happened, other than just saying, ‘Well, somebody printed them twice.’ Well, yes, duh, but we need to know why they were able to print it twice, why this wasn’t caught, why it is that they mailed out 300 more ballots, apparently, give or take.” 

A complaint about the duplicate spring ballots was made by the Republican Party of Wisconsin. In its own analysis, the commission’s staff found probable cause that the clerk’s office had violated state election law by sending the duplicate ballots and recommended that the commission order her to “conform her conduct to the law and put procedures in place to prevent issuing duplicate ballots.” The commission decided to investigate the cause of the problem first before taking further action. 

The repeated mistakes were made as the election administration of Wisconsin’s largest cities, including Green Bay, has been under intense scrutiny since the emergence of Republican complaints about the 2020 election. 

Green Bay was one of the main targets of Republican complaints of “Zuckerbucks” — grants to support election administration costs during the COVID-19 pandemic from a nonprofit supported by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg that largely went to Democratic-voting cities. The city was also pulled into a drawn-out legal battle stemming from the actions of Republican officials and a local election conspiracy theorist following the 2020 election. 

During Thursday’s meeting, commissioners noted that the state’s WisVote system has safeguards to prevent this exact error, but that Green Bay used a different process. Wisconsin’s election system gives local election clerks a lot of discretion to decide how elections will be managed. 

“If a municipality is using the WisVote system to print the stickers that go on the outgoing envelopes to voters containing their ballots, if you use that system, you cannot do a duplicate generation of those stickers,” Jacobs said. “You can’t do it. We put in a failsafe, and that failsafe is there specifically to prevent this from happening. And I want everyone to know that that system works and has worked and does work. Where this has happened more than once is where communities have elected to not use the WisVote system to generate their own stickers.” 

Election betting 

The commission on Thursday also discussed a state law that makes it illegal to gamble on the results of a Wisconsin election and vote in that election. The issue has become increasingly relevant due to the rise of prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket. 

Earlier this year, Jacobs warned on social media that betting on an election could result in people losing their right to vote — though there remained questions of how the law could be enforced. 

Commission staff said that the law would be enforced similarly to other rules about voter eligibility, which largely rely on complaints being made to the commission by witnesses. 

“Many voters may not know that they risk making themselves ineligible to vote in Wisconsin if they place a bet on a prediction market for an election-dependent outcome, such as which candidate will win the nomination or the office sought at an election,” WEC attorney Angela O’Brien Sharpe said, noting a gambling voter could be charged with a felony. “If someone has cause to believe that a voter has placed a bet, that would be solved by the same type of challenge as the other voter qualifications. The challenger would initiate the qualification challenge process the same as they would for any qualification issue, the voter would then be asked under oath if they had made any bet or wager depending on the result of the election, and that process would follow the very specific steps that are outlined in our administrative code for how to administer those types of challenges.”

A multifaith group of clergy gathered at the state Capitol  Tuesday to call for protecting voting rights and ensuring all votes are  counted.

“Our theology teaches us and tells us that God created all of us in God’s image,” said Rev. David Hart, pastor of Sherman United Methodist Church in Madison, at a press conference on the Capitol steps, adding that all people  “have this voice that deserves to be heard in the public square.”

The event Tuesday was one of three across Wisconsin, organizers said, and one of 15 similar actions held in nine states.

“We have seen the attacks on our election process,” said Rev. Breanna Illéné, director of Ecumenical Innovation and Justice Initiatives at the Wisconsin Council of Churches. “We are here today to celebrate our local poll workers, the city and county clerks who administer elections here in Wisconsin” — who she added, “are helping make our democracy function.”

The event took place as worries have grown about the possibility that President Donald Trump could deploy armed federal agents to polling places, and as Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers joined other governors in demanding that the Trump administration immediately withdraw a rule restricting the mailing of absentee ballots in states, including Wisconsin, that have refused to turn over sensitive voter data to the federal government.

On Election Day in November, clergy will show up at local polling places as poll chaplains — “a peaceful presence” to ensure voters’ rights are protected, and to bring “calm to the site,” Illéné said in an interview. “They are just another layer of trust that we hope to add to the election process.”

