The city of Madison and its former clerk are arguing in court that they can’t be sued for failing to count 193 absentee ballots in the 2024 presidential election, in part because a Wisconsin law calls absentee voting a privilege, not a constitutional right.
That legal argument raises questions about how much protection absentee voters have against the risk of disenfranchisement — and could reignite a recent debate over whether the law calling absentee voting a privilege is itself unconstitutional.
That law, which appears to be uncommon outside of Wisconsin, has been cited repeatedly in recent years in attempts to impose more requirements and restrictions on absentee voting, and, at times, disqualify absentee ballots on which the voters have made errors. It does not appear to have been invoked to absolve election officials for errors in handling correctly cast ballots.
Nonetheless, the law has become central to the defense presented by Madison and its former clerk, Maribeth Witzel-Behl, in a novel lawsuit seeking monetary damages on behalf of the voters whose ballots went missing.
The suit, filed by the law firm Law Forward, names the city and the clerk’s office as defendants, along with Witzel-Behl and Deputy Clerk Jim Verbick in their personal capacities, and cites a series of errors after the 2024 election that led to the ballots not being counted in alleging that they violated voters’ constitutional rights.
In defending against that claim, attorneys for Witzel-Behl argued in a court filing that by choosing to vote absentee, the 193 disenfranchised voters “exercised a privilege rather than a constitutional right.”
Witzel-Behl’s filing argues that the 193 disenfranchised voters did, in fact, exercise their right to vote, but chose to vote absentee and therefore place the ballots into an administrative system that “can result in errors.”
“The fact that Plaintiffs’ ballots were not counted is unfortunate,” the filing states. “But it is the result of human error, not malice. And that human error was not a violation of the Plaintiffs’ constitutional right to vote.”
Matthew W. O’Neill, an attorney representing Witzel-Behl, declined to comment.
The city’s attorneys have now adopted the same argument, filings show.
Asked about the city’s legal defense, current Madison clerk Lydia McComas didn’t address the argument directly but told Votebeat that the city is committed to counting all eligible votes “regardless of how they are cast.”
Phil Keisling, a former Oregon secretary of state, said he wasn’t aware of other states with similar laws. He said he found the city’s argument wrong and offensive.
“The right to vote, if there is a state constitutional right to vote, should have nothing to do with the form that a voter chooses,” he said.
Law passed to clarify absentee voting requirements
The law that Madison cites in its legal defense was enacted in 1985, long before absentee voting became widespread. The stricter language about the regulation of absentee voting came after judges in a series of Wisconsin court cases called for more liberal interpretation of those regulations.
The law states that while voting is a constitutional right, “voting by absentee ballot is a privilege exercised wholly outside the traditional safeguards of the polling place.” A subsequent provision states that absentee ballots that do not follow required procedures “may not be counted.”
The law appears similar to a 1969 U.S. Supreme Court decision that drew a distinction between the right to vote and the right to receive absentee ballots. That decision has since been interpreted — and misinterpreted — in a “number of ways by a number of people wanting to trim back mail voting,” said Justin Levitt, an election law professor at Loyola Marymount University.
After the Wisconsin law was enacted, the state election board clarified the Legislature’s position that failing to comply with procedures for absentee ballot applications and voting would result in ballots not being counted. The board did not suggest the law could be used to excuse municipalities that improperly discard legally cast ballots.
Absentee voting has long been available in Wisconsin but surged in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic and has been extensively litigated since then.
The law calling absentee voting a privilege was central to a lawsuit that resulted in a 2022 statewide ban on ballot drop boxes; another lawsuit to prohibit voters from being able to spoil ballots and vote with a new one; and President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election outcome in Wisconsin.
A later lawsuit led to the reinstatement of drop boxes in 2024. In that case, plaintiffs argued that the law “unconstitutionally degrades the voting rights of all absentee voters by increasing the risk of disenfranchisement.” The court, then led by liberal justices, declined to overturn the statute but disagreed with an earlier interpretation that absentee voting requires heightened skepticism.
Experts say Madison’s defense misinterprets the law
Rick Hasen, a professor at UCLA Law School and expert on election law, said he didn’t think the law itself was problematic, adding that states have various laws controlling absentee voting. The U.S. Constitution, he noted, doesn’t require any state to offer absentee voting.
But “once the state gives someone the opportunity to vote by mail,” he said, “then they can’t — as a matter of federal constitutional law — deprive that person of their vote because they chose a method that the state didn’t have to offer.”
The city and Witzel-Behl’s use of the law in this instance “seems to be wrong,” Hasen said.
Attorneys for Law Forward in a court filing called Witzel-Behl’s argument a “shocking proposition.”
“There is no right to vote if our votes are not counted,” Law Forward staff attorney Scott Thompson told Votebeat. “And this is the only case I’m aware of where a municipal government has argued otherwise.”
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
Almost half of all private school students in Wisconsin now receive school vouchers, signaling a rapid reshaping of the state’s educational landscape powered by state taxpayers.
When it launched in 1990, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, the nation’s first modern private school voucher program, included just 300 students at seven secular private schools. The students came from families earning less than 175% of the federal poverty level, and state taxpayers covered $2,446 of tuition for each.
The total price tag that year: about $700,000, or $1.78 million today adjusted for inflation. It was a pittance compared to the $1.9 billion of state aid and $2.4 billion of property taxes provided to public schools in Wisconsin that year.
By 2011, enrollment in Milwaukee’s voucher program reached 23,000 students, or about three out of four private school students that year.
Former Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican-led Legislature helped spur the creation of three more private school choice programs similar to MPCP: one for students in Racine (RPCP), one for students elsewhere in the state (WPCP) and another for students with special needs (SNSP). This expansion was part of a national effort to boost private school education with support from Walmart founders, the Walton family, according to previous Wisconsin Watch reporting.
Flash forward to last school year: Nearly half (46%) of all private school students in Wisconsin received vouchers across the state’s four programs. Taxpayers this school year will spend more than $700 million to defray tuition costs for about 60,000 students. Almost all (about 96%) attend religiously affiliated schools.
The vast growth of the voucher system has helped Wisconsin’s private school system grow modestly as public school enrollment declines. Critics, particularly Democrats and public school teacher unions, describe the state as funding two school systems.
Supporting a second school system with public money
Taxpayers through school district budgets provide $10,877 for each K–8 voucher student and $13,371 for each voucher student in grades 9-12 who enrolls in one of the three voucher programs. Each student who participates in the Special Needs Scholarship Program receives $16,049. Those amounts will increase by 4%, 3.2% and 2.6% respectively next school year.
Except in Milwaukee, where the program is directly funded by the state budget, the funding is deducted from the state aid to each school district. This school year, $357.5 million was deducted.
For public schools, state aid roughly represents 45% of school funding. Federal aid, property taxes and other revenue cover the rest. Although the exact amount varies by district, public schools collected an average of $14,104 per student in property taxes and state general and categorical aid during the 2024-25 school year.
When the state redirected aid from public schools to pay for the Racine, statewide and special need vouchers, school districts were still allowed to raise revenue as if the private school student were attending the public school. So while the district pays $10,877 to the private school for a K-8 student, it can still collect roughly $13,362 in state general aid and property taxes, keeping the difference to pay for other students still in the public system.
In the meantime, Republican lawmakers proposed “decoupling bills,” which would have the state fully cover the Racine, statewide and special need voucher programs, similar to Milwaukee. That would prevent the money from passing through the public school districts, reducing the net revenue school districts have been able to collect for the past decade.
“The funding system is broken, and the link in current law between school choice funding and property taxes needs to be repealed,” said Carol Shires, vice president of operations, School Choice Wisconsin, an advocate group for the voucher system, in an email to Wisconsin Watch.
Private school market stabilizes with public funds
As homeschooling has gained considerable popularity over the past decade, the voucher program has saved many private schools from losing enrollment and likely closure.
“There really would not be a private school sector in Milwaukee, with a few exceptions, if it wasn’t for the voucher program,” said Alan Borsuk, senior fellow in law and public policy at Marquette University Law School, “because nobody had the money to pay tuition, and there was just no way to afford schools.”
Wisconsin private schools gained 1,687 students from 2011 to 2024, a stark contrast to public schools, where enrollment declined by more than 65,000 students. Homeschooling grew even more, by nearly 13,000 students.
There are fewer private schools, but more are participating in the voucher program
A Wisconsin Watch data analysis found that about half of the private schools that joined the voucher program between 2008 and 2024 grew their student population.
A debate on effectiveness
When the voucher program was introduced in Milwaukee, lawmakers envisioned the program empowering low-income parents who couldn’t otherwise afford private schools to choose where their children are educated, bridging the education gap, and improving education quality for both the private and public school systems.
“Choice gives poor students the ability to select the best school that they possibly can,” former Gov. Tommy Thompson said in a telephone interview with the New York Times in 1990. “The plan allows for choice and competition, and I believe competition will make both the public and private schools that much stronger.”
About 35 years after the program’s introduction, people still cannot come to a consensus on whether it improves education quality.
“Taxpayers fund choice students at a lower dollar amount than they fund public school students, yet those choice students achieve better outcomes,” Shires wrote, referring to the school year 2024-25 state testing results from DPI.
The DPI data cited by the organization showed a higher average test score for voucher students compared to their peers in public schools.
However, that methodology has been criticized by reviewers affiliated with the National Education Policy Center, a university research center housed at the University of Colorado Boulder’s School of Education. The reviewers criticized the approach of directly comparing standardized test scores of voucher students with those of public school students, arguing that such comparisons are overly simplistic and misleading.
In his review, Stephen Kotok, an associate professor at St. John’s University, wrote that simply comparing average test scores between the two groups without accounting for nonrandom selection into voucher programs overlooks other factors that may influence student performance besides school quality. He also wrote that relying solely on standardized test scores to judge educational quality or productivity is a “crude” measure.
DPI uses report card systems to provide a more comprehensive review of school performances in addition to test scores. Last year, 85% of public schools and 85% of voucher schools met, exceeded or significantly exceeded expectations. However, less than half (43%) of the voucher schools were scored due to insufficient data. DPI cited small student populations and low test participation rates among voucher students for not assessing those schools.
Several recent studies indicate that the academic benefits of voucher programs are marginal.
An analysis of 92 studies on school choice students’ academic achievements published between 1992 and 2015 found a very slight rise in standardized test scores among students who transferred from public schools to voucher schools, according to Huriya Jabbar, an associate professor at the University of Southern California.
Borsuk wrote that the voucher system does not improve the overall quality of education in a column for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He noted the education quality of voucher schools varies by school, with a mixture of excellence and disappointment.
In addition, state laws do not protect private school students from discrimination as they do in public schools. Previous reports by Wisconsin Watch have found some voucher school students have faced discrimination because of their disabilities or sexual orientation.
Not just providing choice for public school students
RPCP and WPCP generally do not accept students previously registered in private schools, but the program makes an exception for grades K4-1 and 9.
This year, one in four (1,129) newly enrolled WPCP students studied in a private school the previous year — even more than the 948 students who transferred from Wisconsin public schools. Comparatively, most newly enrolled Racine students came from public schools or had not previously attended any school.
MPCP does not have a similar requirement, and DPI stopped publishing the source of enrollment data in 2006.
Bringing religion into classrooms
Enrollment at MPCP jumped in 1998 as the program began incorporating religious schools after the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled 4-2 the program didn’t promote state-sponsored religious education.
As of the 2025-26 school year, nearly all of the voucher schools are religiously affiliated.
Parents cite the religion-based curriculum, safer environments, strict discipline and small classrooms in their decision to send their children to private schools.
Parents of voucher students may opt out of the religious curriculum under the law, yet no available data show how often that happens.
“Almost 30 years now, if there have been 25 cases of opt-outs, I’d be really surprised,” Borsuk said. “If you’re going to a religious school and don’t want to be there, then why are you going to that school? It’s basically as simple as that.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
It’s a new year in Wisconsin, and an election one, too. There are many state government and politics storylines we plan to follow at Wisconsin Watch in 2026 from major policy debates to races that could determine the future of the state.
But we value accountability here, including for ourselves. Before we dive into predictions for the year ahead, we want to look back at what our state team thought might happen in 2025.
Here’s what we predicted and what actually happened.
2025 prediction: The Wisconsin Supreme Court will expand abortion rights.
Outcome:True.
The court in a 4-3 July ruling struck down Wisconsin’s 1849 near-total abortion ban, determining that later state laws regulating the procedure enacted after the ban superseded it.
There are still restrictions on when someone can receive an abortion, including a ban on the procedure 20 weeks after fertilization and a 24-hour waiting period and ultrasound before an abortion is performed. President Donald Trump’s big bill signed in July has also threatened Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood clinics in Wisconsin that offer abortions. A federal appeals court in December paused a lower court ruling and allowed the Trump administration to continue enforcing that part of the law.
2025 prediction: Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and the Republican-controlled Legislature will again strike a deal to increase funding for public education and private voucher schools, similar to the compromise they made in 2023.
Outcome:Mixed.
Evers and the Republican-controlled Legislature did reach an agreement on K-12 education funding during the budget process, approving a $500 million boost for special education funding. But this wasn’t like 2023, when conservatives secured significant funding increases for private voucher schools.
General school aid was kept at the same level as previous years. The Department of Public Instruction in October said, because of that decision, 71% of school districts will receive less general aid during the current school year. Private voucher school funding increased based on past per pupil funding adjustments. As a result of revenue limits going up $325 a year for the next 400 years (no change there from Evers’ creative veto in 2023) and general aid staying flat, property taxes increased significantly.
