Voters Nov. 5 amended the Wisconsin Constitution to limit voting to citizens. Republican supporters said it would prevent any move allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections, as some U.S. jurisdictions allow.
Over 9% of voting-age U.S. citizens (21.3 million people) cannot readily access proof of citizenship, because they do not have it or could not access it easily, a University of Maryland survey released in June said.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Wisconsin voters line up outside of a Milwaukee polling place on Nov. 5, 2024. Wisconsin U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde is one of the Republican politicians who sowed doubt about the integrity of this year’s election. (Andy Manis | Getty Images)
President-elect Donald Trump may have quieted his lies about widespread voter fraud after his win earlier this month, but the impact of his effort to cast doubt on the integrity of American elections lingers on.
Although this post-election period has been markedly calmer than the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, there were isolated flare-ups of Republican candidates borrowing a page from Trump’s playbook to claim that unsatisfactory election results were illegitimate.
In Wisconsin, Republican U.S. Senate challenger Eric Hovde spread unsubstantiated rumors about “last-minute” absentee ballots in Milwaukee that he said flipped the outcome of the race. Though he conceded to incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin nearly two weeks after the election, his rhetoric helped stoke a spike in online conspiracy theories. The Milwaukee Election Commission disputed his claims, saying they “lack any merit.”
In North Carolina, Republican state Senate leader Phil Berger told reporters last week he feared that the vote-counting process for a state Supreme Court seat was rigged for Democrats. Karen Brinson Bell, the head of the State Board of Elections, skewered Berger for his comments, saying they could inspire violence.
And in Arizona, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake, who has spent two years disputing her defeat in the 2022 governor’s race, hasn’t acknowledged her Senate loss. While she thanked her supporters in a video posted to X, the platform formerly called Twitter, she stopped short of conceding to Democratic U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego.
Republicans’ disinformation campaigns have caused Americans’ confidence in elections to plummet and exposed local election officials to threats and harassment, and some observers worry about a return of the GOP’s destructive rhetoric the next time they lose.
“We have to turn this rhetoric down,” said Jay Young, senior director of voting and democracy for Common Cause, a voting rights group. “There cannot be this continued attack on this institution.”
Still, many politicians who either denied the 2020 election results or criticized their local voting processes won election. In Arizona, for example, voters chose state Rep. Justin Heap, a Republican, to lead the election office in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix and the largest jurisdiction in the critical swing state. Heap ran on a “voter confidence” platform and suggested at a Trump rally that Maricopa’s election office is a “national laughingstock.”
Trump tapped former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to oversee the U.S. Department of Justice. Bondi, a Republican, served as an attorney for Trump while he disputed the results in 2020. She could use her position as U.S. attorney general to prosecute election officials involved in that election, as Trump promised in an X post in September.
While the rhetoric around stolen elections has been somewhat muted among the GOP ranks since Trump’s victory, conservatives attempted to flip the “election denial” script on Democrats in at least one race.
We have to turn this rhetoric down.
– Jay Young, Common Cause's senior director of voting and democracy
In Pennsylvania, Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Casey refused to concede defeat until last Thursday, two weeks after The Associated Press called the race for Republican challenger David McCormick. Casey lost by fewer than 16,000 votes, less than half a percentage point.
Casey said he wanted to see the results of an automatic recount and various court cases filed on his behalf, but Republicans jumped on his refusal to bow out quickly.
Last week, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who resisted pressure from Trump in 2020 to “find” votes after he lost the state, lambasted Casey for not conceding the Senate race.
“Election denialism needs to end, now,” Raffensperger wrote in a statement. “We are a country of laws and principles, not of men and personalities. Do your job! Follow the law. Accept election results or lose your country.”
Even as Republicans mostly toned down their rhetoric this year, some left-wing social media accounts repeated a debunked conspiracy theory that Starlink, the internet provider owned by billionaire and Trump supporter Elon Musk, changed vote counts.
Those posts, however, aren’t comparable to GOP election denialism, according to the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, which fights strategic misinformation.
“While the claims are similar, the rumoring dynamics on the left are markedly different due to the lack of endorsement or amplification by left-leaning influencers, candidates, or party elites,” the center posted last week.
Young, of Common Cause, said it’s clear that election disinformation of any kind has a devastating impact on the local officials tasked with administering the vote.
Threats to election workers continued even after Election Day. Bomb threats were called into election offices in California, Minnesota, Oregon and other states, forcing evacuations as workers were tallying ballots.
But this was just a slice of the onslaught many officials faced over the past four years. Local election officials need the resources to beef up the way they fight disinformation and physical attacks, Young said.
“We should be doing better by them,” he said.
Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and X.
Voters mark their ballots on Nov. 5, 2024 in Tryon, North Carolina. (Photo by Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Despite more Latino men shifting more Republican, a majority continued to vote Democratic in 2024, new polling released Tuesday reveals.
The findings from the 2024 American Electorate Voter Poll came a week after the historic presidential race in which Donald Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris to win his second White House term. Both heavily targeted Latino voters throughout their campaigns.
“The national exit polls are wrong about Latinos in general and Latino men in particular,” said Matt Barreto, co-founder of Barreto-Segura Partners Research, during a Tuesday media briefing on the poll’s findings.
Among voters in the poll, 56% of Latino men said they voted for Harris, compared to 43% who selected Trump.
Roughly two-thirds of Latino women voters voted for Harris, while about one-third chose Trump.
Some exit polls, in contrast, emphasized the movement of Latino voters toward Trump.
Data scientists and polling experts at Barreto-Segura Partners Research, the African American Research Collaborative and Harvard University conducted the survey, which several national organizations sponsored.
Battleground states
Between Oct. 18 and Nov. 4, the survey targeted more than 9,000 Latino, Black, Native American, Asian American and white voters in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The survey also provided additional data for California, Florida and Texas, given the large share of minority voters in those three states.
“We’re extremely confident that our sample is accurate, that it is an accurate portrait of Latino men and Latino women, and that it is balanced to match their demographics, and that it was available in Spanish at every stopping of the survey,” added Barreto, who was a pollster and adviser to the Harris campaign.
“Young voters in particular of every racial and ethnic group shifted to be more Republican as compared to 2020 — this was not driven by any individual particular racial group, but all young voters shifted compared to 2020,” he added.
A shift of all groups towards the GOP
Henry Fernandez, CEO of the African American Research Collaborative, said “this election was not about one group moving towards the Republican Party, but instead a shift of virtually every group towards the GOP by relatively small but consistent margins, largely due to concerns about the cost of living.”
“While voters of color voted majority for Harris and white voters, majority for Trump, this shift towards the GOP occurred across almost all groups, even those like younger voters that the Democratic Party has relied on for its future success,” Fernandez said.
He added that “this weakening of support for Democrats occurred even as key issues championed by Democrats did extremely well, both in ballot initiatives across the country and in our poll.”
Among all Latino voters, more than 6 in 10 said they voted for Harris, compared to a little over one-third who chose Trump.
Meanwhile, more than half of all Latino voters felt that Democrats would do a better job at addressing the issue most important to them, compared to about one-third who felt Republicans would.
Inflation, health care cited
Across all racial and ethnic groups of voters surveyed, inflation, health care costs and jobs and the economy proved to be the most important issues.
Abortion and reproductive rights also proved to be an important issue for voters across all groups, followed by housing costs and affordability and immigration reform for immigrants already in the United States.
Roughly three quarters of voters across racial and ethnic groups were in support of a federal law that would “guarantee access to abortion and give women control over their own private medical decisions.”
The majority of Black, Latino, Native American and Asian American voters also expressed worry about Project 2025 — a sweeping conservative agenda from the Heritage Foundation.
Trump has sought to distance himself from the platform, though some former members of his administration helped write it.
Michael Gableman in Dane County Circuit Court on Thursday, June 23 | Screenshot via Wisconsin Eye
The Wisconsin Office of Lawyer Regulation (OLR) filed a disciplinary complaint against former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman on Tuesday. In 10 counts, the complaint alleges Gableman violated numerous provisions of the Wisconsin Rules of Professional Conduct for Attorneys during and after his much-maligned investigation of the 2020 election.
Among the allegations, Gableman is accused of failing to “provide competent representation” and to “abstain from all offensive personality” and of violating attorney-client privilege.
The OLR investigation into Gableman was initiated after a grievance was filed by voting rights focused firm Law Forward. In a statement, Law Forward president Jeff Mandell said the organization would continue to hold people accountable for undermining faith in the state’s election system.
“Gableman misused taxpayer funds, promoted baseless conspiracy theories, and engaged in improper intimidation tactics; his efforts undermined the integrity of our electoral system,” Mandell said. “Law Forward is committed to ensuring accountability for those who undermine the public’s trust in our elections, and we will continue to pursue legal action to hold others who impugn elections responsible for their actions, ensuring that they face consequences for any misconduct that threatens the freedom to vote. Our work is far from finished, and we are dedicated to securing a future where elections remain fair, transparent, and free from interference.”
The first two counts against Gableman involve statements and actions he took after filing subpoenas against the mayors and city clerks of the cities of Green Bay and Madison. The complaint alleges that Gableman mischaracterized discussions he had with the lawyers for both cities, communicated with Green Bay’s city attorney when the city had obtained outside counsel in the matter, lied to Green Bay city officials about the work of his investigation and mischaracterized those actions when he filed a petition with a Waukesha County Circuit Court attempting to have the mayors of both cities arrested for not complying with his subpoenas.
The third count alleges that Gableman made false statements in his testimony to the Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections when he accused officials at the Wisconsin Elections Commission, as well as the mayors of Green Bay and Madison, of “hiring high-priced lawyers” to conduct an “organized cover-up.”
“Gableman did not characterize his assertions as opinions,” the complaint states. “He presented them as objective, proven facts. His assertions were public accusations of improper, possibly unlawful activity by Mayors Rhodes-Conway and Genrich. Gableman had no tangible, verifiable, objective, persuasive evidence to support his assertions. Gableman’s accusations caused serious reputational damage to the public officials involved. He publicly sought to jail the mayors of Madison and Green Bay, despite all they and their attorneys had done to comply with Gableman’s subpoenas.”
The fourth through seventh counts against Gableman involve actions and statements he made during open records litigation involving his investigation by the public interest organization American Oversight.
Those counts allege that Gableman’s statements while on the witness stand, in open court during a recess and to the news media after a hearing about his investigation’s failure to provide records constituted demeaning statements about a judge and opposing counsel and displayed a “lack of competence” in following the state’s open records and records retention laws by destroying records and failing to comply with American Oversight’s records requests.
Count eight alleges that Gableman used his contract with the Wisconsin Assembly and Speaker Robin Vos to pursue his own interests, including by stating multiple times he had to “pressure” Vos into continuing the investigation that dragged on for months after it was supposed to end.
The complaint states that Gableman was paid a total of $117,395.95 during the investigation and the Assembly paid $2,344,808.94 for the investigation, including $1,816,932.26 for hiring outside counsel in multiple instances of litigation initiated during the review.
“Before signing the contract, Gableman did not tell Vos that he did not agree with the objectives Vos had outlined, the time frame for submitting the final report, or the compensation to be paid to him,” the complaint states. “Gableman also did not tell Vos that he intended to enlist public support to pressure Vos to change the objectives of the investigation, increase the budget, or expand the time frame.”
The ninth count in the complaint alleges that by supporting a failed effort to recall Vos, and making various public statements at rallies and in the media about his discussions with Vos and Vos’ staff, Gableman violated his duty of confidentiality with his client, the Assembly.
The final count alleges that Gableman lied in an affidavit to the OLR submitted during its investigation into his conduct. Gableman stated in the affidavit that at no time during his investigation was he “engaged in the practice of law.” However the complaint includes excerpts from a number of the agreements he signed with the Assembly that served as contracts for “legal services,” lists the instances during the investigation in which he gave legal advice to the Assembly and the times he made court filings as an attorney during the investigation.
The complaint states that he made “multiple demonstrably false statements” in the affidavit in which he was attempting to show he had not violated the state code of conduct, itself a violation of the code.
OLR complaints are heard by the state Supreme Court. The office said it doesn’t comment on pending litigation.
The seven members of the Wisconsin Supreme Court hear oral arguments. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
The Wisconsin Supreme Court heard oral arguments Monday morning in a lawsuit over Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) Administrator Meagan Wolfe’s ability to remain in her post.
Several times during the arguments, justices and attorneys described the situation as “absurd” and “bizarre” as the Court is being asked to deal with the ramifications of a divided state government that has frequently deadlocked over executive appointments to boards and commissions and the Republican-held Senate’s confirmation of those appointees.