Rev. Christopher Ross of First Congregational United Church of Christ in Watertown cited biblical readings that support an egalitarian view of society, and with it, democratic participation.

Early Christians built a community that they viewed as “an alternative to the ways of empire,” Ross said. Alluding to attempts to make voting harder, however, he added, “But not everyone these days seems to want such a community.”

Other leaders pointed to democracy as a key tenet of their faiths.

“Jewish tradition teaches us that the process of choosing leaders is not a privilege but a collective responsibility,” said Rabbi Jonathan Prosnit of Temple Beth El in Madison.

“It comes down to a core yet simple belief. Democracy is strongest when every vote is counted,” Prosnit said. “Democracy suffers when voters are suppressed.”

For Unitarian Universalists, democracy is “a religious imperative” said Rev. Kelly Asprooth-Jackson, a UU minister. “It’s one of our core values and principles that people who are affected by decisions must be involved in the making of those decisions.”

Raising barriers to voting and reducing the power of some people’s votes “diminishes all of us because it diminishes the practice of democracy upon which all of us depend for our most fundamental rights,” Asprooth-Jackson said.

The participants also promoted a national letter, drawn up and sponsored by Faith in Us, a national multifaith group, opposing federal and state actions organizers say threaten voting rights. The letter calls on elected officials to safeguard voting rights and assure access to the ballot box for all voters.

It also criticizes President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting voting by mail — which a federal judge blocked late last month — and expresses outrage at redistricting actions that produced “rapid gerrymandering of racially discriminatory election maps in many states” after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down key key provisions in the Voting Rights Act.

In a 5-2 decision, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that an activist group does not have the right to obtain the documents that notify election officials when someone is declared incompetent to vote by a circuit court judge. 

The group, Wisconsin Voter Alliance, has been extremely active in the state’s election denial circles since the 2020 presidential election. The organization is run by Ron Heuer, a prominent and vocal 2020 election conspiracy theorist, and Erick Kaardal, an attorney who was heavily involved in former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman’s widely discredited review of the 2020 presidential election. 

Kaardal’s involvement in the Gableman review included conducting videotaped interviews with residents of nursing homes alleged to have voted despite being old that were criticized at the time as exploitative and misleading about the law. 

Following that thread from the Gableman investigation, in 2022 the alliance filed open records requests in a number of counties seeking the notice of voting eligibility forms that circuit courts send to local and state election officials when a judge declares a person incompetent and ineligible to vote. The group then sued to force the release of those documents. 

The statute guiding declarations of incompetency and the process through which a person declared incompetent can lose their voting rights includes a provision that states court records “pertinent to the finding of incompetency” are closed. 

In the majority opinion written by Justice Janet Protasiewicz and joined by the other three liberal justices plus conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn, the Court ruled that the NVE form is created as part of a guardianship case, therefore it’s pertinent to the finding of incompetency and shielded from public disclosure. 

Protasiewicz wrote that the Legislature crafted the guardianship law specifically to prevent information about people who have been declared incompetent from being made public — so it doesn’t make sense to interpret that law in a way that exposes those people’s status and private information. Additionally, the law specifically requires that someone must prove they have a legitimate “need” to find out if a person has been declared incompetent.

“The legislature created a procedure with ‘closed’ hearings and ‘closed’ records,” she wrote. “That provision would ring hollow if the fruits of those proceedings, like NVE forms, were available through public records requests. Even more revealing, a person who demonstrates ‘a need’ may access ‘[t]he fact that an individual has been found incompetent.’ Thus, the Legislature contemplated that even the fact that a person was found incompetent should be protected. We will not interpret the preceding sentence of [the statute] to allow any public records requester access to a form that gives away that very fact.” 

In a dissent, Justice Annette Ziegler, joined by Justice Rebecca Bradley, argued that because a judge determines if someone under guardianship must lose their vote separately from the initial declaration of incompetency and because the information gets communicated to election officials, the NVE is not “pertinent” to the incompetency finding and the public must be given access. 