2025 prediction: The state Supreme Court election will set another spending record.
Outcome:Nailed it!
Total spending for the 2025 state Supreme Court race between liberal candidate Susan Crawford and conservative Brad Schimel hit $144.5 million, shattering the record set in 2023. The spending in last year’s race broke records even without a $30.3 million giveaway from tech billionaire Elon Musk to conservative voters in the state.
As Larry Sandler recently reported for Wisconsin Watch, it was another year demonstrating how expensive and highly political Wisconsin’s state Supreme Court elections have become over the years.
2025 prediction: Ben Wikler will be the next chair of the Democratic National Committee.
Outcome: Swing and a miss!
Former Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party chair Ken Martin was elected chair of the Democratic National Committee in February. Wikler was the runner-up in the contest.
Following the DNC chair race, Wikler announced in April he would not seek reelection as chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. Devin Remiker took on the leadership role following the state party’s convention in June.
It’s not clear what’s next for Wikler. He announced in October he would not seek the Democratic nomination for governor.
Wisconsin Watch predictions for 2026
There is a lot on the line this year, especially with several key elections on ballots in the spring and fall. Here are storylines we expect to follow in 2026.
2026 prediction: The Wisconsin Supreme Court election will NOT set a new spending record.
The big factor here is that the outcome of the April race won’t determine who controls the majority of the court, which lowers the stakes compared to elections in 2023 and 2025. The contest is expected to be a race between Appeals Court judges Chris Taylor, a liberal, and Maria Lazar, a conservative.
A clearer picture of the fundraising for the 2026 race will appear after campaign finance reports are released this month. Lazar entered the race in October, so her campaign fundraising since then is not yet available.
Taylor, who announced her campaign in May, reported raising more than $584,000 as of July. Following the August announcement that conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley would not seek reelection, a spokesperson for Taylor’s campaign said it had raised more than $1 million.
2026 prediction: Data centers will continue to be a major subject of public interest in Wisconsin as public outcry causes the Public Service Commission to delay approvals of new power plant projects.
Public protests against data centers punctuated the 2025 news cycle as tech giants saw pushback in communities where they sought to build. The Marquette University Law School poll conducted in October shows a majority of Wisconsin voters across the state believe the costs of data centers outweigh their benefits.
The public opposition to data centers and rising utility bill costs will lead to closer scrutiny of power plant projects, which the Public Service Commission is set to review this year.
2026 prediction: In the governor’s race, Republicans will focus on rising property taxes. Democrats will focus on rising health care costs. But the ultimate X factor will be the public mood about what’s happening at the federal level — just as it was in 2018.
Already in December, Republicans have slammed Evers’ 2023 creative veto that increases public school funding for the next 400 years as a centuries-long property tax increase. Democrats have condemned Republicans for not voting to extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies, which expired at the end of December.
Federal issues and public opinion about Trump will ultimately be what sways voters to one party or the other. During the 2018 governor’s race between Evers and then-Gov. Scott Walker, health care was a key issue with Walker authorizing a lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act and Evers calling to expand BadgerCare. But as we’ve noted before, the public is turning against public education in favor of lower taxes, which could keep Republicans in Wisconsin from suffering major swings the party has seen in other states in 2025 off-year elections.
2026 prediction: Democrats will flip at least one chamber of the Legislature for the first time in nearly two decades (not counting that short-lived Senate flip after the 2012 recall elections).
New legislative maps being used for the first time in state Senate races and midterm elections favoring the opposite political party from the one in the White House are signs it could be a good year for Democrats to secure at least one chamber of the Legislature — if not both.
The more likely of the two is the Senate, where Republicans hold an 18-15 majority. Democrats need to flip at least two Republican seats and hold onto the Eau Claire area seat held by Sen. Jeff Smith, D-Brunswick, to win the majority. The party is targeting GOP districts currently held by Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine; Sen. Rob Hutton, R-Brookfield; and Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, where new maps have yet to be tested. Kamala Harris won those three districts, and Democrats running in other states in 2025 have made double-digit gains.
The Assembly, where Republicans hold a 54-45 majority, could also be in play, but Democrats need to flip five Republican-held Assembly seats. Of the 12 Assembly districts in 2024 decided within less than 5 percentage points, five were won by Republicans. Assembly Democrats would need to flip those five seats and hold onto the other seven close districts from 2024 to win the majority.
2026 prediction: Fundraising by candidates for Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District will exceed 2024, especially as that seat draws national attention in the Republican fight to keep the U.S. House majority.
Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden defeated Democrat Rebecca Cooke by less than 3 percentage points in 2024. Van Orden raised nearly $7.7 million and Cooke brought in nearly $6.4 million during the 2024 cycle, outraising all other Wisconsin congressional candidates at the time, according to Open Secrets.
The 2026 race for the 3rd District is likely to be a rematch between Van Orden and Cooke, who have already raised millions for the 2026 cycle. As of late September, Van Orden reported bringing in about $3.4 million and Cooke nearly $3 million. National attention on who wins the U.S. House majority will also bring more money into the race. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee put the 3rd District on a list of “offensive targets” for 2026.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Every week in Forward, our Monday newsletter about the week ahead in Wisconsin government and politics, Brittany Carloni shares a short story from Wisconsin history.
We like to select stories that tie into current events to illustrate how the past speaks to the present. Whether it’s Teddy Roosevelt, after being shot in Milwaukee, warning against factional fighting or the origins of multicultural centers on university campuses or the spirit of gift-giving tied to the first evergreen tree in the Capitol rotunda, the past teaches us a lot about the present.
Today we present the last 12 editions of Back Words. If you like local history tidbits, political analysis and a preview of upcoming state government happenings, make sure you’re subscribed to Forward.
Oct. 6, 2025
On Oct. 6, 1917, just six months after the U.S. entered World War I, Wisconsin Sen. Robert La Follette Sr. spoke for three hours on the floor of the U.S. Senate about the importance of free speech during war time.
“Fighting Bob” earlier that year voted against Congress’ declaration of war with Germany and criticized war time initiatives from President Woodrow Wilson’s administration. His remarks followed news that a Senate committee received a resolution to expel him from the chamber.
“Our government, above all others, is founded on the right of the people freely to discuss all matters pertaining to their government, in war not less than in peace,” reads a copy of La Follette’s remarks published in the congressional record. “For in this government the people are the rulers in war no less than in peace.”
“Every good citizen ought to do everything in his or her power to prevent the coming of the day when we shall see in this country two recognized creeds fighting one another, when we shall see the creed of the ‘Havenots’ arraigned against the creed of the ‘Haves,’” Roosevelt told the crowd, even as supporters implored him to seek medical attention. “When that day comes then such incidents as this to-night will be commonplace in our history. When you make poor men — when you permit the conditions to grow such that the poor man as such will be swayed by his sense of injury against the men who try to hold what they improperly have won, when that day comes, the most awful passions will be let loose and it will be an ill day for our country.”
The episode made headlines the next day. The front page of the Oct. 15 afternoon edition of the Green Bay Press Gazette read: “Crank Shoots Roosevelt at Milwaukee; Wound Not Dangerous.”
Oct. 20, 2025
A Wisconsin Historical Society marker notes that on Oct. 20, 1856, abolitionist Frederick Douglass gave a speech in Beaver Dam about the “brutality and immorality” of slavery. Douglass was born into slavery but escaped and grew to become a renowned activist, writer and speaker.
Newspaper notices show Douglass spoke in several other Wisconsin cities during that period. A Kenosha newspaper at the time previewed his visit to the city, describing Douglass as “the eloquent champion of freedom.” Though there isn’t a record of his Beaver Dam speech, his July 5, 1852, speech in Rochester, New York, had a similar theme.
“The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretence, and your Christianity as a lie,” Douglass said. “It destroys your moral power abroad; it corrupts your politicians at home. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a bye-word to a mocking earth. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your Union.”
Oct. 27, 2025
The Beloit Daily News on Oct. 2, 1908, ran this story about stops in Wisconsin from the “Red Special” train carrying Socialist Party presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs.
As election season ramped up in 1908, the “Red Special” train carrying Socialist Party presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs made stops in Wisconsin on Oct. 30 and 31 and Nov. 1 during his third campaign for the White House.
An Oct. 31, 1908, story in the Social-Democratic Herald quoted Debs at a stop in Beloit.
“The last panic, so-called, occurred under a Democratic administration in 1893. The Republicans were swift to exclaim, ‘Behold, the fruit of Democratic misrule!’” Debs said. “Up to this time the working class had not yet learned to any great extent to think or to act for themselves. They were still responsive to the plea of the capitalist demagogue. Hundreds of thousands of them swept from the Democratic Party into the Republican Party, and that party went into power upon that issue.”
Debs ran for president again four years later with a Wisconsin connection. In 1912, former Milwaukee Mayor Emil Seidel ran as the Socialist Party’s vice presidential candidate.
Nov. 3, 2025
On Nov. 3, 1998, Wisconsin voters elected Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson to an unprecedented fourth term. He was first elected to the governor’s office in 1986.
Thompson won the 1998 election with 60% of the vote to Progressive labor attorney and Democrat Ed Garvey’s 39% of the vote. That same night, Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold won re-election against Republican Mark Neumann by only 2 points.
On election night, CNN senior political analyst William Schneider noted 58% of moderate voters picked Thompson, but only 41% voted for Neumann.
“This really epitomizes the two faces of the Republican Party,” Schneider said. “There’s going to be a split in the Republican Party coming between the governors’ wing, which is dominated by pragmatists and moderate Republicans who are inclusive in their appeal, and the congressional wing of the Republican Party which is dominated by conservative ideologues. Why are the two wings different? Well, clearly, governors represent a whole state, so they have to represent a more diverse constituency and they have to run a government and make things work, whereas members of Congress have much smaller constituencies in the House of Representatives and they can be more ideological and more partisan. I think we’re going to see this division getting bigger and bigger.”
Thompson resigned as governor in 2001 to serve as the secretary of Health and Human Services under President George W. Bush.
Nov. 10, 2025
On Nov. 12, 1836, Wisconsin’s first territorial Gov. Henry Dodge signed the first law approved by the territorial legislature, which set expectations for the conduct between citizens and elected officials.
The legislation authorized the “by fine and imprisonment” of members of the public who disrespect lawmakers or threaten those elected officials for anything they said or did while in session. Fines could not exceed $200, and a prison sentence could not extend beyond 48 hours for one incident. A $200 fine in 1836 would equal roughly $6,000 in today’s dollars.
The initial law also allowed each chamber of the territorial legislature to expel a member with a two-thirds majority. But it exempted lawmakers from arrest during a session “in all cases except treason, felony, and breach of the peace.”
Nov. 17, 2025
On Nov. 21, 1968, 94 Black students participated in a mass demonstration in University President Roger Guiles’ office at what we know today as the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. The event later became known as “Black Thursday.”
The students sought a series of demands from the university, including providing courses on Black literature and history, hiring Black faculty and creating an African-American cultural center for Black students.
“We envision the center as a place where on a cold winter night any student, black or white, can come and in one minute throw off all the unpleasant association of the university proper and enter the center in a spiritual as well as an intellectual experience,” sophomore Sandra McCreary told the Oshkosh Northwestern in the days after.
Oshkosh police later that day arrested the students for unlawful assembly and disorderly conduct for occupying the president’s office and damaging materials from thrown typewriters to broken windows. In December, the Board of Regents chose to expel 90 of the students who participated in the demonstrations. But changes came in the months following Black Thursday, including a new intercultural center that opened in 1969.
Nov. 24, 2025
On Nov. 24, 1959, Wisconsin leaders celebrated the opening of a 15-mile stretch of Interstate 90 between Beloit and Janesville. A program from the dedication ceremony described the project as “the largest single segment of four-lane highway to be completed at one time in the history of Rock County.”
Then-Gov. Gaylord Nelson said he hoped the project would reduce traffic accidents and hailed its completion as an example of how officials working together from multiple levels of government “can bring about civic progress.”
“As Governor of Wisconsin I am pleased to note that this cooperation, combined with the foresight and high standards of the citizens of this area, has resulted in providing Wisconsin motorists as well as visitors with the best transportation facility available,” Nelson wrote in a program message.
Dec. 1, 2025
On. Dec. 2, 1954, the U.S. Senate voted 67-22 to censure Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the Republican senator from Wisconsin who was known for his anti-communism crusades and investigations in Congress. The charges were for the failure to cooperate with the Subcommittee on Privileges and Elections in 1952 and the “abuse” of the Select Committee to Study Censure in 1954.
McCarthy answered “present” on the vote while fellow Wisconsin Republican Sen. Alexander Wiley was absent from the chamber that day on official business, according to the congressional record.
The Senate’s vote came after McCarthy’s hearings in April that year on alleged security issues in the U.S. Army, which further damaged the Wisconsin senator’s reputation. The hearings included the infamous moment when army lawyer Joseph Welch, after McCarthy questioned the communist ties of one of Welch’s colleagues, asked: “Have you no sense of decency?”
In the weeks prior to the official censure vote, McCarthy appeared on the debut program of political show “Face the Nation” where he criticized Democrats and called the upcoming Senate proceedings a “lynch bee.”
“When they’re not basing their vote upon the counts set forth, when they base their vote upon political reasons,” McCarthy said on the program. “When they say ahead of time in effect regardless of what the evidence says, ‘This man has been fighting communism, he’s been shouting that for over 20 years the Democrat party has been infiltrated, therefore we’re going to get him,’ I think lynching bee is a good name for it.”