Two years ago, the Court, at the time controlled by a conservative majority, ruled that Frederick Prehn, a Republican appointee to the state’s Natural Resources Board, did not have to leave his post at the end of his term — even though Democratic Gov. Tony Evers had nominated his replacement.
The Court found that until the Senate — whose GOP leaders were collaborating with Prehn to remain in the seat in an effort to influence policy decisions over wolf hunting and water quality — confirmed his replacement, state law allowed Prehn to remain on the board as a holdover.
In the summer of 2023, Wolfe’s initial four-year term as WEC administrator expired and Senate Republicans, influenced by the three previous years of constant Republican attacks on the state’s election administration, said they would not confirm her to a second term.
The three Democrats on the commission, in an effort to shield Wolfe from the Senate, abstained from a vote to reappoint her while the three Republicans on the commission voted to nominate her again. State law requires a majority of the six member body to vote in favor of an administrator’s nomination, however, meaning the nomination wasn’t officially advanced to the Senate for a vote.
But the Senate acted anyway, voting against Wolfe’s appointment. Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul immediately filed a lawsuit arguing that under the precedent Republicans set in the Prehn decision, Wolfe is able to remain in her position as a holdover.
In September 2023, the GOP-controlled Wisconsin state senate voted to oust Meagan Wolfe as the head of the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Wolfe was the target of false conspiracy theories about illegal voting during the 2020 election, but she has refused to step down. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
At the circuit court level, Republicans admitted that the Senate vote to remove Wolfe was “symbolic.” But after a Dane County judge ruled in Wolfe’s favor, the GOP leaders appealed the decision to the Supreme Court.
While neither side in the Wolfe case argued for overturning the Prehn precedent, the arguments put Republicans in the position of arguing against principles they had themselves fought for in the earlier case — only this time in front of a Court held by a liberal majority.
Misha Tseytlin, the attorney for the Senate, argued that the statute that guides the commission’s authority to appoint an administrator creates “an affirmative duty,” and that the commission must nominate a new administrator when the four year term expires. He said that if the law doesn’t require WEC to act, unelected officials can shield the administrator from the elected Senate indefinitely.
“Whatever level of absurdity one wants to put on the Prehn situation, whether it’s zero or 100, this one’s orders of magnitude more,” Tseytlin said. “There you had a traditional constitutional standoff between the governor and the Senate. They didn’t agree with the appointment, that’s resolved in the holdover. Here we have three, essentially bureaucrats, who have no constitutional status, holding the chief election officer appointment hostage away from the people.”
But Justice Jill Karofsky questioned if this outcome simply forced the Republicans in the Senate to deal with the consequences of a legal interpretation they previously asked for.
“You are trying to thread a needle here that has no eye,” Karofsky said. “Six of the seven of us sat in this courtroom two years ago when your client insisted that Fred Prehn should be able to retain his position on the DNR board, even though his term had expired and your client won. This is a case of careful what you wish for, isn’t it? Now the Legislature is here two years later, demanding that Meagan Wolfe must vacate her position.”
“It seems to me, this has little to do with what the law actually says, and far more to do with who is in these positions,” she continued. “If the Legislature favors someone, they stay. If they don’t, they must go. Does that sound like the rule of law to you?”
Assistant Attorney General Charlotte Gibson, the Department of Justice lawyer arguing on behalf of Wolfe, said that the statute that gives the commission the authority to appoint administrators does not require it to act when the administrator’s term expires. The administrator, she said, becomes a holdover appointee and serves at the will of the commission, who can fire her at any time.
“[Wolfe’s] role is not a part-time policymaking position like the [Natural Resources] board people,” Gibson said. “This is an intense, full-time job requiring expertise and experience, and it just doesn’t work if there are frequent changes in personnel and sudden vacancies … but if an administrator is underperforming, the Commission’s right there on the ground with her. They’re going to see that, and regardless of whether they’re Republicans or Democrats, they’re going to coalesce and bring in an administrator who can do the job.”
Protesters march in Milwaukee after the 2024 presidential election. (Photo | Isiah Holmes)
“Our strategy is year-round civic organizing,” Amanda Avalos, executive director of Leaders Igniting Transformation (LIT) told Wisconsin Examiner, following the Nov. 5 election won by President-elect Donald Trump. LIT canvassers knocked on more than 665,000 doors ahead of Election Day, and the Milwaukee-based group plans to keep up its civic engagement work in the years ahead. “This doesn’t stop us,” Avalos said of the election results. “And if anything, this is fueling.”
LIT, a grassroots nonprofit and nonpartisan group led by youth of color, focuses on building political power for young people through strategic civic engagement. From canvassing neighborhoods and knocking on doors, to advocating for policy change or even preparing young people to run for office, recent years have seen the organization make a name for itself.
Amanda Avalos
It isn’t that LIT’s staff didn’t feel the waves of fear, anger, and despair many community members experienced after Trump’s victory Tuesday. Those emotions were familiar to LIT organizers. “This is not the first time that we’ve been under a Trump administration,” said Avalos. “And we know the direct negative impact that he has on the communities that we work with. And that’s young Black and brown people in the state of Wisconsin.”
LIT plans to counteract that impact by staying organized and motivated. From advocacy efforts to leadership development, sustained organizing is LIT’s mission, said Avalos, explaining that the group is dedicated to “growing our base year-round in between election seasons — not just during election season, but for moments like these…where we need to mobilize and act.”
LIT is already preparing for another big election on April 1, when voters in Wisconsin cast ballots in the state Supreme Court race.
Meanwhile, Avalos says, organizers need to take time to rest, process, grieve, regroup and find community. “That’s what it’s going to take to get through more moments like this,” Avalos told Wisconsin Examiner. “That’s what it took last time, and we continue to hold onto each other and continue to move fiercely with our plan, with our advocacy, with all the ways that young people are leading all across the state.”
The election was particularly divisive for young people. While Harris attracted many young women voters of color, Trump attracted more young men. Some young activists also expressed dissatisfaction at both major political parties. On Nov. 6, protesters gathered in Milwaukee’s Red Arrow Park to protest the war and humanitarian crisis in Gaza and express their frustration over the sense that they were ignored by the Democratic Party. The protest was led by groups including Students for a Democratic Society UWM, the Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, and the Milwaukee Anti-War Committee. Speakers encouraged protesters to find an organization to join and get involved.
Protesters march in Milwaukee after the 2024 presidential election. (Photo | Isiah Holmes)
Avalos agrees that young people feel ignored. “More than ever young people are frustrated,” she said. “The lack of social-economic progress, not being heard at the local decision-making levels — local government, state government and federal government. … There’s a lot of disillusionment, disappointment, frustration, completely valid.” Avalos has heard young people express their sense of powerlessness on issues including the war in Gaza, climate change, the cost of living, housing, tuition and gun violence, as elected officials have failed to remedy those concerns. “Those issues continue to be a priority, and we’re not at the point where we see that reflected in policy and law,” she said.
Avalos told Wisconsin Examiner that LIT will be back at the doors soon, engaging with communities and asking them what they want to to see from their elected leaders. Avalos stressed that connecting the issues that affect people’s families and communities to voting helps impress on people why it’s important to show up at the ballot box. LIT will focus on getting more citizens engaged in school board meetings, common council meeting and public hearings in the state Legislature.
As people process the fallout from the November election, Avalos said she hopes that people will support one another and remember what motivates them. “At the end of the day, it’s not because of anything more than we love each other,” she said of LIT’s continuing work, “and we need know that we all deserve better.”
Voters sign in at a polling place in Takoma Park, Md., on Election Day. Voter enthusiasm was high across the country on Tuesday. (Barbara Barrett/Stateline)
America’s voting system was under siege for four years.
Former President Donald Trump’s false claims about fraud in the 2020 election exposed the people who operate our elections to threats and harassment in the run-up to this one. They fortified their offices against potential violence, adjusted to last-minute, politically driven changes in election laws, and fought a relentless stream of lies and disinformation. Going into Election Day, officials and pro-democracy advocates braced for the worst.
What a difference a day — and a result — makes.
Aside from a few hiccups, the U.S. voting process went smoothly this year. The winner of the presidential election was declared early the next morning, few people claimed widespread voter fraud, and the losing candidate conceded defeat.
It was a triumph for democracy, said David Becker, founder and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, a nonpartisan organization that advises local election officials nationwide.
But he wondered what would have happened had Trump, now president-elect, lost again.
“It’s somewhat telling that we’ve seen fewer fraud claims in the aftermath of an election which former president and future President Trump won,” he said. “But if we can get to the point now where President Trump and his supporters believe in the integrity of our elections, believe in the reality of our integrity of the elections, I will take it.”
Those who study the election process say they have questions: With Trump heading back to the White House, will faith in American democracy rebound? Will Republican lawmakers continue to use the myth of widespread voter fraud to implement further restrictions on mail-in and early voting? And will the threats that have hounded state and local election officials continue?
There’s a lot of uncertainty ahead for U.S. elections, said Kathy Boockvar, the former Democratic secretary of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. But what is certain is that by fueling distrust in elections, Trump and his allies have done permanent damage in this country, she said.
“Will there be a bump, maybe, because some of these folks now saw their candidate that they wanted to win? Sure,” she told Stateline. “There may be a bump in trust, but it’s not going to erase years and years of intentional dividing American against American, and intentional fueling of distrust of institutions and media.”
What happened to the election fraud?
In his victory speech on Tuesday night, Trump said his win was “a massive victory for democracy.” He made no mention of widespread voter fraud and gave no indication that there were any attempts to steal the election.
He had struck a different tone just hours before.
Earlier in the day, Trump falsely asserted in a Truth Social post that there was a heavy law enforcement presence in Philadelphia and Detroit. Officials in both cities debunked that claim. He also claimed without evidence that there was “massive CHEATING” in Philadelphia, which local officials, including Republicans, denied.
Trump would go on to win the critical swing states of Michigan and Pennsylvania in his landslide victory.
What will it take to get belief in the trustworthiness of elections to a point where it’s true for all of us, all the time?
– Pamela Smith, president and CEO of Verified Voting
Election officials faced some falsehoods and disruptions Tuesday. Michigan officials called out what they said was an inauthentic video, allegedly showing boxes of ballots being carried into Detroit’s election office late Tuesday evening. The FBI warned of fabricated videos circulating online and of noncredible bomb threats at polling places in several states, including Michigan, originating out of Russia.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, told reporters at a news conference Wednesday morning those incidents of disinformation felt like things she saw in 2020, as Trump and his allies began to contest his loss.
“I worry and imagine that there was much more planned to drop, potentially, to create confusion and chaos in the hours following the election in an effort to potentially lay seeds to challenge results in the future,” she said. “Of course, we didn’t see that play out.”
U.S. national security officials praised how elections were conducted nationwide this year, as they had in 2020. Jen Easterly, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said the election was peaceful and secure, and that malicious activity had no significant impact on the integrity of the process.
“Our election infrastructure has never been more secure and the election community never better prepared to deliver safe, secure, free, and fair elections for the American people,” she said in a press release Wednesday.
Election officials did a heroic job this year, said Pamela Smith, president and CEO of Verified Voting, a nonprofit that works with state and local election officials to keep voting systems secure. Officials’ work was built on years of beefing up election procedures, audits and security, and coordinating with nonprofit advisers. Elections are resilient, Smith said.
But she added: “What will it take to get belief in the trustworthiness of elections to a point where it’s true for all of us, all the time? And maybe that is a lofty goal, but it’s worth having.”
There are some challenges that need to be addressed, including long lines on college campuses, how to decrease the number of absentee ballots rejected over incorrect signatures, and how to address the continued threats from foreign bad actors such as Russia.
But the crisis of the past four years did force state and local election officials to be more prepared for all threats, said Boockvar, who is president of Athena Strategies and a member of the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections. The committee’s bipartisan group of election and law enforcement officials developed pocket-size guides to election laws for police officers to carry.
“The good news is we have much more cross-sector support,” she said.
A line of voters wrapped around a polling location in Huntsville, Ala., by midmorning on Nov. 5. (Anna Claire Vollers/Stateline)
Future legislation
After Trump cast his ballot on Election Day in Florida, he went to his campaign headquarters in Palm Beach and laid out what he wished the voting process looked like.
“They should do paper ballots, same-day voting, voter ID and be done,” he said. “One day, same day.”
The makeup of Congress is still unknown as local election offices continue to count ballots. But Republicans have shown a willingness to tackle federal voting legislation, as they did with their failed attempt to insert into a larger funding bill a ban on voting by noncitizens (which already is illegal).
But some of Trump’s ideas, especially moving the country to a system in which voters can only cast a ballot on Election Day, is unlikely, said Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. But other suggestions are possible, he added.