“Even when an individual is found to be incompetent, a court may or may not be called upon to determine if the ward is ‘incapable of understanding the objective of the elective process,’” Ziegler wrote. “If and when such a determination is separately found, then NVEs are created to notify the WEC that the ward has lost the right to vote. But, the NVEs do not bear on the court’s separate, earlier finding of incompetency. And, as the NVE does not exist at the time of the incompetency finding, it could not be a court record pertinent to the finding of incompetency. Instead, an NVE is generated only after the incompetency finding is made and in response to the separate question of the right to vote.” 

Both Ziegler and Bradley have often sided with Wisconsin’s election deniers — including voting in late 2020 to overturn the results of Wisconsin’s presidential election after former President Joe Biden won in the state over  President Donald Trump. In the dissent, Ziegler echoed frequent right-wing talking points about “the integrity of the election process” and wrote that members of the public have the right to interrogate if their fellow citizens are eligible to vote. 

“The public records law declares that ‘a representative government is dependent upon an informed electorate’ and that the public is entitled to the ‘greatest possible information regarding the affairs of government,’” she wrote. “That policy carries particular force here, where the records at issue bear directly on everyone’s voting rights and its administration. Undoubtedly, the public has a significant interest in ensuring that only those legally qualified to vote participate in elections. Improper ballots not only raise concerns of individual exploitation but also implicate the integrity of the electoral process as a whole.”

Following the decision, voting rights advocates celebrated the majority’s decision to protect voter privacy. 

“Like all Wisconsinites, individuals under guardianship deserve dignity and respect,” Law Forward Legal Fellow Taylor Gilbertson said in a statement. “It should go without saying that any effort to reveal their private voting records would risk a profound injustice. The Court was right to protect them.”

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Sensitive information about individuals who are judged mentally incapable of voting in Wisconsin is not accessible through the state’s public records laws, according to a 5-2 Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling released Tuesday. 

Justice Brian Hagedorn, a frequent swing vote on the court, joined the liberal justices in the majority, which determined that state law shows the Legislature intended to keep Notices of Voting Eligibility closed from public access. The notices are documents the courts send to election officials after a judge concludes a person is found mentally incompetent to cast a ballot. 

“Our decision today is rooted in the legislature’s choice to protect the privacy of individuals subject to guardianship proceedings,” Justice Janet Protasiewicz wrote for the majority. “The legislature said, with limited exceptions, ‘court records pertinent to the finding of incompetency are closed.’” 

In the same opinion, the majority provided specifics on what the court should consider when someone seeks to compel a public official to release public records, which is known as a “writ of mandamus.” The majority determined that the court “should consider only whether the requester has a right to the records,” which can be done through analyzing whether records exist, if there are statutory exceptions and if “the public policy balancing test weighs toward disclosure.” 

Bill Lueders, the president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, said the court’s decision on mandamus actions “discarded an outdated standard for public records cases and reduced barriers to winning these cases in the future.”   

Conservative justices Annette Ziegler and Rebecca Bradley dissented. In her dissent, Ziegler argued that the Notice of Voting Eligibility forms should be released because they are not relevant to incompetency proceedings and are created as “a communication of a finding” after that decision is made.

“The majority’s conclusion fails to recognize this important distinction: A finding of incompetency is distinct from a finding that one has lost the right to vote,” Ziegler wrote. “Instead, it adopts an overbroad and unworkable definition of what records pertain to a finding of incompetency to include NVEs. Holding that NVEs are shielded from the public records law runs counter to the statute’s language, scheme and the presumption of open government.” 

The case was originally brought in 2022 by the conservative Wisconsin Voter Alliance. The group filed lawsuits in 13 counties, arguing that having access to information about individuals who have been judged incompetent to vote would show inconsistencies in the state’s voter rolls. The alliance is led by Ron Heuer, who worked on the state’s partisan review of the 2020 presidential election results conducted by former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman. Heuer did not return phone calls or emails from Wisconsin Watch on Tuesday.

At the request of Wisconsin Watch, the Dane County clerk in 2023 conducted a review that  found 95 individuals who previously cast ballots despite a court finding them unable to do so. Election officials and state lawmakers have previously called for a legally binding process to track adjudicated incompetent voters, but no bill in recent years has made it through the legislative process. 