Dec. 8, 2025
On Dec. 7, 1943, two years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the USS Wisconsin was christened by Wisconsin first lady Madge Goodland. Official construction on the battleship started in January 1941.
A story on the events in the Wisconsin State Journal said Goodland practiced breaking the ceremonial champagne bottle ahead of the christening by shattering bottles of sherry against the executive residence.
Then-Gov. Walter S. Goodland also attended the christening and called the USS Wisconsin celebration “thrilling and inspiring.”
“What more appropriate than to dedicate this immense fighting craft to the men and women engaged in the world war in which this ship will soon participate,” Goodland said in remarks that day. “And especially to the 250,000 gallant men and women who hail Wisconsin as their home.”
The ship was officially commissioned in April 1944.
Dec. 15, 2025
On Dec. 14, 2020, the Wisconsin Supreme Court in a 4-3 ruling upheld former President Joe Biden’s election win in the state and rejected a lawsuit from President Donald Trump and his campaign that sought to overturn the election results.
Justice Brian Hagedorn, a conservative, joined liberal Justices Ann Walsh Bradley, Rebecca Dallet and Jill Karofsky in the majority while conservative Justices Patience Roggensack, Annette Ziegler and Rebecca Bradley dissented.
Hagedorn, who wrote the majority opinion, criticized the timing of the Trump campaign’s challenges to Wisconsin’s results, claims which “must be brought expeditiously.”
“Our laws allow the challenge flag to be thrown regarding various aspects of election administration,” Hagedorn wrote. “The challenges raised by the Campaign in this case, however, come long after the last play or even the last game.”
Dec. 22, 2025
The first evergreen tree placed in the Capitol rotunda during the Christmas season was in December 1916 as the new building neared completion, according to the Wisconsin Historical Society.
A 40-foot tree for the rotunda arrived in Madison that year from northern Michigan, news reports show. It was lit on Dec. 23, 1916, during a two-day Christmas celebration organized by the local Rotary Club, which included donated gifts to “every child in the city” from the Capitol Mutual Club.
“Hundreds of children of all ages and sizes tried to stand still yesterday afternoon and listen to the strains of ‘Holy Night’ and other devotional strains interspersed with popular airs at the Rotary club celebration while their eyes were glued on the wonderful tree in the rotunda of the capitol, and the huge baskets of gifts furnished by the Capitol Mutual Club near it,” a Dec. 24, 1916, Wisconsin State Journal story wrote of the festivities. “The singing was very nice but judging from the howl that went up when Santa Claus began to distribute the gifts, the music was not the most interesting feature of the program.”
An evergreen tree is placed in the Capitol rotunda every year during the holiday season while political party leaders have disputed calling it a Christmas tree or a holiday tree. Gov. Tony Evers gave the 2025 balsam fir from Oconto County the theme “The Learning Tree.”
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Wisconsin Watch published 83 original fact briefs this year. Fact briefs are 150-word answers to yes/no questions based on surprising or dubious statements made by politicians or other information influencers.
We tend to focus on statements made by Wisconsin politicians, though their statements can range from local to national issues. Many of those are based on statements made about what’s in the news. They’re timely, relevant and easy to digest.
Other fact briefs shed light on topics that remain relevant weeks, months or years after the initial statement was made. Here’s a look at some of those from 2025.
National focus
Do unauthorized immigrants have constitutional rights?Yes. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that all people in the U.S. have constitutional protections, though citizens have additional rights, such as voting.
Is violent crime in the U.S. higher than 25 years ago?No. Violent crime rates, nationally and in major cities, are lower than they were 25 years ago.
Are airline flights the safest mode of transportation in the U.S.?Yes. Federal data show that airline flights are safer than other major transportation modes in the U.S.
Are National Guard troops generally trained in law enforcement? No. National Guard troops, like those President Donald Trump has used to crack down on big-city crime, generally are not trained in law enforcement.
Do tens of millions of unauthorized immigrants receive federal health benefits? No. Unauthorized immigrants are not eligible to enroll in federally funded health coverage.
Is there evidence linking marijuana use to psychosis?Yes. Peer-reviewed research has found links between marijuana use and psychosis — the loss of contact with reality, experienced as delusions or hallucinations.
Does Medicare Advantage cost more than traditional Medicare? Yes. The federal Medicare program spends more per beneficiary for a person on Medicare Advantage than if the person were on traditional Medicare. The difference is projected at 20% higher, or $84 billion, in 2025.
Do recent studies link water fluoridation with less dental decay in children?Yes. Peer-reviewed studies published in the past several years connect water fluoridation with less dental decay in children.
Are homosexual acts criminalized in 65 countries?Yes. Homosexual acts are illegal in 65 countries, including seven that impose the death penalty.
Is there a U.S. law that bans the Communist Party?Yes. The Communist Control Act of 1954 bans the Communist Party. It remains part of the U.S. Code, but has rarely been enforced, and Congress has repealed most of its provisions.
Are interstate truckers required to read and speak English? Yes. Interstate truckers in the U.S. are required to read and speak English under guidance by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
Does the typical public housing tenant in the U.S. stay in public housing 12 years?No. The median stay in public housing in the U.S. is four years, a 2024 study of U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department data found. Median means half the tenants in public housing projects stayed more than four years, and half stayed less.
Is the majority of federal government spending mandatory?Yes. About 60% of federal spending is mandatory — appropriations are automatic. About 27% is discretionary spending, and about 13% pays federal debt interest.
Wisconsin focus
Have Wisconsin electricity price increases exceeded the Midwest average for 20 years?Yes. Wisconsin electricity rates — for residential, industrial and commercial users — have exceeded regional averages annually for 20 years.
Can Wisconsin require state jobs go only to Americans?No. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that states cannot restrict public employment to citizens. Both public and private employers are generally barred by federal law from treating people differently based on national origin or ethnicity.
Does Wisconsin require daily exercise for K-12 students?No. Wisconsin doesn’t require daily exercise for students, though there are non-daily requirements for physical education.
Has biennial state funding for the Wisconsin DNR dropped by $100 million over 30 years?Yes. State funding of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has been reduced by more than $100 million per biennium (two-year budget periods) in the past 30 years, though a key factor is smaller debt payments.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
If Democrats win a majority in one or both chambers of the Legislature in 2026, the party will have more power to govern than any time in more than 15 years.
Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein, D-Middleton, said she saw a sign of what that future could look like during the state budget-writing process earlier this year. With just a three-seat advantage in the Senate, Republicans needed to work across the aisle to advance the budget, and Senate Democrats had a seat at the negotiating table, Hesselbein said.
For the past 15 years of Republican majorities in the Senate and the Assembly, GOP lawmakers have been able to operate largely without input from legislative Democrats. In 2011, following the Republican midterm surge during President Barack Obama’s presidency, a GOP trifecta in the Legislature and the governor’s office advanced legislation aimed at cementing a permanent majority.
They passed laws such as Act 10, which dismantled Democratic-supporting public sector unions; strict voter ID, which made it harder for students and low-income people to vote; and partisan redistricting, which kept legislative Republicans in power with near super-majorities even after Democrats won all statewide offices in 2018.
“We have an open door policy as Democrats in the state Senate. We will work with anybody with a good idea,” she said. “So we will try to continue to work with Republicans when we can and seek common values to really help people in the state of Wisconsin.”
Newly redrawn legislative maps put into play during last year’s elections, when President Donald Trump won Wisconsin, resulted in 14 flipped legislative seats in favor of Democrats. Following those gains in 2024, Senate Democrats need to flip two seats and hold onto Senate District 31, held by Sen. Jeff Smith, D-Brunswick, to win a majority next year.
The party’s campaign committee is eyeing flip opportunities in seats occupied by Republican Sens. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green; Rob Hutton, R-Brookfield; and Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, which are all districts that former Vice President Kamala Harris won in 2024, according to an analysis last year by John Johnson, a Lubar Center Research fellow at Marquette University.
Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, in an email to Wisconsin Watch said a Democratic majority in the chamber “won’t happen.”
With political winds during a midterm year typically favoring the party not in control of the White House, Democrats could see gains in the Assembly as well, although there are more challenges than in the Senate. All of the Assembly seats were tested under the new maps last year, but Democrats still made gains during an election year when Trump’s name on ballots boosted Republicans. Minority Leader Greta Neubauer, D-Racine, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel earlier this month that she is “optimistic” about chances to flip the Assembly, where five seats would give Democrats control of the chamber for the first time since 2010.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos did not respond to questions from Wisconsin Watch about how Republicans might work with Democrats if the party wins a majority next year.
If there is a power shift in the Capitol in 2026, few lawmakers have experienced anything but Republican control of the Legislature. Just 11 of the 132 members across both political parties previously held office at a time when Democrats controlled both legislative chambers.
Some of the longest-serving Democrats said they agree with restoring more bipartisanship in the legislative process if the party gains power in 2026.
“I don’t want to repeat the same mistakes as the Republicans did,” said Sen. Tim Carpenter, D-Milwaukee, who was elected to the Assembly in 1984 and the Senate in 2002. “We have to give them an opportunity to work on things.”
Carpenter and Rep. Christine Sinicki, D-Milwaukee, who was elected to the Assembly in 1998, said if the party wins one or both majorities they want to make sure members are prepared for governing responsibilities they’ve never experienced, like leading a committee.
“It’s a lot more work,” Sinicki said of being in the majority. “But it’s very fulfilling work to actually be able to go home at night and say, ‘I did this today.’”
Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein, D-Middleton, speaks during a Senate floor session Oct. 14, 2025, at the State Capitol in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Hesselbein said if Senate Democrats secure power in their chamber next year, members will continue to focus on affordability issues that they’ve proposed during the current session. Some of those bills included providing free meals at breakfast and lunch to students in Wisconsin schools, lowering the cost of prescription drugs and expanding access to the homestead tax credit.
LeMahieu, though, said Democrats have “no credibility” on affordability issues.
“Senate Republicans delivered the second largest income tax cut in state history to put more money in Wisconsin families’ pockets for gas and groceries while Senate Democrats propose sales and income tax hikes to pay for a radical agenda nobody can afford,” he said.
Senate Democrats in the meantime are holding listening sessions across the state and working on a list of future bills to be ready to lead “on day one,” Hesselbein said. “If we are fortunate enough.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Mandela Barnes shouldn’t expect the Democratic primary field to clear for him in the Wisconsin governor’s race like it did when he ran for Senate, close watchers of the election say.
One reason why? Some anxious Democrats are worried about Barnes’ loss in the Senate race in 2022.
Barnes, the former lieutenant governor, lost to Sen. Ron Johnson in 2022 by just one percentage point. On the same ballot, Gov. Tony Evers won reelection by more than 3 percentage points. There’s still angst and unease for not capturing that Senate win, close watchers say.
“There might not be any issue that divides Democrats more” than Barnes’ electability, said Barry Burden, who runs the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
The crowded primary field includes Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, state Sen. Kelda Roys, state Rep. Francesca Hong, former Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. CEO Missy Hughes and former state Rep. Brett Hulsey. Earlier this month, Evers’ former aide, Joel Brennan, jumped into the race too.
Whoever wins is likely to face U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the leading Republican candidate, who has routinelytargeted Barnes on social media. Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann is also running.
Wisconsin Congressman Tom Tiffany addresses the audience in his speech during the Republican Party of Wisconsin convention on May 17, 2025, at the Central Wisconsin Convention & Expo Center in Rothschild, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Barnes has the highest name recognition among the primary candidates and is widely considered to be the front-runner. An October poll released prior to Barnes’ campaign announcement placed him at 16% support in the primary, the highest of any candidate included in the survey.
“Mandela Barnes is the most known and by far the most popular candidate,” said Molly Murphy, a pollster for Barnes’ campaign, adding that he has a “decisive lead over everyone else in the field.”
Even so, Democrats in the state say this isn’t a done deal.
“I don’t think anybody, including Mandela, is that prohibitive a favorite the way that Evers was at the top of the field and Mandela was at the top of the field in those two primaries over the last eight years,” said Sachin Chheda, a Milwaukee-based Democratic strategist who is not affiliated with any candidate. It’s a “wide open field.”
Barnes ran away with the primary in 2022, winning nearly 78% of the vote; his most competitive challenger, Milwaukee Bucks Executive Alex Lasry, dropped out of the race ahead of the primary and endorsed him. Barnes’ general election campaign, however, was inundated with attacks from the right that proved successful.
Barnes’ campaign staff blamed the 2022 results in part on insufficient support from national Democrats to match outside spending by Republicans on attack ads — though some, like Burden, question whether money would have “made a difference.”
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee donated $51,200 to his campaign in 2022 — the same amount they gave to nine other Senate candidates, per Open Secrets.
The national campaign arm for Democratic governors has pledged to stay out of the primary contest.
The Democratic Governors Association is “excited about this strong bench of candidates and look forward to helping elect whoever Wisconsinites nominate to be their next governor,” said spokesperson Olivia Davis.
Barnes does have connections with major figures in the national party, though. Since 2023, Barnes has led a voting rights organization, Power to the Polls, and a renewable energy nonprofit. Earlier this month he was endorsed by U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff of California.
“People wrote me off from the very beginning, people wrote me off in the primary in that race. And we defied expectations, and I would not have been able to defy those expectations if it were not for the groundswell of support that I had going into it,” Barnes told another local outlet this month.
Murphy, the president of Impact Research, said that governor’s races are “a different ecosystem” from Senate campaigns. “No two cycles are the same; 2022 was very much a referendum on national leadership,” she said.