There is broad, bipartisan support among voters for mail-in and early voting, along with other protections such as voter list maintenance and audits, Olson said. For example, Georgia is a Republican-run state with robust early and mail-in voting and high voter turnout, with paper ballots, post-election audits and voter ID requirements.
Connecticut voters just approved a constitutional amendment that allows for no-excuse absentee voting. Nevada voters approved a ballot measure that now requires an ID to vote by mail and in person. Voters in eight states, including North Carolina and Wisconsin, also approved ballot measures to make noncitizen voting illegal under state law.
Republican state lawmakers still seem keen to continue finding new ways to tighten procedures in the name of “election integrity.”
This election ran smoothly because of the legislation and proactive lawsuits from the conservative movement, argued Arizona state Rep. Alexander Kolodin, a Republican who was sanctioned by the State Bar of Arizona for his role in challenging the 2020 election.
“Look, there were a lot of vulnerabilities still, but it was a more secure election than the ones we’ve had in the past,” he said in an interview.
Kolodin introduced legislation this year to keep vote centers open longer and give voters more notice to fix signature or date errors on their absentee ballots, among other provisions. Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs signed it in February.
He expects Trump to keep election integrity in the public consciousness and continue to pressure conservatives to work on it. For his part, Kolodin will push to scrap Arizona’s larger vote centers and opt for precinct-level polling places for better efficiency.
Before the election, Michigan state Rep. Luke Meerman, a Republican, told Stateline that he would love to see measures that require some sort of ID to vote in person and by mail.
“Something to prove that whoever filled that ballot out was the person that was supposed to be filling it out probably would be at the top of my list,” he said.
Despite Trump’s win, the false narratives around the supposed insecurity of U.S. elections — in which noncitizens and dead people are voting in droves — will likely continue, said the Cato Institute’s Olson; it is baked into the movement that brought the former president back into power.
“Given that so much of this was about Trump’s desire for personal vindication, maybe it’s over, and maybe we won’t face the same kind of systematic attempt to delegitimize the honesty of elections,” Olson said. “But that’s the optimistic view.”
Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and X.
Milwaukee Elections Commission Executive Director Paulina Gutierrez addresses news media on election night. On Friday, the commission delayed certification canvassing until Monday after receiving a suspicious package. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
The Milwaukee Elections Commission put off certifying election results Friday after receiving a suspicious package that the commission said was later determined not to be hazardous.
Commission staff reported the package, a bubble-wrapped envelope wet with an unknown liquid that arrived at the commission’s City Hall office Friday morning. The Milwaukee Fire Department responded to the report, sending a hazardous materials team
According to a statement released by the elections commission, the envelope “emitted an unusual odor.” The statement said that firefighters were contacted “out of caution” and that, “after thorough testing, all results were clear, and [Milwaukee Fire Department] confirmed the area was safe.”
The Wisconsin Examiner contacted the Milwaukee Police Department for more information and was referred to the Milwaukee Fire Department, who said to contact the mayor’s office. The city’s spokesman, Jeff Flemming, could not be reached, but the mayor’s office referred the inquiry to the elections commission.
The commission statement said the body rescheduled its certification of the election to Nov. 11, at 8 a.m.
“Once certified by the City of Milwaukee Board of Election Commissioners, the results will be transferred to the county and continue through the process to the state,” said the commission’s statement.
First responders gave the all clear to the commission to accept the curing of provisional ballots until 4 p.m. Friday.
Look on the bright side — all the talk about a stolen election, massive voter fraud, rigged voting machines and threats against local election workers disappeared overnight. Instead of planning an insurrection, MAGA Republicans have pivoted to picking out their outfits for president-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration parties.
The minute it became clear that Trump won, Republican fulminating about “massive cheating” blew over. Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe declared the election in Wisconsin a “great success.” Bipartisan poll watchers agreed: the whole thing went off practically without a hitch. Never mind the WisGOP warnings all day on social media about (nonexistent) illegal voting by noncitizens. Never mind the grandstanding at Central Count in Milwaukee by fake elector scheme co-conspirators Sen. Ron Johnson, elections commissioner Bob Spindell and WisGOP chair Brian Schimming. All is forgiven, because Trump won Wisconsin.
The mechanics of voting are not under attack. Instead, a majority of American voters, including a majority of Wisconsinites, chose to elect a right-wing authoritarian leader and to give his party control of the federal government, apparently because they believe Trump will repeal pandemic-fueled inflation (which is already way down in the U.S.).
As my friend Hugh Jackson, editor of our sister outlet the Nevada Current wrote on Wednesday morning: “the U.S. Supreme Court, and the U.S. judiciary generally, is now even more on track to become nothing more than a functionary outlet for a right-wing extremist and authoritarian executive branch hell-bent on dismantling and superseding the rule of law. Also, poor Gaza. Poor Ukraine (poor Europe). And for all that, and so much more, a box of Honey Nut Cheerios still isn’t going to fall back to 2019 prices.”
Stress-eating leftover Halloween candy while watching the triumph of MAGA well into the wee hours, I remembered I’d agreed to speak to a group of retirees the morning after the election. What was there to say? The election results are a gut punch. Here in Wisconsin we are at the center of it. “You know Wisconsin put Trump over the top,” a journalist in Washington, D.C., texted me, helpfully.
Since I had to pull myself together and try to make sense of the results, I headed downtown and found myself in a room full of friendly faces. There’s no sugar-coating things, I told them. The results are a shock. Especially for Wisconsin’s immigrant community, this is a frightening time and we need to do everything we can to support people and ease the fear and suffering of those who are the targets of terrifying threats.
There are a few bright spots in Wisconsin among Tuesday’s results. In addition to the hiatus on election denial, there are the results of state legislative races — the first to be run with Wisconsin’s new fair maps — which ended the gerrymandered GOP supermajority in the state Senate and yielded a more evenly divided state Assembly.
The end of gerrymandering is the fruit of a long, difficult battle by citizens determined to get fair maps. It’s worth remembering that when all three branches of government in Wisconsin were controlled by a single party, that goal seemed far off. And a hard-fought win it was. We’ve come a long way. Don’t forget that progress is possible. It’s important to combat despair.
There will be a lot of Monday-morning quarterbacking of this election. I’ve written about how I believe the Democrats lost touch with their working class base, and how Trump took the opportunity to move into that space with his right-wing populist message.
But the fact is Harris was a powerful candidate who picked up the torch from Biden when he fell apart, painfully, publicly and irretrievably.
There are those who say our country is too sexist or too racist for a woman of color to be elected president. Another white guy would have been better, they suggest. Without a doubt, misogyny and racism were big features of the 2024 campaign. But you don’t beat that backlash by surrendering to it. And we must beat it back. That takes a lot of resilience. Harris took us another step forward in making Americans believe they could elect a female president. It will take more than one or two tries to bring that about.
For now, perhaps the most important thing for all of us who are hurting after this election is to prioritize real, human contact. Remember that you are still surrounded by friends, neighbors and loved ones. We need to connect with each other and stay in touch. As simple and maybe even simplistic as it sounds, we need each other’s company to help get us through this difficult time. We need to see other people in person and we need to take a break from scrolling online.
Being with other people, strengthening our bonds of affection and solidarity, is the foundation of democracy. That’s where we need to start.
Signs posted inside the Wisconsin State Capitol during debate over redrawing the state's voting maps. The new maps, which created many more competitive legislative voting districts, are in use for the first time for the 2024 election.| Wisconsin Examiner photo.
Wisconsin Examiner reporters are posting live updates here throughout Election Day from polling places, victory parties and on the ground throughout the state. Check back for the latest election news.
Wisconsin elections administrator calls 2024 election a ‘great success’
By: Henry Redman- Tuesday November 5, 2024 11:12 pm
Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe at a press conference on Election Day | Screenshot via Zoom
Wisconsin’s election on Tuesday was a “great success,” according to Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe. At a news conference Tuesday night, Wolfe said that outside of bomb threats to polling places that were deemed non-credible, a few bits of disinformation posted online and an incident in Milwaukee that was quickly and transparently resolved, the election went smoothly. At Milwaukee’s central count location where city election officials were processing and tabulating absentee ballots, election observers noticed that the panels on the tabulating machines that cover the USB ports through which results are downloaded no longer had their tamper-proof seals keeping them closed. Election officials determined that the panels hadn’t been locked and “out of an abundance of caution” decided to restart the tabulating process.
Wolfe said every decision about the process was up to Milwaukee officials but that “no equipment malfunctioned, no ballots were compromised, and every step of the process was completed in the public eye by election inspectors from both the Republican and Democratic parties and under the watch of Republican and Democratic observers.”
Also at central count, a prominent election denier who has frequently spread baseless and nonsensical accusations about the state’s election system was posting on social media that Milwaukee election officials were allowing the acceptance of absentee ballots without the required witness signature. That never happened.
Wolfe also debunked videos circulated online that purported to show supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump fighting at a Wisconsin polling place. She said it was clearly disinformation and didn’t take place at an actual Wisconsin poll site.“[It] really serves as an important reminder to just be aware of these disinformation efforts that are ongoing, and to really think critically about the information about elections that you consume,” she said. “Certainly think before sharing information about elections.”
Earlier in the day, the FBI had reported that bomb threats had been made against polling sites in a number of states, including poll locations in Madison. Law enforcement officials deemed the threats non-credible. “At no point today was there an active or credible threat to a polling location that we’re aware of,” Wolfe said.
3 weeks ago
Milwaukee Elections Commission director says every ballot counted accurately
Milwaukee Elections Commission Executive Director Paulina Gutierrez addresses news media on election night. | Photo by Henry Redman
Milwaukee Central Count has processed and tabulated more than 80,000 absentee ballots out of the the more than 107,000 cast, Milwaukee Elections Commission Executive Director Paulina Gutierrez said at a news conference shortly after 9:30. Asked about U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson’s questions about the incident which caused the city to restart counting ballots, Gutierrez said it’s impossible to meet Johnson’s request to compare the exact tally of the more than 30,000 votes that had to be re-run through the machines before and after the recount, because votes are broken down by ward, not by total tally, but that every vote will have been tracked and a chain of custody will be publicly available.
“At the end of the day, every ballot that was here that was legitimate was counted and was counted accurately,” she said. “It was tracked, there is a paper trail, there is a chain of custody, and we are going to get this done.”
Johnson had also criticized the error, in which the sealed panels on voting machines became unsealed, as “sloppy.” Gutierrez countered that, saying a bipartisan decision was made to correct a human error transparently. “We have an extensive chain of custody, we have checks and balances, this is a bipartisan team,” she said. “The observers also play a big role. We have things here that we’re tracking, and this is, this is all of our community’s, City of Milwaukee residents, Democrats and Republicans, and we’re doing this together, and when we saw an issue that was brought to our attention, we reacted swiftly and we acted transparently. So there has been nothing to hide here. Everything is here and tracked. This is not sloppy. This is how we do things, to make sure that things are transparent.”
Last updated: 10:27 pm
3 weeks ago
Milwaukee Mayor: ballot recount ‘an issue that we’ve taken seriously’
Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson talks to reporters at the City of Milwaukee central count facility, (Photo | Isiah Holmes)
Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson arrived at the city’s central count location shortly after U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson wrapped a live TV interview with Fox News from the convention center hall in which he called the error that caused about 30,000 absentee ballots to be recounted a “sloppy” error.
The senator has also been asking city election officials for the exact vote tally of the ballots that had to be recounted to make sure the vote total matches the second time. Officials have said, however, that an exact number doesn’t exist because the vote tallies aren’t tabulated until election workers are done feeding all the ballots into the machines.
The mayor said that it was “an issue that was caught, an issue that was addressed and an issue that we’ve taken seriously” before pointing out the Republicans in the state Senate had killed a bill that would have allowed the city to begin processing ballots on Monday.
“Folks want to have this as a wedge issue,” the mayor said, adding that Milwaukee’s elections are run with the “highest level” of integrity and transparency.
Election workers at central count have now processed and tabulated more than 63,000 votes, meaning it has made up for and doubled the total count from when the process had to be restarted.
Last updated: 9:10 pm
3 weeks ago
Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson arrives to question Milwaukee election officials
Sen. Ron Johnson and Wisconsin GOP Chair Brian Schimming | Photo by Henry Redman
Updated: At Milwaukee’s central count location, where election workers had to recount more than 30,000 absentee ballots “out of an abundance of caution” because stickers sealing the panels protecting the USB slots on voting machines became unstuck, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson and Republican Party of Wisconsin Chair Brian Schimming questioned Milwaukee Elections Commission Executive Director Paulina Gutierrez about the incident. “We’ve got a lot of questions,” Johnson said, asking about the chain of custody on the security footage of the machines and if the Republican party would be able to test if the votes tallied would match after the ballots were recounted. “My concern is I want to know how it opened up.”