Disability advocates previously advocated for the information in Notice of Voting Eligibility forms to be kept private over concerns it could make vulnerable individuals more at risk of being scammed or exploited. 

Tuesday’s ruling is part of a complicated legal saga stemming from cases from Wisconsin Voter Alliance cases that have made their way through the state’s court system in recent years.

In 2024, the Madison-based 4th District Court of Appeals and the Waukesha-based 2nd District Court of Appeals issued conflicting opinions on separate but similar cases brought by the alliance. 

Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar, who ran for the Wisconsin Supreme Court earlier this year, wrote the 2nd District opinion that supported the Wisconsin Voter Alliance’s position on access to the records. That opinion was released after the 4th District decision was published as precedent, but was revised after the Wisconsin Supreme Court issued a ruling in January 2025.  

The high court in that 2025 decision only ruled on the differing Appeals Court opinions but did not reach a decision on whether Notices of Voting Eligibility are public records until Tuesday.

The case also became an attack point in this year’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race. Justice-elect Chris Taylor in a debate before the April election pointed to Lazar’s Appeals Court opinion on access to sensitive records as evidence to claim that Lazar “brought an extreme right-wing political agenda to the bench.”

Wisconsin Supreme Court rejects 2020 election investigator’s attempt to get voting eligibility records is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Reading Time: 6 minutes

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

The FBI agents arrived at David Bolter’s Milwaukee home on a cool, cloudy Wednesday morning in late May. They were armed with a list of questions for the 2020 poll worker, who had raised concerns about the way local officials handled the 2020 election, Bolter told Votebeat.

President Donald Trump relied on Bolter’s claims in an unsuccessful 2020 lawsuit that sought to throw out more than 220,000 votes. That would have been more than enough to move Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes from Democrat Joe Biden, who won the state, to Trump. Though courts, several election reviews and many audits rejected Trump’s claims, the Republican never stopped believing that he was cheated out of the presidency in 2020.

That appears to be why, last month, the FBI sent agents back to Milwaukee to question Bolter as part of an expanding national effort by the second Trump administration to investigate long-debunked claims of fraud in the 2020 election.

The investigation into the 2020 election appears to be relying on already disproven allegations from people like Bolter. Bolter declined to divulge more about his conversation with the FBI, which has not been previously reported, but allegations from Bolter’s 2020 affidavit were central to some conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. For example, he alleged that somebody in Milwaukee’s absentee ballot counting facility announced around midnight on Election Day that a “huge truckload of ballots” was going to be delivered — an accusation for which there has so far appeared to be no additional evidence.

Around the same time Bolter says he talked to the FBI, two plainclothes agents with FBI badges showed up at the apartment of a former Milwaukee resident and 2020 poll worker about an affidavit she submitted, according to the former poll worker, who asked to be identified only by her first name, Christine, to give her the freedom to discuss an ongoing investigation.

Christine had also submitted an affidavit about the 2020 election, saying election workers had been told that all votes were counted, but she then saw workers continuing to count ballots around midnight. That affidavit was the focus of the agents’ questions, Christine told Votebeat.

“I suspected wrongdoing, but I’m not saying that it actually happened,” she said. “I’m just one lowly person that was working there.”

During the interview, she added, an agent showed her a photograph of Claire Woodall, the former Milwaukee election chief, asking her if she recognized the former election official who has been central to false allegations about the 2020 election. She identified her by name. Woodall didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Caroline Clancy, a spokesperson for the FBI’s Milwaukee office, declined to comment.

While investigators seem mainly focused on the 2020 vote, some elections experts believe the Trump administration’s wide-ranging probe is actually designed to create more doubts among Americans about future elections, as Republicans face strong political headwinds that could cost them control of Congress later this year.

“This isn’t about the 2020 election, this is about the 2026 and 2028 elections,” said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan, nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research. “This is about intimidating election officials. This is about creating a stream of disinformation designed to delegitimize an election the president may believe he’s going to lose. This is designed by the president’s underlings to satisfy the unrealistic expectations of a president that still cannot comprehend that he lost an election that he definitely lost, and it’s incredibly destabilizing.”