For now, name recognition and previous fundraising experience make Barnes the front-runner, said Joe Zepecki, a Democratic strategist based in Wisconsin. Still, Zepecki said, there are more incentives for the other candidates to stay in the race this time.
“I don’t think anybody anticipates a rerun of ’22 where other Democrats just kind of get out of the way a couple of weeks before the primary,” he said.
Another reason he expects the field to stay mostly intact? Because Democrats have a good shot at securing a trifecta in Wisconsin in 2026, and the chance to be governor while the party holds control is more appealing than being one of 100 senators.
There’s also the hand-wringing over electability.
“My reaction and the reaction of some other people I know who were quite involved in politics was, ‘Oh man, I hope he decides not to (run),’” said Mary Arnold, co-chair of the Columbia County Democrats, which covers the communities between Madison and Wisconsin Dells. “He’s going to overshadow the field, and I don’t know if that’s going to be a good thing.”
That concern may be isolated to political insiders, Zepecki said.
“Then there’s real people. …The further I go out from my circle of political friends, the more enthusiasm for Barnes I hear,” he said.
This story was produced andoriginally published by Wisconsin Watch and NOTUS, a publication from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute.
For nearly two weeks following Election Day in 2024, former U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde, a Republican, refused to concede, blasting “last-minute absentee ballots that were dropped in Milwaukee at 4 a.m., flipping the outcome.”
Hovde earlier this year told Votebeat that he believes there are issues at Milwaukee’s facility for counting absentee ballots, but he added that he doesn’t blame his loss on that. He didn’t respond to a request for comment in December for this article.
In Wisconsin’s polarized political landscape, Milwaukee has become a flashpoint for election suspicion, much like Philadelphia and Detroit — diverse, Democratic urban centers that draw outsized criticism. The scrutiny reflects the state’s deep rural-urban divide and a handful of election errors in Milwaukee that conspiracy theorists have seized on, leaving the city’s voters and officials under constant political pressure.
That treatment, Milwaukee historian John Gurda says, reflects “the general pattern where you have big cities governed by Democrats” automatically perceived by the right “as centers of depravity (and) insane, radical leftists.”
Charlie Sykes — a longtime conservative commentator no longer aligned with much of GOP politics — said there’s “nothing tremendously mysterious” about Republicans singling out Milwaukee: As long as election conspiracy theories dominate the right, the heavily Democratic city will remain a target.
Milwaukee voters and election officials under constant watch
Milwaukee’s emergence as a target in voter fraud narratives accelerated in 2010, when dozens of billboards in the city’s predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods showed three people, including two Black people, behind bars with the warning: “VOTER FRAUD is a FELONY — 3 YRS & $10,000 FINE.”
Community groups condemned them as racist and misleading, especially for people who had regained their voting rights after felony convictions. Similar billboards returned in 2012, swapping the jail bars for a gavel. All of the advertisements were funded by the Einhorn Family Foundation, associated with GOP donor Stephen Einhorn, who didn’t respond to Votebeat’s email requesting comment.
Criticism of Milwaukee extends well beyond its elections. As Wisconsin’s largest city, it is often cast as an outlier in a largely rural state, making it easier for some to believe the worst about its institutions — including its elections.
“One of the undercurrents of Wisconsin political history is … rural parts versus urban parts,” said University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee political scientist and former Democratic legislator Mordecai Lee. As the state’s biggest city by far, “it becomes the punching bag for outstate legislators” on almost any issue.
“People stay at home and watch the evening news and they think if you come to Milwaukee, you’re going to get shot … or you’re going to get run over by a reckless driver,” said Claire Woodall, who ran the city’s elections from 2020 to 2024.
Election officials acknowledge Milwaukee has made avoidable mistakes in high-stakes elections but describe them as quickly remedied and the kinds of errors any large city can experience when processing tens of thousands of ballots. What sets Milwaukee apart is the scrutiny: Whether it was a briefly forgotten USB stick in 2020 or tabulator doors left open in 2024, each lapse is treated as something more ominous.
Other Wisconsin municipalities have made more consequential errors without attracting comparable attention: In 2011, Waukesha County failed to report votes from Brookfield when tallying a statewide court race — a major oversight that put the wrong candidate in the lead in early unofficial results. In 2024, Summit, a town in Douglas County, disqualified all votes in an Assembly race after officials discovered ballots were printed with the wrong contest listed.
“I don’t believe that there is anywhere in the state that is under a microscope the way the city of Milwaukee is,” said Neil Albrecht, a former executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission.
Black Milwaukeeans say racism behind scrutiny on elections
Milwaukee grew quickly in the 19th century, built by waves of European immigrants who powered its factories and breweries and helped turn it into one of the Midwest’s major industrial cities. A small Black community, searching for employment and fleeing the Jim Crow South, took root early and grew substantially in the mid-20th century.
As industry declined, white residents fled for the suburbs, many of which had racist housing policies that excluded Blacks. That left behind a city marked by segregated schools, shrinking job prospects and sharp economic divides. The split was so stark that the Menomonee River Valley became a shorthand boundary: Black residents to the north, white residents to the south — a divide Milwaukee never fully overcame.
The result is one of the most segregated cities in the country, a place that looks and feels profoundly different from the overwhelmingly white, rural communities that surround it. That contrast has long made Milwaukee an easy target in statewide politics, and it continues to feed some people’s suspicions that something about the city — including its elections — is fundamentally untrustworthy.
The Rev. Greg Lewis, executive director of Wisconsin’s Souls to the Polls, said the reputation is rooted in racism and belied by reality. He said he has a hard enough time getting minorities to vote at all, “let alone vote twice.”
Albrecht agreed.
“If a Souls to the Polls bus would pull up to (a polling site), a bus full of Black people, some Republican observer would mutter, ‘Oh, these are the people being brought up from Chicago,’” he said. “As if we don’t have African Americans in Milwaukee.”
Election workers count votes using a tabulation machine during Election Day on Nov. 5, 2024, at Milwaukee’s central count facility at the Baird Center. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
After former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes — a Black Milwaukeean and a Democrat — lost his 2022 U.S. Senate bid to unseat U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, Bob Spindell, a Republican member of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, emailed constituents saying Republicans “can be especially proud” of Milwaukee casting 37,000 fewer votes than in 2018, “with the major reduction happening in the overwhelming Black and Hispanic areas.”
The message sparked backlash, though Spindell rejected accusations of racism. Asked about it this year, Spindell told Votebeat he meant to praise GOP outreach to Black voters.
Milwaukee organizer Angela Lang said she finds the shifting narratives about Black turnout revealing. “Are we voting (illegally)?” she said. “Or are you all happy that we’re not voting?”
History of real and perceived errors increases pressure on city
The scrutiny directed at Milwaukee falls on voters and the city employees who run its elections.
Milwaukee’s most serious stumble came in 2004, when a last-minute overhaul of the election office contributed to unprocessed voter registrations, delayed absentee counts and discrepancies in the final tally. Multiple investigations found widespread administrative problems but no fraud.
“It was hard coming in at that low point,” said Albrecht, who joined the commission the following year, saying it gave Milwaukee the reputation as an “election fraud capital.”
In 2008, the city created a centralized absentee ballot count facility to reduce errors at polling places and improve consistency. The change worked as intended, but it also meant Milwaukee’s absentee results — representing tens of thousands of votes — were often reported after midnight, sometimes shifting statewide margins.
That timing is largely a product of state law: Wisconsin is one of the few states that prohibit clerks from processing absentee ballots before Election Day. For years, Milwaukee officials have asked lawmakers to change the rule. Instead, opponents argue the city can’t be trusted with extra processing time — even as they criticize the late-night results all but unavoidable under the current rule.
Proposals to allow administrators more time to process ballots — and therefore report results sooner — have repeatedly stalled in the Legislature. The most recent passed the Assembly last session but never received a Senate vote, with some Republicans openly questioning why they should give Milwaukee more time when they don’t trust the city to handle the ballots with the time it already has.
“The late-arriving results of absentee ballots processed in the city of Milwaukee benefits all attempts to discredit the city,” Albrecht said.
Without the change, to keep up with other Wisconsin municipalities, Milwaukee must process tens of thousands of absentee ballots in a single day, a herculean task. “The effect of not passing it means this issue can be kept alive,” said Lee, the UW-Milwaukee political scientist.
Some Republicans acknowledge that dynamic outright. Rep. Scott Krug, a GOP lawmaker praised for his pragmatic approach to election policy, has long supported a policy fix. This session, it doesn’t appear to be going anywhere.
Krug said a small but influential faction on the right has built a kind of social network around election conspiracy theories, many focused on Milwaukee. Because the tight counting window is part of the fuel that keeps that group going, he said, “a fix is a problem for them.”
2020 marked the shift to ‘complete insanity’
Albrecht said that while Milwaukee had long operated under an unusual level of suspicion, the scrutiny that followed 2020 represented a shift he described as “complete insanity.”
That year, in the early hours after Election Day, Milwaukee released its absentee totals, but then-election chief Woodall realized she’d left a USB drive in one tabulator. Woodall called her deputy clerk about it, and the deputy had a police officer take the USB drive to the county building. The mistake didn’t affect results — the audit trail matched — but it was enough to ignite right-wing talk radio and fuel yet more conspiratorial claims about the city’s late-night reporting.
The scrutiny only intensified. A joking email exchange between Woodall and an elections consultant, taken out of context, was perceived by some as proof of fraud after Gateway Pundit and a now-defunct conservative state politics site published it. Threats followed, serious enough that police and the FBI stepped in. Woodall pushed for increased security at the city’s election office, saying that “there was no question” staff safety was at risk.
A similar dynamic played out again in 2024, when workers discovered that doors on absentee tabulators hadn’t been fully closed. With no evidence of tampering but anticipating backlash, officials zeroed out the machines and recounted every ballot. The fix didn’t stop Republicans, including Johnson, from suggesting something “very suspicious” could be happening behind the scenes. Johnson did not respond to a request for comment.
Meanwhile, errors in other Wisconsin communities, sometimes far more consequential, rarely draw similar attention. Take Waukesha County’s error in 2011 — a mistake that swung thousands of votes and affected which candidate was in the lead. “But it didn’t stick,” said UW-Madison’s Barry Burden, a political science professor. “People don’t talk about Waukesha as a place with rigged or problematic elections.”
In recent years there was only one substantiated allegation of serious election official wrongdoing: In November 2022, Milwaukee deputy clerk Kimberly Zapata was charged with misconduct in office and fraud for obtaining fake absentee ballots.
A month prior, she had ordered three military absentee ballots using fake names and sent the ballots to a Republican lawmaker, an effort she reportedly described as an attempt to expose flaws in the election system. Zapata said those events stemmed from a “complete emotional breakdown.” She was sentenced to one year of probation for election fraud.
“We didn’t hear as much from the right” about those charges, Woodall said.
More recently, the GOP has raised concerns about privacy screens — a curtain hung last November to block a staging area and, earlier this year, a room with frosted windows. Republicans seized on each, claiming the city was hiding something.
Paulina Gutiérrez, the city’s election director, told Votebeat the ballots temporarily kept behind the curtain “aren’t manipulated. They’re scanned and sent directly onto the floor,” where observers are free to watch the envelopes be opened and the ballots be counted.
But the accusations took off anyway. Even Johnson, the U.S. senator, suggested the city was “making sure NO ONE trusts their election counts.”
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
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Wisconsin utility ratepayers owe nearly $1 billion on coal power plants that have been or soon will be shut down. That includes debt taken on to build and upgrade the plants, plus a guaranteed rate of return of nearly 10% for the utility companies that own the plants.
Other states have found ways to limit the effect on ratepayers, such as allowing debt to be securitized at a lower rate than the guaranteed investment return and having comprehensive planning processes that reduce the likelihood of overbuilding.
Wisconsin utility groups have pushed back on bipartisan proposals, and Republicans have blocked efforts by Gov. Tony Evers to reduce costs for ratepayers.
By some measures, the Pleasant Prairie Power Plant, once regarded locally as an “iconic industrial landmark,” had a good run.
Opened in 1980 near Lake Michigan in Kenosha County, it became Wisconsin’s largest generating plant, burning enough Wyoming coal, some 13,000 tons a day, to provide electricity for up to 1 million homes.
But over time, the plant became too expensive to operate. The owner, We Energies, shut it down after 38 years, in 2018.
We Energies customers, however, are still on the hook.
A portion of their monthly bills will continue to pay for Pleasant Prairie until 2039 — 21 years after the plant stopped producing electricity.
In fact, residential and business utility customers throughout Wisconsin owe nearly $1 billion on “stranded assets” — power plants like Pleasant Prairie that have been or will soon be shut down, a Wisconsin Watch investigation found.
That total will likely grow over the next five years with additional coal plants scheduled to cease operations.
Customers must pay not only for the debt taken on to build and upgrade the plants themselves, but also an essentially guaranteed rate of return for their utility company owners, long after the plants stop generating revenue themselves.
“We really have a hard time with utilities profiting off of dead power plants for decades,” said Todd Stuart, executive director of the Wisconsin Industrial Energy Group.
The $1 billion tab looms as Wisconsin utility companies aim to generate unprecedented amounts of electricity for at least seven major high-tech data centers that are proposed, approved or under construction. By one estimate, just two of the data centers, which are being built to support the growth of artificial intelligence, would use more electricity than all Wisconsin homes combined.
All of which raises an important question in Wisconsin, where electricity rates have exceeded the Midwest average for 20 years.
What happens to residents and other ratepayers if AI and data centers don’t pan out as planned, creating a new generation of stranded assets?