Gutierrez said she’s not the commission’s public records staff but everything would be available and that Republican Party attorneys can request everything they need. “We have nothing to hide, request all the records you want,” she said. “We run safe, secure and fair elections,” before telling the pair they could “knock themselves out” and go look at voting machines on their own as election observers. “Let’s go knock ourselves out,” Johnson said before walking to the machines.
Wisconsin Elections Commissioner Robert Spindell arrives at Milwaukee Central Count with Sen. Ron Johnson (Photo | Isiah Holmes)
Schimming, along with Wisconsin Elections Commissioner Robert Spindell, who also arrived to inspect Central Count, were involved in planning the fake electors scheme, in which Wisconsin Republicans cast fraudulent Electoral College ballots for Donald Trump after President Joe Biden won the 2020 election in Wisconsin.
As part of a legal settlement, Wisconsin’s fake electors agreed not to serve as Trump electors in 2024.
Johnson’s Senate office was involved in attempting to transfer Wisconsin’s fake Electoral College ballots for Trump to Vice President Mike Pence, whom Trump pressured to help him overturn Biden’s 2020 victory.
Last updated: 8:57 pm
3 weeks ago
Green Bay counts ballots at its central count facility, responds to concerns
At a press conference around 2:30 p.m., Green Bay City Clerk Celestine Jeffreys said workers at the city’s central count site will keep counting until all of the ballots are tabulated.
Green Bay’s central count site, where absentee ballots are consolidated and tabulated. (Andrew Kennard | Wisconsin Examiner)
“We will keep counting! And we will eat pizza,” Jeffreys said at a press conference this afternoon. “And eat delicious baked goods from one of our local bakeries. And drink coffee.”
Absentee ballots cast by city residents, including in early voting, are consolidated for counting at the central count facility in City Hall. At the end of the day Monday, the city reported having received 20,154 absentee ballots, 40% of the 51,630 registered voters in the city, as of Nov. 1 statistics from the Wisconsin Election Commission’s website.
As of about 4:00 p.m. Tuesday, 3,194 absentee ballots have been counted, the city of Green Bay reported on Facebook.
There have been problems with machines, Jeffreys said. If a machine is not functioning, ballots that were not able to go into the machine are placed in an auxiliary bin.
Asked if there have been complaints of electioneering or inappropriate behavior at the polls, Jeffreys said she received concerns from voters about the closeness of an observer at one location and the closeness of a poll worker at another location. Both voters were concerned about the secrecy of their ballot. Jeffreys said she addressed the issues with chief inspectors.
Jeffreys also said she deferred to the parks and police departments to handle certain complaints as those agencies felt were appropriate “given our guidelines and our access to public spaces.”
“So, there was a gathering over at Joannes Park,” Jeffreys said. “That has nothing to do with my office. There was a DJ who was playing music. That has nothing to do with my office.”
Jennifer Gonzalez, communications coordinator at the Green Bay Police Department, told the Examiner that the gathering at the park was reported due to a political signage. She said the signage was not considered electioneering and did not violate any other laws, so no enforcement action was taken.
Gonzalez said she was told the DJ was playing music near a polling site, and the volume had caused some concern. The person was cooperative and left, she was told.
Central Count in Milwaukee. (Photo | Isiah Holmes)
Updated: Milwaukee Central Count is restarting its count of absentee ballots after the doors on its tabulation machines were mistakenly left open. According to CBS News reporter Katrina Kaufman, Wisconsin Elections Commission Chair Ann Jacobs said the recount is being done for transparency and so “people can have confidence in the results.”
A.J. Bayatpour of CBS 58 in Milwaukee reports that Milwaukee’s Republican Party Chair Hilario Deleon told CBS reporter Tajma Hall that he doesn’t think anything “nefarious” happened.
Jeff Flemming, spokesperson for the City of Milwaukee, said that votes are being re-counted at Milwaukee’s Central Count “out of an abundance of caution. “Roughly 31,000 ballots are being re-run to correct an error where 13 voting machines were not “fully sealed” due to human error, Flemming said. The development comes as Milwaukee County continues to count ballots, and residents continue heading to the polls. “It is going to extend the time that we will get the totals here,” said Flemming.
Jacobs, chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, has continued to provide updates from Central Count in Milwaukee, from the website X, formerly known as Twitter. “Following up on this from Milwaukee,” Jacobs wrote on Twitter. “Before re-scanning, the tabulators are zeroed out – meaning they show no ballots in the tally. ALSO – and importantly – NOBODY knows how the originally scanned ballots were voted. No results were available or created.”Jacobs went onto post, “so like everyone else, we all must wait until tabulation (and re-tabulation) is complete early tomorrow to know Milwaukee’s vote totals! This is as it should be and is the correct process.”
Last updated: 6:48 pm
3 weeks ago
Wisconsin voters face long lines, but have few problems, Common Cause reports
On a national election protection update for reporters Tuesday afternoon, there were reports of long lines in several states and what turned out to be false bomb threats in Georgia.
In Wisconsin there have been long lines as well, said Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin, one of the call’s panelists, but except for a glitch at the Milwaukee Central Count requiring 30,000 ballots to be retabulated, “we have not seen anything out of the ordinary.”
Jay Heck, Common Cause Wisconsin
Heck observed that nearly half of Wisconsin voters voted early this year, while about 1.7 million were expected to vote in person on Tuesday. Until 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic increased the interest in absentee and early voting, Wisconsin voters have in the past “preferred to vote on election day.”
“The big issue, for most people, has been… long lines,” Heck said, with the heaviest traffic when polls opened at 7 a.m., over the lunch hour and more expected in the evening before the polls close at 8 p.m.
The longest lines have been reported on college campuses, particularly for same-day voter registration, Heck said.
One notable change has been “that there are many more partisan election observers, not only at polling places but in central count locations” where absentee ballots are sent to be counted. Milwaukee and Green Bay are among the Wisconsin communities using central count sites.
Heck said he had received reports of some 50 Republican observers at the Milwaukee central count site, along with 10 or 11 Democratic observers. There are also nonpartisan observers from organizations such as Common Cause.
Last updated: 6:06 pm
3 weeks ago
UW-Madison first-time voters register and observe voting at Memorial Union
UW-Madison students vote. | Photo by Baylor Spears
“Our ward is basically all freshman dorms, so a lot of people registering, a ton of first-time voters, however, this is definitely the biggest volume of Election Day registrations in one morning that I have seen here,” said Izzie Behl, chief inspector officer at the polling location inside the University of Wisconsin-Madison Memorial Union. Behl has worked as an election official for the last three years. By 2 p.m. 522 people had voted at the location.
Eric Sanderson, a UW-Madison freshman from Virginia, was one of those first-time voters. He said he decided to vote in Wisconsin because he figured it would be easier than mailing in his ballot. He said he had to call and ask on Tuesday morning for information about voting, but it was a “pretty easy, streamlined” process. He said he voted for Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats down the ballot because he thinks it will be better for the environment and women’s rights, and because of Trump’s age.“Trump’s really old,” Sanderson said. “I’d like a president that’s not at risk of, like, going senile during the presidential term.” He said the debate between Trump and Harris affirmed his decision. “A lot of that was just looking at which of them had their head in it more, and were not saying weird, f*cked up things,” Sanderson said.
Grace LeClaire, a UW-Madison freshman, voted early for Harris and U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin on Friday but was at the polling location to observe the voting process with her anthropology class | Photo by Baylor Spears
Grace LeClaire, a freshman and Madison-native, voted early for Harris and U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin on Friday but was at the polling location to observe the voting process with her anthropology class. LeClaire said she is pro-choice and supports reproductive rights.“This is my first presidential election and that’s the case for a lot of people in my class, so it’s really cool to see democracy in action,” LeClaire said.
Across the street from Memorial Union on Library Mall, UW-Madison College Democrats were standing in the rain encouraging students to vote. “I’m noticing a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of excitement. Students have either voted early, which is great, or they have a plan to vote or we’re helping them get that plan to vote,” Chair Joseph Wendtland said. “We’re answering questions about… what kind of ID do I need? What kind of proof of residence?”
UW-Madison College Democrats Chair Joseph Wendtland on Library Mall. | Photo by Baylor Spears
Wendtland said he is hearing a lot of enthusiasm for Harris in particular. For his part, he said he voted for Harris on the first day of early voting after a rally held by former President Barack Obama and vice presidential candidate and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Wendtland noted that others had come out to help on Tuesday including University of Chicago College Democrats, who were helping to knock doors, state Sen. Kelda Roys, who came to help put up their tents at 7 a.m., Wisconsin High School Democrats and Tennessee state lawmaker Justin Jones. “It’s really all hands on deck right now,” Wendtland said.
Students wait in line to vote at UW-Whitewater | Photo by Henry Redman
At UW-Whitewater’s on campus polling site, the line for students waiting to register to vote or update their address stretched to more than 4.5 hours at around 5 p.m. Orion Smith, who works with the university’s student government, told the Wisconsin Examiner the line had stretched for hours since about 9 a.m.
The line for student voters who didn’t need to update their registration was only about 20 minutes, Smith said. Outside of the University Center where voting was taking place, a group of Democratic students were encouraging their classmates to vote. Peter Johanneson, a 20-year-old junior, says it feels like students on campus are excited to vote for Democrats, including state Assembly candidate Brienne Brown — who Johanneson says made her presence felt on campus during the campaign. Audrey Hameister, also a 20-year-old junior, says she’s optimistic about the results for Democrats on Tuesday and that she believes a majority of student voters are supporting the Democratic ticket, especially since Vice President Kamala Harris became the party’s nominee.
3 weeks ago
Volunteers redirect Milwaukee voters arriving at now-closed early voting locations
UW-Milwaukee students who reside in the university’s Sandburg Hall streamed into the UWM Lubar Entrepreneurship Center Tuesday afternoon to cast their ballots. Around 3 p.m., Poll Chief Kelly Conaty told Wisconsin Examiner that 812 ballots had already been cast. Conaty said that the polling site, which handles two separate voting wards, had seen no problems of any kind all day. Still, Conaty said that many students arriving to vote are needing to register before getting into the ballot line.
“We’re registering a lot of people,” said Conaty, adding that this is not uncommon for the college. As Conaty spoke to Wisconsin Examiner, a line of about 40 students lined up near the front door. Down the street, a modest tent of volunteers were also hard at work making sure students and adults alike know where they need to go.
Members of the non-profit group Super Market Legends said they noticed a trend of people arriving at locations that had been open for early voting, but are no longer active on Election Day. While they explained the situation to the Wisconsin Examiner, four students walked up at different times to the nearby Zelazo Center, which had been an early voting location. The volunteers at the tent made sure that the students knew where to go. So far this voting season, the volunteers said they have redirected hundreds of Milwaukeeans to the correct voting places after they’ve arrived at now closed early voting locations.
UW-Milwaukee students are directed to different polling sites according to their residential halls. Students at Sandburg Hall go to the UWM Lubar Entrepreneurship Center, which is across the street from the campus on Kenwood Blvd. Riverview Hall students go to the Gordon Park Pavilion on Humbold Blvd, while students in the Kenilworth Square Apartments go to the Charles Allis Art Museum on Prospect Avenue. students in the Cambridge Commons go to the Urban Ecology Center on East Park Place.
The Kenosha Police Department is reporting minimal disruptions or calls for service to polling places so far on Election Day. A Kenosha PD spokesperson, Lt. Joshua Hecker, shared two summaries of police calls to polling places on Tuesday. At 7:01 a.m., police responded to the Senior Citizens Center for “a person playing music in a City owned parking lot.” The DJ was one of Wisconsin’s contingent from DJs at the Polls, which has over 100 members across Wisconsin. KPD’s summary describes the group as “a nationwide network of non-political DJ’s playing music to spice up election day.”
While the DJ’s actions were not overtly political, the department noted that the DJ was playing music over 100 feet from the main entrance. “City poll supervisors deemed the music to be a disturbance and due to the fact they were in a city lot, Officers asked them to shut it down and leave, which they did.”
The second call came in around 10:33 a.m. Officers responded to the Prayer Assembly House for “a man being disorderly over voter ID.” The report summary states that a middle-aged man was there with his 93-year-old mother, who did not have a current ID. When poll workers said that her ID was not valid, her son “became argumentative with poll staff and refused to leave.” The summary states that the man was also argumentative with officers, “and made bad faith arguments about police denying his elderly mother her rights and asked if we were proud of ourselves,” the summary states. The man wanted poll supervisors to answer his questions, which they hesitated to do because he was also allegedly recording them. Eventually when the poll workers said that a passport would be enough, the man went home, got a passport, and he and his 93-year-old mother were allowed to vote “after he threw it [the passport] at poll workers and cussed them out,” the summary stated. No arrests were made during this incident.