Wisconsin is the latest known target of the Trump administration’s 2020 investigation. The FBI is looking to interview elections officials and Milwaukee police officers in what some worry could be a precursor to an effort to seize ballots from the 2020 presidential race, as it already has in Georgia.

The Trump administration is revisiting allegations of election fraud that have been repeatedly scrutinized

In January, federal investigators seized 600 boxes of ballots from the 2020 election in Fulton County, Georgia. The heavily Democratic county, home to Atlanta, was key to Biden’s narrow 2020 victory in the state.

As in Wisconsin, the FBI in Georgia has built its investigation on allegations that have already been repeatedly scrutinized by audits, investigations, and courts without unearthing any evidence of fraud or tampering that could have overturned the results.

The Georgia search represented an unprecedented intervention by the federal government into local administration. Even more unusually, Tulsi Gabbard, who will step down at end of this month as director of national intelligence, personally oversaw the seizure and arranged for Trump to speak directly to the FBI agents via cell phone after they carried out the operation.

The Trump administration investigations stretch from Arizona, where federal officials subpoenaed computerized records of a partisan review state lawmakers conducted of Maricopa County’s 2020 election, to Puerto Rico, where the Office of the Director of National Intelligence procured voting machines to examine for potential security risks.

The administration’s investigations aren’t entirely limited to 2020. The U.S. Department of Justice sent a letter in April to Wayne County, Michigan — home to Detroit — demanding all ballots cast in the 2024 election, which Trump won. But even in that case, to support the request, the Justice Department cited accusations of fraud made after the 2020 election, including a lawsuit that was quickly dismissed after a judge wrote that “plaintiffs’ interpretation of events is incorrect and not credible.” Wayne County never handed over the ballots, because it doesn’t have possession of them.

What do the 2020 elections mean for 2026?

The FBI faces challenges in pursuing cases tied to the 2020 election since the five-year statute of limitations that applies to most of the likely charges expired last year. Law enforcement veterans said it is possible that the Justice Department could pursue broader conspiracy charges in the case, but the prospect remains unclear.

FBI Director Kash Patel suggested in April that the Justice Department would soon announce arrests related to the 2020 election, but that has not yet occurred. Officials with the FBI and Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment.

John Keller, a former acting head of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section who resigned in 2025 after refusing the Trump administration’s demands to drop corruption charges against then-New York City Mayor Eric Adams, said the administration appeared to be trying to normalize federal investigations of state elections to pave the way for future intervention.

“They are using enforcement directed at the 2020 election as a test run for what they can get away with on Election Day this year, or after, to try and delay certification or invalidate an election” if the results don’t go their way, he said.

Injecting federal law enforcement officials into an ongoing election is a more extreme and serious action than investigating a past one, and it could face stiffer opposition. But it’s clear, at least, that the administration is scrutinizing current elections closely.

Trump last week blasted California’s long vote counting process in its primary election and asserted that Democrats were trying to steal the election and federal authorities were investigating. Last month, Trump also said he was ordering the Justice Department to investigate an error that led to some voters in Maryland receiving ballots for the wrong party in the state’s upcoming primary. State officials in both cases have explained the true causes of the issues and that nothing nefarious was behind them.

Any effort to seize ballots in an ongoing election would create unprecedented new issues, such as a breach in the chain of custody over cast ballots, that could prevent election officials from declaring a winner and throw results into uncertainty.

Catherine Engelbrecht, co-founder of the Texas-based conservative group True the Vote, which has promoted debunked theories about the 2020 election, said she understands Trump’s intentions but believes the 2020 election questions should have been resolved “in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election.”

“This is not necessarily the way I would have recommended that it would be handled,” she said. “The fact that it wasn’t addressed has left this lingering void.”

In most cases, however, Trump’s claims of voter fraud were addressed in the wake of the 2020 election. Time and again, courts, state investigations, and even the Justice Department concluded that there was no evidence of problems or fraud that would have changed the results.

Engelbrecht said she views the Trump administration’s ongoing investigations as an effort to dig into long-standing concerns about the voting process it wants to address for future elections.

“The past is prologue,” she said. “If we don’t understand what happened, we are doomed to repeat it.”

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

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

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

The Trump administration’s multiple investigations of the 2020 election may have more to do with 2026 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.