How much do Wisconsin ratepayers owe on stranded assets?
Of the five major investor-owned utilities operating in Wisconsin, two — We Energies and Wisconsin Public Service Corp. — have stranded assets on the books. Both companies are subsidiaries of Milwaukee-based WEC Energy Group.
As of December 2024, when the company released its most recent annual report, We Energies estimated a remaining value of more than $700 million across three power plants with recently retired units: Pleasant Prairie, Oak Creek and Presque Isle, a plant on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Wisconsin Public Service Corp.’s December 2024 report listed roughly $30 million in remaining value on recently retired units at two power plants.
In total, utilities owned by WEC Energy Group will likely have over $1 billion in recently retired assets by the end of 2026.
The company also noted a remaining value of just under $250 million for its share of units at Columbia Generating Station slated to retire in 2029, alongside a remaining value of roughly $650 million for units at Oak Creek scheduled to retire next year.
Its customers will pay off that total, plus a rate of return, for years to come.
The company estimates that closing the Pleasant Prairie plant alone saved $2.5 billion, largely by avoiding future operating and maintenance costs and additional capital investments.
Both Wisconsin Power and Light and Madison Gas and Electric also own portions of the Columbia Energy Center, and Wisconsin Power and Light also operates a unit at the Edgewater Generating Station scheduled for retirement before the end of the decade. Neither company provided estimates of the values of those facilities at time of retirement. Andrew Stoddard, a spokesman for Alliant Energy, Wisconsin Power and Light’s parent company, argued against treating plants scheduled for retirement with value on the books as future stranded assets.
How stranded assets occurred: overcommitting to coal
In 1907, Wisconsin became one of the first states to regulate public utilities. The idea was that having competing companies installing separate gas or electric lines was inefficient, but giving companies regional monopolies would require regulation.
Utility companies get permission to build or expand power plants and to raise rates from the three-member state Public Service Commission. The commissioners, appointed by the governor, are charged with protecting ratepayers as well as utility company investors.
A demolition sign is posted at the former site of the We Energies Power Plant on Nov. 13, 2025, in Pleasant Prairie, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Stranded assets have occurred across the nation, partly because of the cost of complying with pollution control regulations. But another factor is that, while other utilities around the country moved to alternative sources of energy, Wisconsin utilities and, in turn, the PSC overbet on how long coal-fired plants would operate efficiently:
In the years before We Energies pulled the plug on Pleasant Prairie, the plant had mostly gone dark in spring and fall. Not only had coal become more expensive than natural gas and renewables, but energy consumption stayed flat. By 2016, two years before Pleasant Prairie’s closure, natural gas eclipsed coal for electricity generation nationally.
In 2011, We Energies invested nearly $1 billion into its coal-fired Oak Creek plant south of Milwaukee to keep it running for 30 more years. The plant, which began operating in 1965 and later became one of the largest in the country, is now scheduled to completely retire in 2026 — with $650 million on the books still owed. That will cost individual ratepayers nearly $30 per year for the next 17 years, according to RMI, a think tank specializing in clean energy policy. The majority of the debt tied to those units stems from “environmental controls we were required to install to meet federal and state rules,” WEC Energy Group spokesperson Brendan Conway said.
In 2013, to settle pollution violations, Alliant Energy announced an investment of more than $800 million in the Columbia Energy Center plant in Portage, north of Madison. But by 2021, Alliant announced plans to begin closing the plant, though now it is expected to operate until at least 2029.
Various factors encourage construction and upgrades of power plants.
Building a plant can create upwards of 1,000 construction jobs, popular with politicians. Moreover, the Public Service Commission, being a quasi-judicial body, is governed by precedent. For example, if the PSC determined it was prudent to allow construction of a utility plant, that finding would argue in favor of approving a later expansion of that plant.
The PSC allowed utility companies “to overbuild the system,” said Tom Content, executive director of the Wisconsin Citizens Utility Board, a nonprofit advocate for utility customers. “I think the mistake was that we allowed so much investment, and continuing to double down on coal when it was becoming less economic.”
Utilities “profit off of everything they build or acquire,” Stuart said, “and so there is a strong motivation to put steel in the ground and perhaps to even overbuild.”
Conway, the WEC Energy Group spokesperson, argued that the utilities’ plans to retire plants amount to a net positive for customers.
“We began our power generation reshaping plan about a decade ago,” he wrote in an email. “That includes closing older, less-efficient power plants and building new renewable energy facilities and clean, efficient natural gas plants. This plan reduces emissions and is expected to provide customers significant savings — hundreds of millions of dollars — over the life of the plan.”
Guaranteed profits add to ratepayer burden
The built-in profits that utility companies enjoy, typically 9.8%, add to the stranded assets tab.
When the Public Service Commission approves construction of a new power plant, it allows the utility company to levy electricity rates high enough to recover its investment plus the specified rate of return — even after a plant becomes a stranded asset.
The former site of the We Energies Power Plant on Nov. 13, 2025, in Pleasant Prairie, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
“We give them this license to have a monopoly, but the challenge is there’s no incentive for them to do the least-cost option,” Content said. “So, in terms of building new plants, there’s an incentive to build more … and there’s incentive to build too much.”
When the Pleasant Prairie plant was shut down in 2018, the PSC ruled that ratepayers would continue to pay We Energies to cover the cost of the plant itself, plus the nearly 10% profit. The plant’s remaining value, initially pegged at nearly $1 billion, remained at roughly $500 million as of December 2024.
Eliminating profits on closed plants would save ratepayers $300 million on debt payments due to be made into the early 2040s, according to Content’s group.
New ‘stranded assets’ threat: data centers
As artificial intelligence pervades society, it’s hard to fathom how much more electricity will have to be generated to power all of the data centers under construction or being proposed in Wisconsin.
We Energies alone wants to add enough energy to power more than 2 million homes. That effort is largely to serve one Microsoft data center under construction in Mount Pleasant, between Milwaukee and Racine, and a data center approved north of Milwaukee in Port Washington to serve OpenAI and Oracle AI programs. Microsoft calls the Mount Pleasant facility “the world’s most powerful data center.”
Data centers are also proposed for Beaver Dam, Dane County, Janesville, Kenosha and Menomonie.
The energy demand raises the risk of more stranded assets, should the data centers turn out to be a bubble rather than boom.
“The great fear is, you build all these power plants and transmission lines and then one of these data centers only is there for a couple years, or isn’t as big as promised, and then everybody’s left holding the bag,” Stuart said.
The sun sets as construction continues at Microsoft’s data center project on Nov. 13, 2025, in Mount Pleasant, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
In an October Marquette Law School poll, 55% of those surveyed said the costs of data centers outweigh the benefits. Environmental groups have called for a pause on all data center approvals. Democratic and Republican leaders are calling for data centers to pay their own way and not rely on utility ratepayers or taxpayers to pay for their electricity needs.
Opposition in one community led nearly 10,000 people to become members of the Stop the Menomonie Data Center group on Facebook. In Janesville, voters are trying to require referendums for data centers. In Port Washington, opposition to the data center there led to three arrests during a city council meeting.
Utilities are scheduled in early 2026 to request permission from the Public Service Commission to build new power plants or expand existing plants to accommodate data centers.
Some states, such as Minnesota, have adopted laws prohibiting the costs of stranded assets from data centers being passed onto ratepayers.
Wisconsin has no such laws.
Shifting cost burden to utility companies
Currently, ratepayers are on the hook for paying off the full debt of stranded assets — unless a financial tool called securitization reduces the burden on ratepayers.
Securitization is similar to refinancing a mortgage. With the state’s permission, utilities can convert a stranded asset — which isn’t typically a tradeable financial product — into a specialized bond.
Utility customers must still pay back the bond. But the interest rate on the bond is lower than the utility’s standard profit margin, meaning customers save money.
A 2024 National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners report noted that utilities’ shareholders may prefer a “status quo” scenario in which customers pay stranded asset debts and the standard rate of return. Persuading utilities to agree to securitization can require incentives from regulators or lawmakers, the report added.
In some states, utilities can securitize the remaining value of an entire power plant. Michigan utility Consumers Energy, for instance, securitized two coal generating units retired in 2023, saving its customers more than $120 million.
In Wisconsin, however, utilities can securitize only the cost of pollution control equipment on power plants — added to older coal plants during the Obama administration, when utilities opted to retrofit existing plants rather than switching to new power sources.
The Oak Creek Power Plant and Elm Road Generating Station, seen here on April 25, 2019, in Oak Creek, Wis., near Milwaukee, are coal-fired electrical power stations. (Coburn Dukehart / Wisconsin Watch)
In 2023, two Republican state senators, Robert Cowles of Green Bay and Duey Stroebel of Saukville, introduced legislation to allow the Public Service Commission to order securitization and allow securitization to be used to refinance all debt on stranded assets. The bill attracted some Democratic cosponsors, but was opposed by the Wisconsin Utilities Association and did not get a hearing.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers proposed additional securitization in his 2025-27 budget, but the Legislature’s Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee later scrapped the provision.
Even Wisconsin’s narrow approach to securitization is optional, however, and most utilities have chosen not to use it.
We Energies was the first Wisconsin utility to do so, opting in 2020 to securitize the costs of pollution control equipment at the Pleasant Prairie plant. Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission approved the request, saving an estimated $40 million. “We will continue to explore that option in the future,” Conway said.
But the PSC expressed “disappointment” in 2024 when We Energies “was not willing to pursue securitization” to save customers $117.5 million on its soon-to-retire Oak Creek coal plant. The utility noted state law doesn’t require securitization.
Stuart said that if utilities won’t agree to more securitization, they should accept a lower profit rate once an asset becomes stranded.
“It would be nice to ease that burden,” he said. “Just to say, hey, consumers got to suck it up and deal with it, that doesn’t sound right. The issue of stranded assets, like cost overruns, is certainly ripe for investigation.”
Comprehensive planning required elsewhere — but not Wisconsin
Avoiding future stranded assets could require a level of planning impossible under Wisconsin’s current regulatory structure.
When the state’s utilities propose new power plants, PSC rules require the commission to consider each new plant alone, rather than in the context of other proposed new plants and the state’s future energy needs. Operating without what is known as an integrated resource plan, or IRP, opened the PSC to overbuilding and creating more stranded assets. IRPs are touted as an orderly way to plan for future energy needs.
“There’s no real comprehensive look in Wisconsin,” Stuart said. “We’re one of the few regulated states that really doesn’t have a comprehensive plan for our utilities.
”We’ve been doing some of these projects kind of piecemeal, without looking at the bigger picture.”
Protesters speak against a proposed natural gas power plant in Oak Creek, Wis., on March 25, 2025. (Julius Shieh / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service)
Structured planning tools like IRPs date back to the 1980s, when concerns about cost overruns, fuel price volatility and overbuilding prompted regulators to step in. Minnesota and Michigan require utilities to file IRPs, as do a majority of states nationwide.
Evers proposed IRPs in his 2025-27 state budget, but Republican lawmakers removed that provision because it was a nonfiscal policy issue.
Northern States Power Company, which operates in Wisconsin and four other Midwestern states, is required by both Michigan and Minnesota to develop IRPs. “Because of these rules, we create a multi-state IRP every few years,” said Chris Ouellette, a spokesperson for Xcel Energy, the utility’s parent company.
Madison Gas and Electric, which only operates in Wisconsin, argued that its current planning process is superior to the IRP requirements in neighboring states. “A formal IRP mandate would add process without improving outcomes,” spokesperson Steve Schultz said. “Wisconsin’s current framework allows us to move quickly, maintain industry-leading reliability and protect customer costs during a period of rapid change.”
How to influence decisions relating to stranded assets
The devil will be in the details on whether the Public Service Commission adopts strong policies to prevent the expected wave of new power plant capacity from becoming stranded assets, consumer advocates say.
The current members, all appointed by Evers, are: chairperson Summer Strand, Kristy Nieto and Marcus Hawkins.
The public can comment on pending cases before the PSC via its website, by mail or at a public hearing. The commission posts notices of its public hearings, which can be streamed via YouTube.
Barbed wire fence surrounds the former site of the We Energies Power Plant on Nov. 13, 2025, in Pleasant Prairie, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Among the upcoming hearings on requests by utilities to generate more electricity for data centers:
Feb. 12: We Energies’ request to service data centers in Mount Pleasant and Port Washington. We Energies says the fees it proposes, known as tariffs, will prevent costs from being shifted from the data centers to other customers. The “party” hearing is not for public comment, but for interaction between PSC staff and parties in the case, such as We Energies and public interest groups.
Feb. 26: Another party hearing for a case in which Alliant Energy also said its proposed tariffs won’t benefit the data center in Beaver Dam at the expense of other customers.
To keep abreast of case developments, the PSC offers email notifications for document filings and meetings of the commission.
The PSC would not provide an official to be interviewed for this article. It issued a statement noting that utilities can opt to do securitization to ease the financial burden on ratepayers, adding:
“Beyond that, the commission has a limited set of tools provided under state law to protect customers from costs that arise from early power plant retirements. It would be up to the state Legislature to make changes to state law that would provide the commission with additional tools.”
On Nov. 6, state Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin, D-Whitefish Bay, and Rep. Angela Stroud, D-Ashland, announced wide-ranging data center legislation. One provision of their proposal aims to ensure that data centers don’t push electricity costs onto other ratepayers.