3 weeks ago
Fort Atkinson Dems turn out for Evers, Baldwin and new maps
U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Gov. Tony Evers address a group of about three dozen members of the Jefferson County Democratic Party on Election Day. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
In Fort Atkinson, more than three dozen members of the Jefferson County Democratic Party — as well as a few joining from the neighboring Dodge and Walworth counties — packed into the small county party office to welcome U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Gov. Tony Evers before kicking off some last minute canvassing.
Full of excitement at the prospect of electing Democrats Melissa Ratcliff and Joan Fitzgerald to its seats in the state Senate and Assembly (both in attendance at the event) after years of Republican representation under the old legislative maps, the Democrats from a rural county nearly mid-way between the urban centers of Madison and Milwaukee said they were expecting wins on Tuesday.
“I think our country has weathered the storm, and grown in the process,” Fort Atkinson Democrat Jim Marousis says. See more.
Last updated: 3:52 pm
3 weeks ago
Video: Sun Prairie, Wis. election official on why she does this work
VIDEO: Cindy Melendy – Election Officer at United methodist church in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin explains the ballot counting process and how the public can view it. She says that this election feels different because so many more people are coming out to vote and adds “it’s nice to feel part of process.”
3 weeks ago
Voters in western Wisconsin weigh in on Van Orden, Cooke race
Polling place in Independence, Wis. | Photo by Frank Zufall
Voters in Independence, Wisconsin — in the western part of the state encompassed by the 3rd Congressional District — are choosing between incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden and his Democratic challenger Rebecca Cooke.
Andrea Brandt voted for Cooke. She didn’t like Van Orden’s participation in Jan 6 pro-Trump rally protesting the 2020 election results in Washington, DC. “I don’t care for him,” she said.
Mary Bragger chose Van Orden. “It’s not one issue for me. I vote Republican because they tend to be more conservative and that is the way I lean.”
In Eau Claire, also part of the 3rd CD, Amanda Krueger, 26, voted for Cooke. “I know her personally. she’s a hard worker and she’s ambitious and she represents my needs and wants. Krueger said the critical issue was “Women’s rights ” and “the right to choose.”
Aaron Shaw also said he voted for Cooke because he didn’t like the “slander techniques used against her.”
Mary, who didn’t want to use her last name voted for Van Orden, but she voted for Kamala Harris over Donald Trump, she said, even though she is opposed to abortion. After ticking Harris for president she voted mostly Republican dowballot as her way of balancing her concern. She had no issues with Van Orden and didn’t hold it against him that he went to the Jan 6, 2020 protest in Washington, DC, because he left before the violence started.
Did you know that if you’re living unhoused in Wisconsin, you can still vote?
The Wisconsin Elections Commission provides a voter guide for people who don’t have stable housing, or are living on the street.
In Milwaukee County, hundreds of people live without housing on the street, in vehicles, and in county and city shelters.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission states that anyone 18 years or older, who is not otherwise disqualified from voting, may do so in Wisconsin. Unhoused residents may designate a fixed location for their residence to vote, as long as it’s an identifiable location in the state of Wisconsin which could “conceivably serve as a temporary residence,” a voter guide from the Elections Commission states.
If you’re living in a shelter, you can claim the shelter as your residence for voting purposes, unless that shelter has any restrictions against doing that.
Proof of residency can be achieved by showing a document such as a letter from a shelter, or from a private or public social service organization which provides services to unhoused residents. The document must identify the individual and describe the location where they are living. Make sure the letter or document is also signed by a person affiliated with a social service organization.
People who are living unhoused but want to vote may contact the Wisconsin Elections Commission help desk at 608-261-2028 or email elections@wi.gov with any questions.
Last updated: 3:18 pm
3 weeks ago
DJ Reggie ‘Smooth Az Butta’ brings music to the polls
DJ Reggie “Smooth Az Butta” Brown at the polls in Milwaukee. | Photo by Isiah Holmes
Like many Wisconsin voters, Reggie “Smooth Az Butta” Brown chose to vote early this year. “I had to get that early vote in,” the Milwaukee radio personality told Wisconsin Examiner. “Made me feel good, too.”
For nearly 30 years, Brown has been a household voice and name in Milwaukee, especially for Black and brown communities.
Earlier this year, Brown was laid off from iHeartMedia and V100 radio. On Tuesday morning, Brown set up his DJ station and table outside Washington High School, in Milwaukee’s Sherman Park neighborhood. Starting at ince 6:30 a.m. he joined a group of 20 people serving as “DJs at the Polls,” a nationwide organization with 180 members in Wisconsin alone.
One of the other DJs, a friend of Brown’s, was stationed at Rufus King High School in Milwaukee, which is actually closer to where Brown lives. Later today, Brown will head down to the suburban city of Greenfield to play music and lift spirits as people cast their ballots.
Brown said that although it seemed slow at Washington High School, voting had been proceeding steadily all morning. He needed to keep his comments non-partisan due to his affiliation with DJs at the Polls, he said, but Brown did speak to the issues on his mind when he voted.
“All the women’s issues,” said Brown. “I have sisters, I have a daughter, all those issues. Cheaper groceries, you know. I want somebody in there that’s going to do good for the nation,” Brown said. “We’re Americans, so let’s live it right. Let’s do it right.”
Sun Prairie, Wis. polling place | Photo by Henry Redman
In Sun Prairie, which traditionally sees incredibly high turnout in presidential elections, the polling place at city hall opened with a “steady stream” of voters all morning, according to chief inspector Greg Hovel.
Around 11:30, the lunchtime rush was just beginning and a team of seven poll workers used a second tabulator to process the 1,639 absentee ballots cast in the precinct. The team had already gotten about 1,000 of those ballots processed and tabulated.
Hovel said there had been no hiccups despite having five new poll workers to get up to speed with the early morning line waiting and that the poll has seen a number of new voter registrations.
Last updated: 2:07 pm
3 weeks ago
UW-Madison students arrive at polls on campus Tuesday
UW-Madison students line up to vote. | Photo by Baylor Spears
Voting was running smoothly for University of Wisconsin-Madison students at a polling location inside of Gordon Dining and Event Center on Tuesday morning. At 11:22 pm, about 622 voters had already cast their ballots.
Sam Schwalbach, a freshman from Hudson in the western part of Wisconsin, said he voted for Trump. | Photo by Baylor Spears
College students could be influential in deciding whether Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump wins Wisconsin. The last two presidential elections were decided by less than 20,000 voters. Students the Examiner spoke with said the process was smooth and also brought up an array of issues that influenced their decision.
Sam Schwalbach, a freshman from Hudson in the western part of Wisconsin, said he voted for Trump. It’s his first time voting and he said his top issues were lowering taxes and “keeping the border safe.”
“We want to keep a lot of jobs here, and we can’t do that if we’re having people come over the border illegally. I think it just makes the country not as safe as well,” Schwalbach said. “Obviously immigration is a good thing, but it’s better when it’s like legal.”
Emily Blumberg, a junior from Illinois, and Adrianna Garcia, a junior from Minnesota, are friends who ran into each other at the polls. | Photo by Baylor Spears
Emily Blumberg, a junior from Illinois, and Adrianna Garcia, a junior from Minnesota, are friends that ran into each other at the polls. They said the process was smooth. “It was a very simple process. The school made it very easy,” Blumberg said. She added that it was easy to find the polling location and that some classes were canceled to allow students to make time to vote.
Blumberg and Garcia both said they voted for Harris in the presidential election, and decided to vote in Wisconsin because of what it means to vote in a swing state. “It holds more weight here, especially like Illinois has been a blue state,” Blumberg said. “Same with Minnesota,” Garcia added. “You know that to make that difference here means a lot,” Blumberg said.
“Anything but Trump,” Garcia said in discussing why she voted for Harris. “Growing up in the household that I did, we have very strong beliefs that morals are more important than policies that could benefit the economy in anyway.”
“This is an election where human rights issues should take precedence over like preferences with whatever economic policies, not that mine would even align with his,” Blumberg said. She said that women’s rights were also important for her and that she thinks its time for the U.S. to have its first female president.
Syed Rizvi, a freshman from New York, said he cast his vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein. When President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, he said that he was initially excited because he thinks the U.S. “needs its first female president,” however he said Harris’ comments about pro-Palestinian protesters at rallies and other comments about the war in Gaza made him decide to vote third-party.
“My family has been a long-term Democratic family but I just feel like this election I wanted to vote for a candidate who represented my values, who has openly spoken against the genocide in Israel and Palestine,” Rizvi said. “I think Jill Stein is the only candidate that has openly and proudly spoken up for that, and so the moment Kamala Harris said that she would continue the weapons to Israel that is when she lost my vote.”
There are six third-party candidates on ballots in Wisconsin and Stein is seen as a potential spoiler for Harris.
Last updated: 3:23 pm
3 weeks ago
Watertown clerk expects to count ballots through early morning
Watertown, Wis. polling site | Photo by Henry Redman
In Watertown in Jefferson county, the library polling place has seen “steady” voting all morning, according to chief inspectors Kate Latin and RoxAnne Witte. The line had gotten the longest during the morning rush when voters waited about 15-20 minutes, but as of Friday, about 45% of the town’s registered voters had already cast a ballot.That high early vote means a massive amount of absentee ballots for poll workers to process and tabulate today. Witte said she anticipates it will take a long time to finish.“I’m expecting early morning,” she says of when the returns from the largely Republican community of about 20,000 people should be reported to the county.
Last updated: 1:26 pm
3 weeks ago
Police in Milwaukee area report ‘no issues’ with voting
The city police departments of Wauwatosa, West Allis, and Milwaukee are all reporting no issues so far this Election Day.
The updates, which came in just before 1 p.m., come as polling places report steady streams of voters. “We have not taken any reports of issues related to the election or poll sites today,” wrote Wauwatosa Police Department spokesperson Sgt. Abby Pavlik in an email statement to Wisconsin Examiner.
A spokesperson with the Milwaukee Police Department said they were “unaware of any major issues.”
Although many Milwaukee County residents voted early, others are still arriving at community centers, city halls, schools, libraries, and other polling sites to cast their ballots on Tuesday.
In the weeks leading up to the election, some Milwaukee-area communities experienced vandalism targeting Democratic candidate yard signs. Wauwatosa was one of them, with signs damaged across the city from the southeastern corner to the northwest.
Pavlik said that in recent days, no more reports of defaced yard signs were reported to Wauwatosa PD. “When these reports come into dispatch, we document the location and the damage to ensure a record is kept,” said Pavlik. “An officer is not automatically sent to every incident, we respond if the caller requests it.”
Last updated: 2:02 pm
3 weeks ago
Green Bay, Wis. has ‘very brisk start’ to Election Day, rotates election observers
Green Bay City Clerk Celestine Jeffreys said nine election observers are allowed at a time at Central Count, with rotations every hour. Whether they are Republican, Democrat, or other — such as someone with another party, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) or the League of Women Voters — they can watch at Central Count with rotations every hour, she said.
The city said on Facebook that 234 absentee ballots have been counted as of 10:30 a.m. At a press conference at City Hall at about 10:30 a.m., Jeffreys said the ballots must be opened and processed before they are put into the machine. As of the end of day yesterday, there were 20,154 absentee ballots returned, the city said. Absentee ballots can be returned to the clerk’s office at City Hall before 8 p.m. today.
In a press release Monday, the clerk’s office said the city would begin processing absentee ballots this morning at 7:05 a.m.“Voters should be aware that, even as some states report early voting turnout, our state does not allow pre-Election Day processing of any ballots,” the clerk’s office stated.
At the press conference this morning, Jeffreys said about 3,200 voters have gone through the polls, according to the polls that have reported in — 70% of polling locations. “A very brisk start to our Election Day here,” Jeffreys said. A couple of issues have come up. Jeffreys said a tech was sent to address an issue at Ward 41; she hasn’t heard back since and thinks everything’s fine. In a separate issue, she said she thinks a voter received a test ballot, and she’s looking into it. “I’m not sure how a test ballot got to polls, but I will be investigating that after this press conference,” she said. On Monday, Wisconsin Examiner spoke to Jennifer Gonzalez, communications coordinator at the Green Bay Police Department, about the election. She said there are no known incidents that have required a police response at that time. The Examiner reached out to Gonzalez this afternoon to request an update and is awaiting her response.
Last updated: 4:02 pm
3 weeks ago
Orderly election morning in Milwaukee as early voting cuts down on lines
Polling places In Milwaukee and surrounding suburbs did not have long lines Tuesday morning, unlike recent presidential elections, and poll workers said many voters had already cast their ballots during Wisconsin’s early voting period ahead of Election Day.