But there is no provision on stranded assets.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Larry Sandler sits down with Wisconsin Watch video journalist Trisha Young to break down why Wisconsin is an outlier in Supreme Court spending and what’s next for the state. (Video by Trisha Young / Wisconsin Watch)
As journalism continues to evolve, we’re experimenting with alternative storytelling formats to help the public access important information they might not find anywhere else.
Earlier this month Wisconsin Watch published Supreme Costs, a three-part series by freelancer Larry Sandler explaining why our state’s Supreme Court elections are so expensive and what can be done about it. The series included graphics from data reporter Hongyu Liu highlighting how astronomical the $144.5 million spent on the 2025 race was compared with past elections.
Last week we published a condensed version of the nearly 11,000-word series for those who are into the whole brevity thing. The short version clocked in at about 2,600 words.
Today we’re condensing the story even further with a short video of Larry explaining the key points of his series. The video was created by Wisconsin Watch video producer Trisha Young.
Whether you want to dive deep into a subject, peruse the highlights or only have five minutes to spare, Wisconsin Watch has a story for you.
A Wisconsin judge ruled Monday there is enough evidence to proceed to trial in a felony forgery case against an attorney and an aide to President Donald Trump for their role in the 2020 fake elector scheme.
Dane County Circuit Judge John Hyland ruled that there was probable cause to proceed with the 11 felony forgery charges against Jim Troupis, who was Trump’s campaign attorney in Wisconsin, and Mike Roman, Trump’s director of Election Day operations in 2020.
The preliminary hearing of a third person charged, former Trump attorney Ken Chesebro, was postponed amid questions about what statements the man made to prosecutors that could be admitted in court.
— Scott Bauer, The Associated Press
Original story:
Five years after the 2020 presidential election, state-led cases against individuals involved in “fake elector” plans to overturn that year’s election results in favor of President Donald Trump have hit roadblocks.
Just this fall, a judge in Michigan dismissed the state’s case against 15 people accused of falsely acting as electors to certify the presidential election for Trump in 2020. A Georgia prosecutor, who took over that state’s case in November after the district attorney was removed, dropped the charges against Trump and other people who were accused of 2020 election interference in the state.
But unlike Michigan and Georgia, Wisconsin’s criminal case has not faced such legal stumbles so far. A preliminary hearing in the criminal case against former Trump campaign attorneys Kenneth Chesebro and Jim Troupis and former campaign aide Michael Roman was held Monday morning in Dane County Circuit Court.
Legal experts said Wisconsin’s case at this point differs from those in Michigan and Georgia in key ways. There have been no major scandals so far, no changes have been made to people overseeing the case, and Wisconsin’s prosecution has a narrower focus than those in other states, said Lori Ringhand, a constitutional and election law professor at the University of Georgia School of Law.
“The prosecution isn’t of the electors,” Ringhand said. “It’s of the actual people, the very high-level Trump campaign people, attorneys who are accused of facilitating the entire scheme.”
Democratic Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul in June 2024 charged Chesebro, Troupis and Roman with 11 felony forgery counts each for generating documents that falsely claimed Trump won Wisconsin in 2020. The three men allegedly originated the fake electors plan in Wisconsin that spread to other swing states across the country with close vote margins between Trump and former President Joe Biden.
Wisconsin’s focus on Chesebro, Troupis and Roman could be a stronger case than if the state focused on the slate of false electors, Ringhand said. That’s because it’s hard to prove intent in the cases targeting just electors.
In the Michigan case, the Associated Press reported the judge in September said that the state failed to prove the electors had intended to commit fraud. A majority of the Wisconsin false electors said they did not believe their signatures certifying a Trump election in the state would be sent to Washington, D.C., according to an amended criminal complaint filed in December 2024.
“Against the electors themselves, I think it was going to be difficult to prove that they were intending to do something false or fraudulent, as opposed to just creating backup slates,” Ringhand said. “That evidence may look different with these people who are the very high-level organizers of the kind of nationwide effort to create these slates in order to perpetuate this narrative or create challenges or confusion on the House floor.”
The case in Georgia, which included Trump as a defendant, was marred by scandal as Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was ultimately disqualified after news surfaced that she had a romantic relationship with a member of her prosecution team. That slowed the legal process, Ringhand said, and the new prosecutor saw challenges in the time delays and potentially prosecuting a sitting president.
While Wisconsin’s case hasn’t faced these obstacles, some could surface in the future, said Jeff Mandell, general counsel and co-founder of Law Forward. The organization filed a civil case against the state’s false electors, which was settled in 2023.
Assistant Attorney General Adrienne Blais, left, and Assistant Attorney General Jacob Corr, right, represent the state of Wisconsin as Jim Troupis, a GOP attorney and former judge, makes his initial appearance in court Dec. 12, 2024, at the Dane County Courthouse in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Mandell pointed out that it’s already taken the state a year and a half to just reach a preliminary hearing. The defendants this year have sought multiple times to dismiss the charges. Troupis, a former Dane County judge, last week requested all Dane County judges be prohibited from overseeing the case “to avoid the appearance of bias or impropriety.” Additionally, the Associated Press reported Friday that Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate allegations from Troupis that the judge overseeing his case is guilty of misconduct.
More efforts to delay and “throw sand in the gears” could show up as the Wisconsin case advances, Mandell said.
“It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if one of the things the defendants have in mind is trying to make sure they don’t go to trial until after the 2026 election,” Mandell said. “Maybe they think there’s going to be a new attorney general who will drop the charge.”
Kaul is seeking reelection as attorney general next year. Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney, a Republican who ran against Kaul in 2022, announced in October his plan to challenge Kaul again in 2026.
Trump in November pardoned those involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, including the three from Wisconsin still facing prosecution, but that action only protects those people from federal prosecutions.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission on Thursday declined to send the state’s unredacted voter rolls to the federal government, joining more than a dozen states pushing back against disclosing sensitive voter information.
The commission’s move comes as the U.S. Department of Justice has asked all 50 states for their voter files — massive lists containing significant personal information on every voter in the country — claiming they are central to its mission of enforcing election law.
“The U.S. DOJ is simply asking the commission to do something that the commission is explicitly forbidden by Wisconsin law to do,” said Don Millis, a Republican appointee on the Wisconsin Elections Commission. “There’s a clear consensus that personally identifiable information is to be protected.”
While pieces of these lists are public, election officials typically redact voters’ Social Security numbers, driver’s license information and dates of birth before issuing them in response to records requests. The DOJ, in many cases, has asked for information not traditionally made public. That was also the case in Wisconsin: The DOJ requested voters’ partial Social Security numbers, license numbers and dates of birth.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission — which is made up of three Democrats and three Republicans — ultimately voted in closed session to send the DOJ a letter declining the request for unredacted voter information. Republican commissioner Bob Spindell appeared to be the only member in favor of cooperating with the federal government and said Wisconsin will likely face a lawsuit as a result of the commission’s choice.
The letter, signed by every commissioner except Spindell, says state law “explicitly prohibits” sending the unredacted voter list.
Officials in both Democratic and Republican states have pushed back on disclosing their voter rolls in response to these requests. On a podcast with conservative talk radio host Joe Pags, Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said these states were refusing to cooperate because they were embarrassed that their voter rolls were not sufficiently cleared of inactive or unlawful registrants.
Rather, many states, like Colorado, have said the federal government isn’t entitled to unredacted voter information that could put voters at risk. The DOJ, they say, has not provided sufficient explanation for how the data will be used.
In early December, after receiving a memorandum of understanding similar to the one sent to Wisconsin, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold told the DOJ to “take a hike,” adding that she “will not help Donald Trump undermine our elections.” The DOJ sued Griswold just over a week later.
All 50 states were asked to turn over their voting rolls, Dhillon said on the podcast: Four states have voluntarily cooperated, 12 are in negotiations, and 14 have been sued by the DOJ over their refusal.
Wisconsin election officials have repeatedly said that federal officials can obtain the publicly available, and therefore redacted, voter roll the same way anybody else can: by purchasing it online for $12,500.
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
Wisconsin clerks say two decisions on legislation this week — a new law expanding towns’ ability to hire clerks and a veto that blocks broader standing to sue election officials — will help ease mounting pressure on local election offices, which have faced record turnover and increasing legal threats.
The new law allows small towns to more easily hire clerks who live outside of municipal limits, a change clerks say is urgently needed as finding small-town clerks has become harder in recent years amid increased scrutiny, new laws and ever-evolving rules. As the new law moved through the Legislature, some small towns ran elections with no clerks at all.
“There are lots of townships that will benefit from this,” said Marathon County Clerk Kim Trueblood, a Republican. “It’s going to help tremendously.”
In the past, towns with fewer than 2,500 residents had to hold a referendum to authorize appointing clerks instead of electing them. That took time, and the election requirement restricted who could serve, since elected clerks — unlike appointed clerks — must live within municipal boundaries.
The new law allows towns to switch to appointing clerks after a vote at a town meeting.
It also eliminates another hurdle: In the past, even if a town approved the switch, it couldn’t take effect until the end of a term. The law lets towns make the change immediately if the clerk position is vacant or becomes vacant.
That could be critical: Between 2020 and 2024, more than 700 of Wisconsin’s municipal clerks left their posts, the highest churn in the nation, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center. Trueblood said this proposal won’t be a complete fix to the clerk shortage but will go a long way toward easing it by allowing municipalities to recruit more broadly.
Likely beneficiaries of the new law include the town of Wausau, whose longtime clerk retired late last year. Town supervisors then appointed a town resident, who quit after two weeks, forcing supervisors to collectively assume the clerk’s duties for the April election.
In that election, the town put forth a referendum to permanently switch to appointing clerks, but voters rejected it by a narrow margin — something that Town Supervisor Sharon Hunter said was a matter of people not understanding why the measure was critical. The town also elected a clerk, but that same clerk quit in September and the town is once again without a clerk.
“There’s just a lot of different responsibilities,” Hunter said. “And I don’t think people realize that it’s not like in the olden days.”
Hunter added that she’s “very excited” about the new law.
“Elections are coming,” she said, “so we really need to find someone very quickly.”
Veto maintains high bar to appealing complaints
Clerks also welcomed Evers’ Friday veto of a bill that would have made it easier to sue election officials by expanding who has standing to appeal Wisconsin Elections Commission decisions in court.
The Democratic governor’s veto preserves a Wisconsin Supreme Court decision issued earlier this year that limits who can appeal WEC decisions to those who “suffer an injury to a legally recognized interest.” Republicans wrote the bill to expand standing to any eligible voters who file a complaint, regardless of whether they suffered harm — a change clerks warned would overwhelm election offices and the courts.
In his veto message, Evers echoed clerks’ concerns, saying the proposal would “open the floodgates to frivolous lawsuits that not only burden our courts, but our election systems as well.”
But Republicans said that despite clerks’ objections, the veto will make it difficult or even impossible to hold election officials accountable for breaking the law.
State Sen. Van Wanggaard, the Republican who wrote the bill, said it could stop a variety of complaints from going to court.
“The little guy gets screwed again,” he said in a statement. “This veto makes WEC an unanswerable body whose judgment can never be questioned by anyone.”
In the past, many lawsuits against clerks and other election officials began as administrative complaints filed with WEC before being appealed to court. Filing a complaint with the agency is the legally required first step for most election-related challenges, unless they are brought by district attorneys or the attorney general.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court decision that prompted the bill halted a lawsuit that challenged the legality of a mobile voting van in Racine. The court did not settle the underlying issue, instead dismissing the case because the liberals who hold a majority on the court determined the plaintiff had no standing.
Given the veto, that situation could recur, with legal questions about elections being left open because cases seeking to resolve them are ultimately dismissed over standing.
At the federal level, the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year heard oral arguments in an Illinois case over the legal standard political candidates must meet to challenge state election laws. A decision is pending.
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
A November fundraising email paid for and sent by Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley’s Democratic campaign for governor included a message signed by “Team Taylor,” the campaign of Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor, who is running in the nonpartisan April race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
The note describes the power the next governor will have and how the court can be a “check” on the person in that office. It ends with an appeal: “Will you split a contribution of $10 between our campaign and David Crowley to help elect Judge Chris Taylor and protect a fair, independent Wisconsin Supreme Court?”
The fundraising message is one of potentially thousands of emails Wisconsinites may receive from campaigns seeking donations ahead of pivotal elections next year. But it also raises questions about why asks from nonpartisan campaigns can appear in a partisan candidate’s fundraising materials and whether a message, like the one from Crowley’s campaign featuring Taylor’s team, can seem like an endorsement.
Taylor has not, in fact, endorsed Crowley, who is running in a crowded Democratic primary field for governor next August. Crowley has endorsed Taylor, a liberal who is running against conservative Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar in the April election.
Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley speaks during the Wisconsin Democratic Convention at the Chula Vista Resort in Wisconsin Dells, Wis., on June 14, 2025. (Patricio Crooker for Wisconsin Watch)
Though the joint fundraising belies Wisconsin’s nonpartisan-in-name — though increasingly partisan-in-practice — Supreme Court elections, the communication doesn’t raise ethical or legal issues, experts told Wisconsin Watch. Additionally, a fundraising email like this is not unusual in the context of Wisconsin’s recent Supreme Court elections, said Howard Schweber, a professor emeritus of political science and legal studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
In fact, Wisconsin’s main political parties were the top donors to the campaigns of the liberal and conservative candidates in the record-breaking 2025 Supreme Court race, with Democrats giving $11.75 million to now-Justice Susan Crawford’s campaign and Republicans sending $9.76 million to the campaign of former Attorney General Brad Schimel.
“This is just yet another data point, number 115, demonstrating that these are, in fact, partisan campaigns run … at least in some cases, by candidates who present themselves as representatives of a party,” Schweber said.
Since its founding, Wisconsin has tried to keep judicial races nonpartisan. Justices are supposed to interpret the law and constitution like a referee, not side with one team or the other. But over the past 20 years, as hot-button political issues have come before the court and spending from political interest groups has reached astronomical heights, that tradition has eroded.
Taylor and Lazar are the likely candidates in the court race in April and are on completely opposite ends of the political spectrum. Taylor is a former Dane County judge who served as a Democrat in the state Assembly and was a policy director for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin. Lazar is a former Waukesha County judge who was an assistant attorney general under a Republican administration.
Wisconsin prohibits judges and judicial candidates from endorsing partisan political candidates or directly soliciting campaign donations. During the 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court race, the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign filed an ethics complaint against Schimel after reports that he joked about buying knee pads to ask for campaign donations.
The message sent by the Crowley campaign is a different scenario, as the text is signed by “Team Taylor,” not Taylor herself. Taylor has not endorsed any political candidates or directly solicited donations in her campaign for the Supreme Court, Sam Roecker, a spokesperson for Taylor’s campaign, told Wisconsin Watch.
Messages Taylor’s campaign sends to its list of email subscribers can be shared by other political campaigns with their own fundraising lists, such as in the case of the Crowley email.
“Other campaigns, regardless of party, who believe in electing a justice who will protect our fundamental rights and freedoms, are welcome to amplify our messages to their supporters,” said Roecker, the Taylor spokesperson.
It’s not clear whether other Democrats running for governor may have shared fundraising messages from the Taylor campaign. Only Rep. Francesca Hong, D-Madison, responded to questions from Wisconsin Watch with a simple “nope.”
Lazar’s campaign has not sent fundraising messages with candidates running for partisan offices, a spokesperson said.
Ahead of the 2025 court race, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany in a campaign email promoted Schimel’s candidacy. But the message was signed by Tiffany rather than anyone connected to Schimel’s campaign.
A spokesperson for Crowley’s campaign said Democrats believe it’s “critical” to elect Taylor to the high court — which was the reasoning behind the campaign message.
“The Crowley campaign sent a fundraising email to support her campaign and highlight the importance of this race, recognizing the natural overlap between the two candidates,” the spokesperson said.
Political activities during a Wisconsin Supreme Court campaign can resurface once a candidate is elected. Earlier this year, Crawford was criticized for attending a briefing with Democratic donors with a discussion on putting two of Wisconsin’s U.S. House seats “in play.”
In November the justice denied a request from Wisconsin’s Republican congressmen that she recuse herself from cases challenging the state’s congressional maps based on attending that meeting.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, a Milwaukee Democrat, announced Tuesday he’s running for governor in 2026.
Barnes served as lieutenant governor under Gov. Tony Evers from 2019 to 2023, the first African American to hold the position. He previously served in the state Assembly from 2013 to 2017.
Barnes’ entry into the race has long been anticipated, especially after a poll in early October showed him with the most support (16%) among a wide open field of Democratic contenders.
Wisconsin Watch has checked several claims related to Barnes during his unsuccessful 2022 campaign against Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson. Here’s what we found:
Defunding police: Barnes did not say that he supported defunding police, though in 2020 he backed reduced spending for Milwaukee police.
Gun rights: Barnes did say in a 2013 social media post he “could not care less about a 2nd Amendment ‘right.’ Bear arms all you wish, but you should pay for your mishandling.” In 2022, he said “we can respect the Second Amendment” while increasing “common-sense” gun control measures.
Immigration: Barnes did not say that he wanted to open U.S. borders. He backed a policy that “secures the border and also includes a path for citizenship.”
Abortion: Barnes did oppose the government legislating a limit on abortion, though a spokesperson at the time told Wisconsin Watch he didn’t support “abortion up until birth,” noting the standard before Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022 allowed limits on abortion after viability. He emphasized the abortion decision should be between a woman and her doctor.
Taxes: Barnes did not support raising taxes on the middle class, but rather backed middle-class tax cuts.
Criminal justice: As a state Assembly member in 2015, Barnes did vote against a law that expanded penalties for battery and threats against public officials.
Climate: Barnes did support the Green New Deal in 2021. During the 2022 campaign, he supported elements of the federal proposal to fight climate change while not referring to it by name.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Edith Butler is dealing with a real-world math problem: Her housing costs keep rising while a tax credit intended to help keeps shrinking.
The widow and retired nurse, 68, lives by herself in a two-bedroom Eau Claire home. She paid $9,000 in rent over the course of last year, eating up more than 60% of her Social Security paycheck — her primary source of income. Her utility costs are also expected to hike next year.
She received $708 last year from claiming a homestead tax credit, which is meant to help lower-income homeowners and renters recoup some property tax costs. That was down from the $900 credit she received five years ago after paying just $6,600 in rent.
In the past, the homestead credit has paid to fill her propane tank for about three months during winter and offset some other costs. But it’s dwindling each year because the state rarely updates eligibility guidelines and credit calculations for inflation. Butler’s credit shrinks whenever the federal government increases her Social Security payment to account for the rising costs of living.
She’s not alone. Statewide homestead credit claims dropped from an average of $523 per recipient in 2013 to $486 in 2025, with thousands fewer claimants as fewer people remained eligible.
“These things have never adjusted. But we’ve paid into these programs all our lives. I paid taxes for 50 years, (and) my Social Security is my benefit that I paid in,” Butler said. “You work hard and you pay into programs, and then when you need them in your older years like this, they’re not there for you.”
The Legislature has not substantially updated the homestead credit for 25 years, causing its value to erode. Recent Democratic proposals to update program guidelines have failed to gain Republican support.
A tax credit’s history
An AP story on the homestead tax credit as published in The Sheboygan Press, Jan. 20, 1966.
By the 1960s, many in Wisconsin acknowledged the regressive nature of property taxes — that lower-income residents pay higher shares of their income than richer households do, John Stark, then-Assistant Chief Counsel in the Legislative Reference Bureau, wrote in a 1991 history of property tax relief in Wisconsin. But the state Constitution’s “uniformity clause” restricted what type of tax relief lawmakers can enact.
Against that backdrop, a State Commission on Aging in 1962 held hearings around the state in which older adults expressed concerns about health care and property taxes. The Legislature responded in 1963 with the homestead credit. Residents 65 and older could claim up to $225 (the equivalent of $2,380 today), with the precise calculation based on income, property taxes paid through ownership or rent.
The Legislature expanded eligibility over the years, notably in 1973, when it lowered the age minimum to 18. That dramatically boosted total claimants and payouts. By 1988, more than 250,000 people received a collective $100 million (roughly $270 million today) in credits.
The trend has since reversed.
Fewer than 67,000 residents claimed a collective $32.6 million in credits last year — a precipitous plunge, Department of Revenue data show.
The program’s income cap today — $24,680 — has barely budged since 2000. The nearly identical cap of $24,500 in 2000 is the equivalent of $45,812 today when adjusted for inflation.
Meanwhile, the program’s “phaseout income” of $8,060, under which homeowners or renters can recoup the maximum 80% of property taxes paid, has increased by only $60 since the 1989 tax year.
Today’s maximum credit a household can claim ($1,168) is just $8 higher than the 1990 level.
Diane Hanson, Butler’s tax agent, said her clients are receiving smaller credits each year or becoming ineligible as inflation pushes wages or Social Security payments above the static income limit.
Still, Hanson suspects many who remain eligible don’t realize it.
The homestead credit helped Hanson through her most challenging times. After learning about it at her local library, she claimed the credit for several years while raising her two children during a divorce, one of them with disabilities.
After becoming a tax agent in 2019, she began to educate clients facing similar circumstances. They include Renata Braatz, who raises her 12-year-old son and spends about 30% of her monthly income on rent through the Section 8 voucher program. She claimed about $600 through the homestead program last year. She spent it on groceries and other expenses for her son.
“I never knew about it. I lived here for six years, and I just started doing it two years ago,” Braatz said.
But asking questions paid off.
“Renata was proactive, reaching out, phoning us, and asking if there could be any credits for her. I think that is more than some folks know to do,” Hanson said. “Before I was a tax professional, I myself didn’t know how much the federal earned income credit can help out parents.”
Democrats call for credit’s expansion
Senate and Assembly Democrats earlier this year introduced identical bills to expand the homestead credit — allowing households earning up to $35,000 to claim it and indexing the maximum annual income, phaseout income and maximum credit to inflation. The proposal would have reduced state revenue by an estimated $36.7 million, $43 million and $48.8 million over the next three fiscal years.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers also proposed a homestead credit expansion in his last two-year budget.
Neither proposal advanced in the Republican-controlled Legislature.
Sen. Mark Spreitzer, D-Beloit, authored the Senate version of the bill with colleagues. His district borders Illinois, which offers a range of more generous homestead tax incentives. Several constituents who previously lived in Illinois asked him why Wisconsin doesn’t offer what Illinois does, inspiring the legislation.
The Wisconsin Constitution’s uniformity clause prohibits lawmakers from enacting Illinois-like tax exemptions for older adults or other low-income residents, Spreitzer said, but the credit offers a legal work-around.
“There’s not really another credit that takes the place of this,” he said. “That’s why the homestead credit is so important.”
Spreitzer said he plans to reintroduce an expansion bill, and he encourages residents to share their perspectives with their representatives.
“If we want to do something about affordability, this is a very direct thing we can do,” Spreitzer said. “We’re not creating a new credit here. This already exists. We’re just talking about increasing who qualifies and how much money they would get back, and that’s money that they would directly be able to get back on their taxes and then spend to put food on the plate for their families.”
Hanson sees a path for bipartisan support for an update.
“The alternative is to see it dwindle,” Hanson said. “It hurts the segment of people that actually need it, the people who just don’t get much help anywhere. They’re still working hard to be independent.”
Learn more about the homestead credit
Visit the Department of Revenue’s website to learn more about eligibility for the credit.
You can claim it by filing online or through mail within 4 years and 3 ½ months after the fiscal taxable year to which the claim relates. That means you can still file for a 2021 credit before April 15, 2026.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
In the Wisconsin Senate’s last floor session of 2025, lawmakers debated and voted on bills that appear destined for Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ veto pen.
One of the bills, which passed the Republican-led Assembly in September and is on its way to Evers’ desk, would prohibit public funds from being used to provide health care to undocumented immigrants. Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, the bill’s Senate author, argued it would protect Wisconsin taxpayers, citing Democratic states like Illinois where enrollment and costs of a health care program for noncitizens far exceeded initial estimates.
But several Senate Democrats lambasted the proposal as a “heartless” attempt by GOP lawmakers to gain political points with their base with 2026 elections around the corner. Sen. Tim Carpenter, D-Milwaukee, hinted at its likely future in the governor’s office.
“It’s going to be vetoed,” Carpenter said.
Plenty of bills in the nearly eight years of Wisconsin’s split government have passed through the Republican-controlled Assembly and Senate before receiving a veto from the governor. Evers vetoed a record 126 bills during the 2021-22 legislative session ahead of his reelection campaign and 72 bills during the 2023-24 session. The governor has vetoed 15 bills so far in 2025, not including partial vetoes in the state budget, according to a Wisconsin Watch review of veto messages. The number is certain to rise, though whether it will approach the record is far from clear.
A few Senate Democrats seeking higher office in 2026 said some recent legislation that is unlikely to make it past Evers, from a repeal of the creative veto that raises school revenue limits for the next 400 years to a bill exempting certain procedures from the definition of abortion, looks like political messaging opportunities to ding Democrats. They anticipate more of those proposals to come up next year.
“For the last eight years we’ve had divided government, but we’ve had a heavily gerrymandered Legislature,” said Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, who is among at least seven candidates running for governor in 2026 and voted against those bills on the floor. “For Republicans in the Legislature, there has been no cost and everything to gain from pursuing the most radical and extreme proposals in their party.”
Evers is not seeking a third term as governor in 2026 and is entering the final year of his current term, which no longer makes him vulnerable to political fallout from vetoing bills. But legislative Democrats, particularly in the Senate where the party hopes to win the majority in 2026, can be forced into difficult decisions in their chambers where Republicans control which bills get votes on the Senate and Assembly floors.
“It was all this political gamesmanship of trying to get points towards their own base and/or put me or others, not just me, into a position to have to make that tough vote,” said Sen. Jeff Smith, D-Brunswick, of the bill banning public dollars spent on health care for undocumented immigrants. Smith, who is seeking reelection in his western Wisconsin district next year, holds the main Senate seat Republicans are targeting in 2026. He voted against the bill.
Smith said the immigration bill saw “a lot of discussion” in the Senate Democratic Caucus ahead of the floor session on Nov. 18, particularly on where Smith would vote given the attention on his seat. The bill passed the chamber on a vote of 21-12 with Democratic support from Sen. Sarah Keyeski, D-Lodi; Sen. Brad Pfaff, D-Onalaska; and Sen. Jamie Wall, D-Green Bay, who are not up for reelection next year but represent more conservative parts of the state.
“Many people thought the easy vote would be to just vote with the Republicans because it’s not going to be signed,” Smith said. “But I’ve still got to go back and explain it to my voters.”
A spokesperson for Majority Leader Sen. Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, did not respond to questions from Wisconsin Watch about how Senate Republicans consider what bills advance to the Senate floor. Neither did a spokesperson for Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester.
In a social media post after the Senate session, Senate President Mary Felzkowski, R-Tomahawk, listed “all the things WI Senate Democrats voted against,” which included “prohibiting illegal aliens from getting taxpayer-funded healthcare.”