At West Allis City Hall, the chief poll worker told Wisconsin Examiner that 15,500 West Allis residents voted early. In contrast, by 9 a.m. Tuesday, 314 people had cast their ballotsacross the four voting wards covered by the city hall polling location.
By 9:30 am, the city hall in Wauwatosa had seen 375 voters. Wauwatosa also had high numbers of early voters, with poll workers telling Wisconsin Examiner that just over 60% of all registered voters in Wauwatosa voted early this year.
Standing in the middle of the room as people voted in Wauwatosa, cross armed and quiet, a man wearing an election observer sticker watched everyone who entered and exited.
Photo by Isiah Holmes
None of the poling sites Wisconsin Examiner visited in and around MIlwaukee had reported problems by late Tuesday morning, either from disruptions by citizens or with equipment failures.
In Milwaukee’s Sherman Park neighborhood, Washington High School had a steady stream of voters flowing in and out. Outside, poll workers helped an elderly woman and her two relatives register to vote at the curb, while they waited in the car, out of the on again, off again rainfall.
Both at Washington High School and the nearby Washington Park Library, poll workers loudly rejoiced each time someone came in to register as a first-time voter.
Two people who tried to register were turned away at the polling site because they did not have proof of their address. A handful of voters were directed to other polling sites since they’d arrived at the wrong location.
At Washington Park Library, the poll site’s chief told Wisconsin Examiner that he hadn’t seen so many people vote early at that location since the pandemic presidential election of 2020.
Outside the library, a Hunger Task Force mobile food pantry operated, void of any political signage, providing meals and groceries to local residents.
Just up the road at the Milwaukee Public Schools Administration Building, 457 people from two voting wards had cast ballots by 10:37 a.m. As at the other Milwaukee area sites, there had been no problems with long lines and no technical or safety concerns.
3 weeks ago
Progressive coalition leader: If Harris wins, credit students and women
If the Democratic Party does well in Wisconsin Tuesday, Greg Speed thinks students’ votes and women’s votes will be a major contributor.
Speed is the president of America Votes, an independent expenditure operation that raises money and funnels it to progressive voter engagement groups. Born in the 2004 election, America Votes works with about 80 organizations nationwide; across the states it has hundreds of coalition partners, including 60 in Wisconsin alone.
The 2020 election was unusual because the continuing COVID-19 pandemic kicked up absentee voting overall, but University of Wisconsin-Madison students who might have normally voted in the city cast their ballots back home, whether elsewhere in Wisconsin or out-of-state.
But that’s not the only reason for this year’s higher early voter turnout among Madison students, who are among the voters that America Votes coalition partners targets.
“It is evidence of a lot of work on voter registration,” Speed said — and isn’t necessarily automatic, because the state allows registration at the polls on Election Day. If it was its own city, however, the UW campus is fourth in the state in new voter registrations. (Milwaukee and Madison are the top two.)
“The fact that so many have gone ahead and registered this year prior to election day is, in and of itself, pretty significant,” Speed said.
The 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade and ending a federal abortion right remains at a top priority with the voters that canvassers in the coalition encounter.
“It’s electric — still,” said Speed. “It is the issue that in a conversation at the doors, you see a person light up when you mention abortion.”
He recalls door-to-door canvassing with environmental groups in 2022 and raising the issue of climate change “and they’d almost stop you and they’re like, ‘What about abortion rights?’”
Two years later reproductive rights have remained as potent as ever, he said. If Democrats win, “the Republican Party … they’re going to have to grapple with what they’ve [done] — hitching their wagon to Trump for as long as they have, but they’ve hitched their wagon to the anti choice movement for much longer. And it’s definitional.”
Speed predicts the issue won’t go away.
“It’s definitional like, and I think Democrats need to buckle up and double down. This is going to be the issue in ‘26 it’s going to be the issue in ‘28 that is not going away until Roe is restored.”
America Votes and its coalition partners don’t focus on traditional Republican voters, but Speed has been watching the Harris campaign’s courting of former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney and other Republicans such as the mayors of Waukesha, Wisconsin, and Mesa, Arizona. That’s “part of the path” to a Harris victory, he said.
Whether in Wisconsin, where Biden won by a little more than 20,000 votes four years ago, or Pennsylvania, where his margin of victory was about 80,000 votes, its not enough to rely on the core urban communities and students that make up so much of the Democratic base, he said.
‘”You’ve got to continue over-performing in Waukesha and Ozaukee [counties],” Speed said. “You’ve got to continue over-performing in Chester County, Pennsylvania, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. That’s those Cheney events and other things. That’s who that was aimed at — those suburban, exurban areas.”
If Harris does better than the polls showing her neck-and-neck with Trump, “it’s definitely going to be [thanks to] a lot of crossover support in suburban, you know, suburban Milwaukee, suburban Philly.”
Democratic candidate Rebecca Cooke cast her ballot in Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District and took time out to chat with the Examiner’s Frank Zufall about turnout and the state of her race against Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden. “There’s no community too small or too red,” Cooke said of her campaign’s get-out-the-vote effort.
Voters enter a polling place at the Waunakee Public Library.| Photo by Henry Redman
In Waunakee, where former President Donald Trump held the Republican Party’s first campaign stop in decades in the deep blue Dane County in early October, the polling place at the local library had a line winding almost out the door at around 10:30 a.m.The poll’s chief inspector Bob Ohlsen says there have been no issues but the morning rush was incredibly busy with voters waiting about 30-40 minutes to vote.
The poll is where voters in half the city’s wards go to cast their ballot, with a large bank of four rows of voting carrels allow the process to move quickly.“People have been incredibly patient,” Ohlsen says. “It’s gonna take a while.”Two election observers representing the Democratic Party were watching voting take place, saying they’d be there all day.
Last updated: 10:49 am
3 weeks ago
Busy morning at downtown Madison, Wis. polling place
Voters cast their ballot in a polling place just blocks from the state Capitol in Madison, Wis. | Photo by Henry Redman
At a downtown Madison polling place just blocks from the state Capitol, voters from the 45th and 51st wards wound their way through an apartment building to vote in the 5th floor community center down the hall from the building’s dog run. Chief Inspector Ben Lebovitz says the location had a very busy early morning rush — causing 15-30 minute lines — that ended around 8:30.
“A lot of voting this morning, it’s gone smoothly,” he says. This polling place used to be at the Madison Municipal Building but has since been moved. Lebovitz, who has worked the polls for years, says voters have gotten used to finding where to vote. Around 8:45 a.m. poll workers began to process the around 700 absentee ballots cast in the two wards and shortly before 9:30, Lebovitz went to cast his own ballot only for it to read as unscannable by the tabulating machine.
It’s a “teachable moment” he said to poll workers as he walked them through how to document and issue a replacement ballot. Two election observers were monitoring voting at the polling place, saying it had gone smoothly all morning. One, Jonathan Fisher, is a staff member for Republican U.S. Rep. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald is a member of the House Committee on Administration, which is running an election observer program.
Spirit Lutheran Church, a polling place in Eau Claire , Wis. Photo by Frank Zufall
Spirit Lutheran Church voting site in Eau Claire was packed at 9 a.m. as voters cast ballots. Democratic U.S. congressional candidate Rebecca Cooke, who is challenging Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden in Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, is set to speak at Spirit Lutheran at 10 a.m. today.
At a news conference Monday morning, Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe reminded the public about the absentee ballot counting process and that it will likely take hours after polls close on Tuesday before unofficial results are available.
Local election officials can’t begin processing and counting ballots until the polls open. In most communities across the state, absentee ballots are handled at the polling place where voters who used absentee ballots would have cast their ballots in person. In those places, the ballots are opened, processed and counted when poll staff can find the time in between assisting people who are voting in person.
In about 30 communities across the state, including some of the largest cities, absentee ballots are processed at central count locations, at which all of the community’s absentee ballots are sent to one location to be counted.
Central Count in Milwaukee. (Photo | Isiah Holmes)
In most communities where absentees are counted at the polls, those ballots are treated like that of an in-person voter. The voter’s name is announced and confirmed in the poll book before being fed into the voting machine to be tabulated. Those results then get reported after polls close along with all of the day’s in-person votes from that precinct.
At central count locations, the absentees are kept separate and all of that work to process, confirm with the poll book and feed the ballots into machines happens there.
The central count results then get reported all at once, separate from the precincts where those votes come from, once they’ve all been counted.
Republicans in the state Senate killed a bill proposed earlier this year that would have allowed ballots to be processed, but not counted, starting on the Monday before the election. The change was proposed in the wake of Republican conspiracy theories that ballots were “dumped” in the middle of the night in Milwaukee to swing the 2020 election for President Joe Biden.
Without that proposed change, absentee ballots — especially in Milwaukee — will likely take hours to count and may not be reported until the early hours of Wednesday morning.
“Election officials are always going to prioritize accuracy, integrity and transparency over speed, and just because you’re waiting until the early morning hours doesn’t mean that anything has gone wrong, this just means that election officials, again, are prioritizing accuracy over speed in order to ensure that every legitimate ballot gets counted,” Wolfe said at the news conference. “Processing absentee ballots takes time, especially since Wisconsin is one of just a few states where poll workers and clerks can’t even begin processing absentee ballots until the polls open on Election Day.
“You may see unofficial results coming in from the individual polling places, but those don’t include the absentee numbers for these jurisdictions, because all the absentees are counted in one central facility, and when all the absentees are done being counted, then the absentees are added to their individual polling place totals,” Wolfe added. “So it doesn’t mean anything is wrong if the unofficial totals that you’re watching online or on TV increase once the absentees are added, that’s to be expected.”
More than 1.5 million people have already cast their ballots. Voters set a state record for in-person absentee voting this year, with 949,157 early votes cast. Another 645,477 absentee ballots were requested, which trails the number of mail-in votes cast in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic caused a surge in absentee voting.
Voting rights activists and others gather at the Midtown Center in Milwaukee on the first day of early voting in July 2022. (Photo | Isiah Holmes)
Election observers hover around Bonnie Chang, a member of Milwaukee’s Board of Absentee Canvassers, as she reveals blank flash drives to download vote totals from tabulation machines on Aug. 13. (Matt Vasilogambros | Stateline)
Both federal and state law provide protections against voter intimidation but recent years of widespread Republican activism alleging voter fraud and calling into question the integrity of elections have raised concerns about the issue on Election Day here in Wisconsin.
The Republican Party has promised to station thousands election observers at polling places across the country. At a handful of poll locations during the August election in Glendale, Wisconsin, where there was a Democratic primary in a special election for the 4th Senate District, local officials had to call the police after observers with a history of spreading election-related conspiracy theories became disruptive. The group left after law enforcement was called, but promised to be back in November.
Local election officials are responsible for maintaining security at polling places and have received guidance from the Wisconsin Elections Commission on how to handle observers and what to do if they get unruly.
Under Wisconsin law, it is a felony to “compel, induce, or prevail upon” a voter to vote or not vote a certain way. It is also illegal for employers to prevent employees from taking time off to vote or to distribute printed material that contains “threats intended to influence the political opinions or actions of the employees.”
Additionally, state law provides that no person can “by abduction, duress, or any fraudulent device or contrivance, impede or prevent the free exercise of the franchise at an election,” or “make use of or threaten to make use of force, violence, or restraint in order to induce or compel any person to vote or refrain from voting at an election.”
Most violations of Wisconsin’s voter intimidation laws are class I felonies, which carry the punishment of a fine of up to $10,000, imprisonment for up to 3 years and 6 months, or both. Election officials convicted of voter intimidation are prohibited from acting as an election official for up to five years.
According to the Campaign Legal Center, common types of voter intimidation include:
Verbal or physical confrontation of voters by persons dressed in official-looking uniforms
Physical intimidation, such as standing or hovering close to voters as they attempt to vote
Flyers threatening jail time or other punitive action against persons who vote
Direct confrontation or questioning of voters or asking voters for documentation when none is required
Vandalism of polling places
Use of police officers to threaten or intimidate voters
Photographing or videotaping voters inside a polling place without their consent
Threats made by an employer to the job, wages, or benefits of an employee if he or she does not vote in a particular manner
Occupying the parking lot of a polling place in such a way that voters might be hindered from entering.
Election observers in Wisconsin may challenge any vote, arguing that it has been cast illegally due to ineligibility of the voter.
“Either election officials or fellow voters can challenge the qualification of a voter, but challenges should have reasonable and appropriate support,” the Campaign Legal Center said in a Wisconsin-specific guide on voter intimidation. “A voter can be challenged based on age, residency, citizenship, ability to sign the poll list or other disqualification from voting. A challenge based on an individual’s appearance, speech or inability to speak English is unacceptable. A challenger who abuses the right to challenge can be subject to sanctions.”