Scott Kelly, Wanggaard’s chief of staff, said a potential veto or putting Democrats on the record on certain issues largely doesn’t influence the legislation their office pursues.
“Our job is to pass bills that we think are good ideas that should be law,” Kelly said. “Whether other people support or veto them is not my issue. The fact that Democrats think this is a political ‘gotcha,’ well, that just shows they know it’s an idea that the public supports.”
Not all of the bills on the Senate floor on Nov. 18 seemed aimed at election messaging. The chamber unanimously approved a bill to extend tax credits for businesses that hire a third party to build workforce housing or establish a child care program. In October, senators voted 32-1 to pass a bipartisan bill requiring insurance companies to cover cancer screenings for women with dense breast tissue who are at an increased risk of breast cancer. The Republican-authored bill has yet to move in the Assembly despite bipartisan support from lawmakers there as well.
Assembly Democrats last week criticized Vos and Assembly Majority Leader Rep. Tyler August, R-Walworth, for blocking a vote on Senate Bill 23, a bipartisan bill to expand postpartum Medicaid coverage to new Wisconsin moms. Assembly Minority Leader Rep. Greta Neubauer, D-Racine, in a press conference at the Capitol called the move “pathetic.”
But health care is a top issue for Democratic voters and less so for Republicans, according to the Marquette University Law School Poll conducted in October. Illegal immigration and border security are the top issue for Republican voters in Wisconsin. About 75% of GOP voters said they were “very concerned” about the issue heading into 2026, though only 16% of Democrats and 31% of immigrants said the same.
Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center and political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said political messaging votes can have impacts on elections, especially in what will be some of the close Senate races in 2026.
“It’s kind of a messaging opportunity, not really a policymaking opportunity. It’s also maybe a way for Republicans to let off some steam,” Burden said. “They have divisions within their own caucuses. They have disagreements between the Republicans in the Assembly, Republicans in the Senate. They can never seem to get on the same page with a lot of these things, and there are often a few members who are holding up bills. So, when they can find agreement and push something through in both chambers and get near unanimous support from their caucuses, that’s a victory in itself and maybe helps build some morale or solidarity within the party.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
A Republican proposal to require every Wisconsin municipality to offer early-voting hours has divided groups representing voters and election officials, with voters calling the proposal a net gain for voting access and some clerks calling the requirements onerous, especially for small municipalities.
The bill originally required every municipality to offer at least 20 hours of in-person early voting at the clerk’s office or an alternate site. It was amended Tuesday, based on clerk feedback, to allow for fewer required hours in some smaller municipalities.
Municipalities that can’t hold their own early-voting hours would be able to offer it in a neighboring municipality or the county clerk’s office under the bill. A separate measure would provide $1.5 million to municipalities extending their early-voting hours — lowered from an originally proposed $10 million — but that would be available only for the 2025-26 fiscal year, while the early-voting requirements appear to be indefinite. The proposal would apply to the April and November elections.
Sen. Rachael Cabral-Guevara, a Republican, previously told Votebeat she wrote the bill after noticing the stark difference in early-voting availability between rural and urban municipalities. Cities such as Milwaukee and Madison offer multiple days for early voting, while some rural municipalities offer just a couple of hours, or do it by appointment only.
Cabral-Guevara didn’t directly answer a follow-up question from Votebeat on Tuesday about whether the Senate would fund the measure, but said she’s hoping it passes. Rep. Scott Krug, a Republican who wrote the bill with her, told Votebeat he hopes the Senate will pass the measure since he lowered the amount of proposed funding.
“It’s only going to create more opportunities for voting,” said Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin. “That for us is always the key. It should be funded for more than one year.”
The amended bill would set the minimum early-voting period at 10 hours in municipalities with fewer than 600 voters,15 hours in municipalities with between 600 and 799 voters and 20 hours in towns with 800 or more voters.
But some clerks said any hourly requirement would be too burdensome — and could have the unintended consequence of decreasing voter access. Because Wisconsin’s elections are run at the municipal level, a small number of clerks serving only a few dozen voters would still be required to adhere to the minimum hours.
Omro Town Clerk Dana Woods called this “too drastic of a measure” and said the requirements may lead to “honorable public servants” choosing to leave their jobs.
Most Wisconsin clerks work part time, with some scheduled only a few hours per week. Woods, for example, is scheduled to be in her office just seven hours per week and serves 1,800 registered voters.
Lisa Tollefson, the Rock County clerk, acknowledged that the proposal could increase voting across the state but said it still doesn’t make sense in the smallest municipalities, where voters typically choose to vote on Election Day.
Joe Ruth, government affairs director at the Wisconsin Towns Association, said at a public hearing for the proposal that clerks would likely stop offering early voting by appointment if they have to fulfill the proposed hourly requirement. And if they do so, he added, the voters who can’t come during the set hours would lose their opportunity to vote early in person.
Ruth didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about whether the amendment alleviated his concerns.
In an Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections executive session, the five Republicans on the committee voted in favor and the two Democrats voted against it. It is scheduled for an Assembly floor vote on Wednesday.
Republican Rep. Dave Maxey, who chairs the Assembly elections committee, called the bill a great idea and questioned why people would vote against a funded mandate that would expand voting. He said there would be a mechanism to fund early voting in future years through the budget.
Rep. Lee Snodgrass, a Democrat, told Votebeat that she voted against the bill because it allows a county board to decide whether a municipality can hold early-voting hours at the county clerk’s office. She said county boards shouldn’t have oversight over elections. The latest tweak to the bill now requires consent from both the county board and clerk.
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
Two of the biggest political issues of the year are immigration and health care.
In the latest Marquette Law School Poll, 75% of Republicans said they were very concerned about illegal immigration and border security while 83% of Democrats said they were very concerned about health insurance. Those were the top issues among those groups. (Among independents, 79% said they were very concerned about inflation and the cost of living, making it their top issue.)
Here’s a look at some recent fact checks of claims related to health care and immigration.
Health care
No, Obamacare premiums aren’t doubling for 20 million Americans in 2026, but 2 to 3 million Americans would lose all enhanced subsidies and about half of them could see their premium payments double or triple.
Yes, Obamacare premiums increased three times the rate of inflation since the program started in 2014. They’re making headlines now for going up even more.
No, 6 million people have not received Obamacare health insurance without knowing it. There wasn’t evidence to back a claim by U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., about the level of fraud in the program.
No, Wisconsin does not have a law on minors getting birth control without parental consent. But residents under age 18 can get birth control on their own.
Immigration
Yes, unauthorized immigrants have constitutional rights that apply to all people in the U.S. That includes a right to due process, to defend oneself in a hearing, such as in court, though not other rights, such as voting.
No, standard driver’s licenses do not prove U.S. citizenship. There’s a court battle in Wisconsin over whether voters must prove citizenship to cast a ballot.
Yes, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is offering police departments $100,000 to cooperate in finding unauthorized immigrants. It’s for vehicle purchases.
No, tens of millions of unauthorized immigrants do not receive federal health benefits.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Wisconsin municipalities and school districts, which rely on taxpayer dollars to fund their services, are running into rising frustration from the residents who pay those costs.
The frustration comes as more local governments are turning to wheel taxes to fund transportation-related services as costs of construction materials rise and local leaders say the Legislature over the years has constrained ways municipalities can raise additional revenues. Nearly half of Wisconsin residents are paying a wheel tax in 2025, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum.
The number of Wisconsin school districts turning to taxpayers to support referendums has also grown in recent years with the state seeing more than 200 ballot questions in 2024, 148 of which were operating referendums. Ninety-four districts sought referendums in elections this year, the most in an odd-numbered election year since 2007, the Policy Forum noted earlier this year.
But Wisconsin taxpayers’ support for funding revenue needs of local governments and school districts appears to be waning as residents grapple with their own rising costs from energy bills to health care payments.
The Marquette University Law School Poll conducted in October showed 56% of voters found lowering property taxes to be more important than funding public education, a number that has gradually grown in the last two years. Between 2015 and 2022 more voters supported funding public schools over lowering property taxes. Additionally, 57% of Wisconsin voters in October said they would be more likely to vote against a school referendum when, just four months earlier, 52% of voters said they would support one.
The public discontent with government taxes and fees aligns with a longtime Republican strategy to reduce the size and reach of government. Similar frustration with the role of government in the wake of the Great Recession swept Republicans into power in Wisconsin in 2010, and they’ve kept control of the Legislature since then.
Heading into the next cycle, Republican lawmakers are promoting bills that seek to limit when taxpayers can be asked for more funding.
One bill from Sen. Rob Hutton, R-Brookfield, would require referendums for local governments that want to establish a wheel tax and mandate the municipalities and counties with existing wheel taxes to go to referendum to keep their fees in place. Hutton, who is up for reelection in 2026, holds perhaps the most vulnerable of three Republican Senate seats that Democrats are targeting in elections next year.
A resident brought the idea for the wheel tax bill to Hutton’s office as New Berlin and Elm Grove considered implementing their own vehicle registration fees earlier this year, his chief of staff said in an email to Wisconsin Watch. The New Berlin Common Council officially rejected the option to pursue a wheel tax in July.
“Some may argue that these are not make or break amounts of money, and that certainly may be the case,” Hutton said during an October hearing on the Assembly companion to his bill. “But every cost adds up to many citizens in these communities, especially those families who are living paycheck to paycheck.”
Hutton’s bill is scheduled for a public hearing Wednesday, just a week after the Eau Claire City Council voted to raise the city’s wheel tax from $24 to $50. Eau Claire residents will pay $80 between city and county fees with the new increase, which is currently higher than Milwaukee where city residents pay $60 in wheel taxes split between the city and county.
The vehicle registration fee increase will give the city of Eau Claire an additional $1.2 million, which the city’s finance director told councilors was necessary for a balanced budget without making other cuts.
“If we didn’t have the wheel tax available, we would have to make very significant cuts,” Stephanie Hirsch, Eau Claire’s city manager, told Wisconsin Watch. “We can’t really touch our public safety departments because of state laws that require us to maintain spending and service maintenance of effort laws, so it would be coming from those public works functions or the other nonmandated services that we provide like operating a very popular outdoor pool or maintaining parks.”
But Eau Claire residents opposed to the proposal said it was wrong to approve a wheel tax increase as costs are rising for food, health care, energy and more.
“Another fee increase, especially on something as basic as the ability to drive to work, drive to school or appointments, should be completely off the table right now,” said Elizabeth Willier, who told the council she organized resident petitions against doubling the wheel tax through conservative group Americans for Prosperity Wisconsin.
Growing tax frustration
Citizen anger against government taxes isn’t new. But it seems that taxpayers in Wisconsin have especially become more engaged in government in the years since the coronavirus pandemic, said Paul Rozeski, the director of government and member relations with Wisconsin Property Taxpayers, Inc.
More people want answers about where their money is going, he said.
“We have a lot of small business members, and for them, it’s death by 1,000 paper cuts,” Rozeski said. “Clearly, more and more taxpayers are feeling the same way.”
That public sentiment on referendums increased as 71% of Wisconsin’s school districts learned in October they will receive less general aid for the 2025-26 school year than they did the prior year. State general education aid funding was kept flat in the biennial budget earlier this year.
It could lead districts to make budget cuts, raise property taxes or even turn to voters with referendums to make up those funding gaps.
“I think that’s not going to slow down,” Sen. Jeff Smith, D-Brunswick, said last month of school district referendums. “I think we’re going to see even more, sadly.”
Under current law Wisconsin school districts will receive a $325 per pupil increase each year in how much revenues they can raise from a combination of state aid and property taxes for the next 400 years due to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ creative veto in 2023.
It’s not clear yet how many school districts might seek referendums in 2026. State law gives districts up to 70 days before an election to adopt a resolution for a referendum, a spokesperson said.
Solutions at the Capitol?
Republican legislative proposals at the Capitol have sought more transparency from school districts that seek additional dollars from taxpayers or more participation from local governments that seek revenues through wheel taxes. Additionally, the Assembly Committee on Education signed off on a series of bills looking to encourage school district consolidation across the state.
Public hearings were held earlier this session on companion bills that would prohibit recurring operating referendums and limit ballot questions from applying to more than four years. Hutton and Rep. Amanda Nedweski, R-Pleasant Prairie, also brought forward a proposal to bar school districts from pursuing referendums if they are not in compliance with Department of Public Instruction financial reporting requirements.
Nedweski during a public hearing in October cited Milwaukee Public Schools as a reason for the bill. Voters passed a $252 million MPS referendum in 2024, but the district had failed to file 2023 state financial reports on time, which led DPI to withhold state funding.
The likelihood of the Republican proposals receiving Evers’ signature is slim. While Hutton’s Senate bill on wheel tax referendums will receive a public hearing, it’s not clear what appetite other lawmakers will have for the proposal.
The Assembly Committee on Local Government held a public hearing on the Assembly version of Hutton’s bill in late October, but chair Rep. Todd Novak, R-Dodgeville, told Hutton and Rep. Dave Maxey, R-New Berlin, that he opposed the proposal.
“If they don’t like a wheel tax, they can replace the board,” Novak said.
Hirsch in Eau Claire understands that the increased wheel tax may be a hardship for residents with the combination of city and county fees. But requiring a referendum would take away options the city needs, she said.
“What we really wish would happen is that the state government would give us more local control and more tools,” Hirsch said. “For example, what we wish for most is a local option sales tax. We really don’t like putting all of the weight on property taxes, and we don’t want to charge people the wheel tax. We wish there were other tools in the tool kit.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
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