However a challenge only disqualifies a vote if “the municipal clerk, board of election commissioners or a challenging elector . . . demonstrates beyond a reasonable doubt that the person does not qualify as an elector or is not properly registered.”
Making baseless or frivolous challenges may constitute violations of the state and federal laws against voter intimidation.
Election observers must sign in when they arrive at a polling place and poll workers have the ability to limit where they’re allowed to be. Observers are also barred from electioneering, taking photos or videos, seeing confidential voter information, having conversations about what’s on the ballot and making phone calls while in the polling place.
Poll workers can remove an election observer for being disruptive.
Last updated: 6:18 am
3 weeks ago
WEC Administrator gives final Election Day reminders
Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe speaks at a virtual press conference after the state Senate voted to fire her on Sept. 14. (Screenshot)
For people going to the polls on Tuesday, state law requires they bring a government-issued ID. The ID is required to prove a voter’s registration, not their residence, so if the registration is up-to-date, the address on the ID does not need to be current, Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe said during a Monday a press conference.
Voters can register at the polls on Election Day, though they’ll need to prove their current residence.
“To register to vote at the polls, a voter will need to show a proof of residence document,” Wolfe said. “So this is something that has to contain your current name and your current residential address. So this could include something like a bank statement, a utility bill, or it could be a current invalid Wisconsin driver license or state ID card. If that ID card has your current name and address on it. Also remember that every single voter in the state of Wisconsin [who] head to the polls tomorrow has to bring an acceptable photo ID. This can include Wisconsin driver license, Wisconsin state ID card, a U.S. passport. It can also include a military or a veterans ID, a tribal ID, a certificate of naturalization and some student IDs.”
Polls close at 8 p.m. on Tuesday. Voters who are waiting in line at 8 should remain in line and they will be allowed to cast a ballot.
If a person still has an absentee ballot to return, it is too late to place it in the mail and have it arrive on time. Voters should now bring that ballot to their local clerk’s office, an absentee ballot drop box if they’re available in that community, their designated polling place, or to their community’s central count location.
After months of campaigning and numerous rally stops in Wisconsin from the two major party candidates, Election Day 2024 has arrived, with polls opening in the state at 7 a.m. Voters can find their polling place online at MyVote.WI.Gov.
On the ballot in the state are the two presidential candidates, the Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris and the Republican, former President Donald Trump. Wisconsin voters will also vote for the race in the U.S. Senate between Democratic incumbent Tammy Baldwin and Republican banker Eric Hovde.
The state also has a few closely watched races for seats in the U.S. House of Representatives; a constitutional referendum on barring non-citizens from voting in the state and the balance of power is up for grabs in the state Legislature under the first elections with newly un-gerrymandered maps. Finally, in local elections across the state voters will decide on school referenda, property tax hikes and who will serve in important county government roles.
Voters at the Wilmar Neighborhood Center on Madison's East side cast their ballots. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
A ballot measure in Wisconsin asking to change one word in the state constitution to prevent non-U.S. citizens from voting in any local, state or federal elections has passed. The effort was the Republican Legislature’s fifth attempt to amend the state constitution this year.
The Associated Press called the outcome at 9:42 p.m. Tuesday. With about 72% of the ballots counted by 11 p.m., “yes” was leading with 70% of the vote to 30% in opposition.
Republicans pointed to a handful of municipalities across the country that have allowed non-citizens to vote in municipal elections like school board races and said the amendment would prevent any Wisconsin communities from doing the same.
“Addressing this issue now will ensure votes are not diluted in the future,” Sen. Julian Bradley (R-Franklin) told Votebeat. “It’s best for the government to address this concern before it becomes a problem.”
Democrats and voting rights advocates said that non-citizen voting isn’t a real problem and that Republicans have shown no proof it is but continue to complain about it as part of their general anti-immigration push in this election. Plus, they said, making changes like this by trying to amend the constitution makes an end run around the normal legislative process and Gov. Tony Evers’ potential veto, while making the state vulnerable to future efforts to make it harder for legal voters to cast a ballot.
“First and foremost, we have a system that works, and I think this is a solution in search for problems,” T.R. Edwards, staff attorney at the voting rights focused Law Forward, said. “Secondarily, it shifts the burden to the voter. … But then third, I think it’s yet another vestige of our gerrymandered Legislature and an escape to actually go through the legislative process to do things that have an actual debate about what works for our state.”
Currently the state Constitution says that “every United States citizen age 18 or older” can vote. The amendment changes the word “every” to “only.”
“Shall section 1 of article III of the constitution, which deals with suffrage, be amended to provide that only a United States citizen age 18 or older who resides in an election district may vote in an election for national, state, or local office or at a statewide or local referendum?” the referendum asked voters.
Recently, Republicans have moved across the country to warn about large-scale non-citizen voting in ways that would swing elections. Yet studies of the voting system across dozens of communities involving millions of votes have found just a handful of cases of non-citizens casting ballots.
Earlier this year, Congress was unable to pass a federal budget over disagreements about a bill that would require citizens to prove their citizenship to register to vote.
The Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation
A survey of a small segment of incarcerated residents in Wisconsin over the year 2024 showed 35% identified as independents, and if they could vote in the upcoming Nov. 5 presidential election 45% would vote for Republican former President Donald Trump while 33% would vote for Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
The data is a result of The Marshall Project’s 2024 Political Survey. The survey, a partnership between The Marshall Project and Columbia University, reached approximately 54,000 incarcerated people in roughly 400 prisons and jails across 45 states and the District of Columbia.
However, even with 54,000 responding, the survey organizers say the sample size is not sufficient to be representative of the over 2 million who are incarcerated in the U.S.
The survey was conducted twice in 2024 with residents responding to questions on a tablet:
Between June 4-July 17 when President Joe Biden (Democrat) was still in the race.
Between August 8-22 after Harris became the Democratic candidate.
Nationwide, as in Wisconsin, the largest share of respondents — 35% — stated their party affiliation was independent. Most incarcerated Wisconsinites favored Trump in the presidential race: 45% for Trump vs. 20% for Biden among a sample of 105 respondents, and 45% for Trump vs. 33% for Harris among a sample of 219 respondents.
Nationwide, with 11,695 taking both surveys, most chose Trump. Trump garnered more than 46% vs. Biden with 20%. But when Harris entered the race, Trump support dropped to 44% and Harris garnered 35%. (But in a survey of 25,092 who just responded to the Trump/Harris contest, 46% supported Trump to 33% for Harris.)
During a zoom call with The Marshall Project and The Journalist’s Resource on Tuesday, Oct 29, Nicole Lewis, engagement editor of The Marshall Project, noted that Biden in the national survey was not the favorite of Black respondents and she credits that to Biden’s support of the 1994 Crime Bill that drove an increase of incarceration, especially for Black men.
But 49% of Black respondents in the national survey said they supported Harris compared with only 30% for Trump. In contrast, 60% of white respondents supported Trump vs. 21% for Harris.
In the related article by The Marshall Project (“Trump remains very popular here”: We surveyed 54,000 people behind bars about the election, by Lewis, Shannon Hefferman and Anna Flagg) reviewing its nationwide survey, the authors noted that Trump has support from a majority of incarcerated Americans, especially white men, even though his policies “are at odds with most criminal justice reformers,” and that he supports the death penalty for convicted drug dealers and “has been critical of efforts to curb police violence and has repeatedly made racist comments about crime.”
The article attributes Trump support to how racial segregation in prison and jails often results in white men tending to watch right-leaning Fox News and Newsmax, while Black inmates tend to watch more liberal-leaning CNN and MSNBC.
The article also noted that some inmates believe because of Trump’s troubles with the law, including 34 felony convictions, he is now more sympathetic to those who have been incarcerated.
Wisconsin prison and jail survey
In the Badger State, 291 incarcerated residents responded to The Marshall Project surveys, and of those, 87% were in county jails and not the state prison system.
With over 20,000 people in Wisconsin state prisons and another 12,000 in county jails, the 291 respondents offer a non-representative sample of the total incarcerated population in the state – the data collected does not statistically identify any meaningful trends.
Even though it is not statistically representative, the surveys offer a rare peek at political preferences for incarcerated people.
Because most of the Wisconsin respondents for the survey were in jail, it’s possible they were in confinement, charged and waiting for a court date, but not convicted, so even if they had been charged with a felony but not convicted on Nov. 5, they would still be eligible to vote, while convicted felons are not eligible to vote.
And if they are in confinement serving a misdemeanor sentence, they are still eligible to vote in Wisconsin because a misdemeanor conviction doesn’t make one ineligible.
There may be some in jail due to a revocation violation of the conditions for felony supervision – probation, parole or extended supervision. Supervision is served after the incarcerated portion of a sentence, and those on felony supervision are not eligible to vote, and if they violate any conditions of their supervision they could land back in jail pending a revocation hearing and eventual return to prison.
In Wisconsin it’s estimated over 45,000 people have served the incarcerated portion of their felony sentence and are out in open society but are still ineligible to vote because they are under supervision – parole, probation or extended supervision (often referred to as “being on paper”).
Of 101 who responded to whether they were eligible to vote in Wisconsin, 58 said they were not, 27/ said they were eligible and 15 were not sure.
Lewis noted for incarcerated or formerly incarcerated persons there is often uncertainty over whether they are eligible to vote and many fear attempting to vote and being charged with a violation and re-incarcerated.
In Wisconsin, the Department of Corrections (DOC) is supposed to keep the Wisconsin Elections Commission updated on the status of felons and whether they are eligible to vote, and then the Election Commission in turn is supposed to inform municipal clerks.
Of 99 who responded to the question of how likely they were to vote in the November election, 48 said they “definitely will not vote” and 24 chose “probably will not vote,” with 14 choosing “probably will vote” and 12 saying they “definitely will vote.”
Clark Merrfield, senior editor of The Journalist Resource, noted in the Zoom call that even in the states of Maine and Vermont where a felony conviction never leads to a loss to voting, in 2018 only one third of incarcerated people registered to vote and only 8% with felonies voted in Vermont and just 6% with a felony voted in Maine.
Lewis said any run-in with the law often leads to disenfranchisement.
“There is some research already that shows that any contact, no matter how small, even a traffic stop, can actually depress people’s civic participation and interest in their civic life,” she said, “so imagine if you’re taken from a population and incarcerated for a period of years. Like what impact is that going to have?”
Concerning their political party affiliation, of the 291 people incarcerated in Wisconsin who responded, 35% chose “Independent” followed by 22% “Democrat,” 21% “Other” and 18% “Republican.”
In the national survey on party affiliation, more chose Republican than those in Wisconsin: 22% nationally versus 18% in Wisconsin.
In both the national and state surveys, Independents garnered 35%.
Lewis said that independent leaning might represent a distrust of both major parties.
Regarding Harris’s record on crime, of the 208 responding, 58% had “no opinion,” 25% said she was “tough on crime” 12% said she was “just right on crime” and 5% said Harris was “not tough enough on crime.”
To the question how should Trump be punished for the crimes for which he has been convicted, of the 90 responding, 42% said he should be “incarcerated” and 36% said he should be “fined” and 21% said Trump should be “fined and put on probation.”
And to the questions whether the U.S. was ready to elect a woman president, of the 209 responding, 53% chose “yes” and 24% chose “no” while 22% selected “not sure.”
For more details from the survey, search Wisconsin at: https://observablehq.com/@themarshallproject/survey3-state-summaries.
People enter a voting precinct to vote in the Michigan primary election at Trombly School Aug. 7, 2018, in Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan. (Bill Pugliano | Getty Images)
In Kenosha, the local Democratic Party office has received calls about residents who put up yard signs supporting Vice President Kamala Harris receiving letters, warning of reprisal and biblical hell fire if they don’t vote for former President Donald Trump.
Lori Hawkins, chair of the Kenosha County Democratic Party, said that people have been reporting the letters to the Kenosha Police Department. “There’s a couple different versions of it, but most people I know have gotten both of them,” Hawkins told Wisconsin Examiner.
One of the letters, images of which were shared with Wisconsin Examiner, opens with the line, “We see that you have Democrat signs on your property.” The letter asks, “are you not aware that when you die that you will be held accountable before almighty God for voting for an open border that allows millions of illegal immigrants to freely enter, many of which are felons and evil people that have been doing deadly harm and will continue to do so [?]” The letter goes on to warn that voters will be held accountable by God “for voting for communism to take over America,” ending that “we don’t want anyone going to horrible hell, but you are on a fast path to it.”
After receiving multiple reports about the letters, Hawkins said that the Kenosha County Democratic Party decided to make a social media post, to ensure that people knew that they weren’t alone. The letters are typed and unsigned. “We know that the people who are putting these letters in mailboxes really believe the topics or the issues that are in the letters, and they’re probably doing it because they are fearful,” said Hawkins. “We know that it’s a bigger organization that’s fomenting this kind of fear, and playing to people’s anxieties and worries.”
Hawkins feels that the letters are “twisting the platform of Democrats who are on the ballot in a way that is, you know, pretty vile and false.” Hawkins has also received reports of Democratic yard and barn signs being slashed, defaced, driven over, or stolen. “And let’s be clear, I have heard and seen none of that happening with the large political signs belonging to Republican Party candidates,” said Hawkins. “So this is just an attempt to silence people, and make people fearful.”
Still, hundreds of people turned out for recent canvassing days held by the Kenosha County Democratic Party. Nancy Locante, a volunteer with the Kenosha County Democratic Party, received one of the letters, mailed to her with no return address. “America is at a crossroads,” one of the letters she received stated. The letter described “transgender ideology infecting our children’s schools,” high grocery bills, immigration, and persecution of “Christian values.” The letter urged Locante to vote for “biblical truths.” Locante said, “that’s quite a bit of intimidation, but of course they don’t have the guts to put their names on it. It can be a little unsettling knowing that they are watching you. But it’s unfortunate that these people’s beliefs are so misguided.” Locante hasn’t been deterred. “I’m walking around with all my buttons and merch on,” she said.
Locante plans to continue helping the Kenosha County Democratic Party canvass neighborhoods ahead of Nov. 5.
In Milwaukee, Leaders Igniting Transformation (LIT) have knocked on over 600,000 doors urging people to get out and vote. LIT’s organizers said they have received reports of identical letters in communities between Milwaukee and Kenosha.
In early October, the Milwaukee suburban city of Wauwatosa experienced a string of sign vandalism, which targeted Democratic-endorsed yard signs. From Wauwatosa’s southeastern corner near 55th street and Wisconsin, all the way up to the northwestern corner of 81st street and Meinecke avenue, signs were defaced with red spray paint. The Republican Party of Milwaukee County denounced the vandalism in Wauwatosa, and said those responsible should be held accountable. In September, red spray paint was used to deface Democratic signs in Madison.
Both presidential campaigns continue to focus heavily on Wisconsin. Harris and Trump held competing rallies in Milwaukee Friday night ahead of Election Day on Tuesday.
Voting carrels set up at Madison's Hawthorne Library on Election Day 2022. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
The Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) approved communication to election clerks Friday to help prepare them for a potential recount of presidential election results in Wisconsin. Commissioners also approved guidance for clerks about how to handle prospective voters who present photo IDs marked as “Limited Term” and “NonDomiciled,” which could indicate they weren’t citizens when it was issued.
Wisconsin received petitions for a full or partial recount of the presidential elections in 2020 and 2016. In both years, the results in Wisconsin were decided by about 20,000 votes. Under state law, a recount is permitted if the margin is 1% or less between the top two vote-getters.
Meagan Wolfe | Wisconsin Elections Commission
WEC Administrator Meagan Wolfe said the materials were being considered to make sure that the commission can communicate to local election officials the timeline and process for a recount, “so everybody’s prepared and they can staff appropriately.”
“In 2020, the Commission considered making some changes after the election to clean up things … and that was met with a lot of resistance because people didn’t want the commission to be changing things once we already knew who the parties to a recount might be,” Wolfe said. “Today’s memorandum and the draft communication are really meant to make sure that everybody’s on the same page.”
Commissioners unanimously approved the communication, which includes information about recount deadlines, information needed to determine recount fees, minor revisions to the recount manual and about how commission staff plans to compile unofficial county results to track recount margins.
A recount must be requested within one business day of the elections commission receiving all the completed county canvasses. The deadline for a recount would be Nov. 30.
“We’ve presented a timeline that shows exactly when the various aspects of a recount would take place, so that again our local election officials and any potential parties to a recount would be able to prepare for that possibility and understand when that recount could potentially occur,” Wolfe said.
The communication will also include information to help clerks make preliminary estimates of the cost of a recount. Wolfe said election officials should plan ahead so that if a candidate is within the recall margin and asks for a recount, officials can produce a cost estimate quickly, which the candidate must pay for. In 2020, former President Donald Trump paid $3 million for recounts in Milwaukee and Dane Counties, which confirmed President Joe Biden’s victory.
“We don’t want to be thinking about it for the first time when there is some type of recount pending,” Wolfe said. “We want to think about it ahead of time and make sure that everybody’s prepared to provide that information in a very expedited way.”
Wisconsin has a decentralized election system with 1,850 Municipal clerks and 72 County clerks — a total of 1,922 local election officials. On election night, municipal clerks will report unofficial results to their county clerks. The Commission plans to go to each county’s website, see the unofficial results that have been posted, and enter the data in a spreadsheet for the federal contest and for any other state-level contest where the margin may be close and post it publicly.
“Usually we do this sort of behind the scenes because we have to know, is there a contest or candidate where we’re within the recount margin if they’re eligible,” Wolfe said, “but I think this is a more transparent way to do it, so that everybody knows where that data comes from and where to turn to to find whether or not a contest is eligible to request a recount.”
Clerks will receive communication about one substantive change to the recount guide: the removal of guidance that clerks can conduct administrative review of recount materials before the Board of Canvassers meets. The change was for transparency and statutory compliance purposes, according to the draft communication. Other changes were not substantive and added statutory citations, provided additional detail or clarity or reorganized information to resolve ambiguities.
The commission also approved guidance for clerks about IDs issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) with “limited term” and “NonDomiciled” labels, which are issued to temporary visitors. The DMV has been able to issue these types of ID since 2016.
Wolfe said during a press call that there have been some questions about noncitizens in voting, and that there’s been “a lot of really inaccurate information” on the issue. She emphasized that noncitizens are not allowed to vote in elections. Republicans have focused on the issue of noncitizen voting in recent years, and placed a referendum on ballots this November to amend the Wisconsin Constitution to change one word to prevent non-U.S. citizens from voting in any local, state or federal elections.
“We understand that some non-citizens that are in the country legally may have a photo ID issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles that shows the word ‘limited term’ or ‘non-domicile.’ It’s also important to understand that, in many circumstances, an individual who may have that type of ID could in fact be a U.S citizen, if they have since been naturalized after receiving that limited-term license,” Wolfe said during a press call ahead of the meeting. “This is why the guidance our commission is considering today emphasizes to poll workers that they would need to follow proper challenge procedures that would allow the voter to respond to any such allegations.”
The guidance explains that IDs marked “Limited Term” indicate that the ID holder is “a non-immigrant (Temporary Visitor) with legal status in the United States” and IDs marked “Non-Domiciled” indicate a commercial driver’s license holder is “a non-immigrant (Temporary Visitor) with legal status in the United States.” It says that, in accordance with statutes, the licenses must be accepted as a proper form of voter identification, but that possessing a valid identification does not necessarily mean the holder of the identification is eligible to vote.
The draft guidance states that if an election inspector notices that a photo ID contains an indication that the individual may not be eligible to vote, state law directs that the inspector examine whether the person’s qualifications to vote should be challenged. It also provides a script clerks can use.
“This is not a change in procedure or law,” Wolfe continued. “The challenge process has always been an avenue for election inspectors to ensure that only eligible voters can participate. For instance, if a poll worker were to see that based on someone’s photo ID, they’re only 16 years old, they would initiate the same challenge process to that voter’s eligibility.”
Commissioner Bob Spindell, a Republican, cast the only vote against the guidance.
Commissioner Mark Thomsen, a Democrat, said it’s unfortunate the issue came up.
“We used this law in 2016 when Donald Trump won, and we’ve used it in every election since that. This hasn’t been an issue,” Thomsen said. “I voted for years without even ever giving my poll worker an ID. We used to actually just trust each other and our neighbors to run the elections, and I really believe we have to get back there. I trust the people in my neighborhood to run the election, and we know we run clean elections in Wisconsin, and we should stop the talk about all this nonsense that we can’t trust our neighbors.”
Cortaisha Thompson knocks on doors on Milwaukee's southside. (Photo | Isiah Holmes)
A strong, warm fall wind accompanied Cortaisha Thompson as she walked through a south-side Milwaukee neighborhood. “I like to be out talking in the community just like, interacting with people,” the 26-year-old told Wisconsin Examiner. About 20 canvassers from Leaders Igniting Transformation (LIT), including Thompson, have spent months knocking on doors throughout Milwaukee ensuring voters have what they need in the election on Tuesday, Nov. 5.
Calmly walking up a staircase leading to a front door, Thompson knocked and waited. After about 30 seconds without an answer, she left a piece of voter education literature in the door and moved on. At the next house a woman answered the door, saying that she planned to vote on Election Day, but that she didn’t know that early voting was an option. Early in-person voting at polling places in Milwaukee began on Oct. 22 and will run until Nov. 3.
A voting ward sign in Milwaukee County. (Photo | Isiah Holmes)
Whether anyone answers the door when she knocks is a toss up, Thompson said. In some neighborhoods, doors stay shut the majority of the time. Sometimes it depends on the time of day and whether most people are at school or work. Thompson, who lives closer to Racine, has also noticed how different neighborhoods in Milwaukee have different vibes. On the South Side, canvassing walks can be quieter. When Thompson canvassed the North Side, she encountered more residents willing to talk about their political views.
“I feel like I get more contacts and more energized people that’s willing to open the door and actually talk,” said Thompson said of North Side neighborhoods. Since LIT’s goal is simply voter education and not candidate endorsement, Thompson doesn’t try to convince people to vote one way or another. Especially in Milwaukee, one of America’s most segregated cities, Thompson sees how people can feel pigeon-holed. “They feel like they have to vote for Trump, or they have to vote for Kamala,” said Thompson. “I just tell them like, we’re not here to tell you who to vote for or anything. We just want to make sure you get out to vote, and get your opinion out there.”
Signs for both former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris sprinkled the diverse neighborhood. Some homes were adorned with colorful decorations. As Thompson approached a couple of doors, where no one answered, she noticed local police association stickers. She said she enjoyed her time in Milwaukee, and even is considering moving to the city.
Each day she canvassed a different neighborhood or part of town. When Thompson canvassed in wealthier neighborhoods with residents “in those super big houses,” people often reacted with hostility to LIT, she said, “cussing at us and stuff like that.” On the South Side she felt more welcome.
Periodically, Thompson would stop to check her phone to see what house is next on the list. Every canvasser is expected to knock on 175 doors a day. A couple months ago, the daily metric shot up to 275, which limited the amount of time canvassers could spend at each door. LIT has a goal to knock on 650,000 doors before election day, and has already reached more than 620,000.
Voting rights activists and others gather at the Midtown Center in Milwaukee on the first day of early voting in July 2022. (Photo | Isiah Holmes)
Thompson sees “a big mix of support” for different candidates neighborhood by neighborhood. “I haven’t gotten that yet, an area that’s strictly for her, or strictly with him,” said Thompson. A Marquette University poll released on Wednesday shows Harris and Trump in a virtual dead heat, 50% to -49% among likely voters.
Similarly, the race between Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Republican challenger Eric Hovde showed Baldwin leading 51% to 49%, a big drop from the seven-point lead Baldwin held in September.
Many voters Thompson has encountered also seem squarely focused on the presidential election. There’s also the Republican-backed constitutional amendments on the ballot this year, which LIT is also informing voters of. “There’s people that say they don’t even go out and vote for no election if it’s not the presidential one,” said Thompson. LIT heard the same thing from voters when knocking on doors for school referendums, mayoral races, and other elections. “None of it.”
That attitude can change, though, when voters are asked about issues instead of about candidates. Thompson recalled speaking to a woman about health care access. “Her daughter got into a car accident and was in a coma and all type of stuff and they didn’t have the money to pay for her treatment,” said Thompson. “And then she started crying talking to me about it so I was like, kind of sad about it…There’s really people out here affected by not having that type of stuff. Majorly affected.” Reproductive rights was another recurring issue Thompson has heard while canvassing. Shortly after telling the story Thompson walked into a local convenience store for some water. When the store manager he realized Thompson was out canvassing voters, he offered the water for free.
Prior to getting involved in LIT, Thompson said she never paid much attention to politics. Older relatives of hers, however, were politically active and pushed her to get involved. When she did, and then started working with LIT, her whole perspective changed. “They bring a lot of stuff to your attention to make you realize, like, your vote really matters, and it really counts,” said Thompson. “Especially in times like this where it’s like if it don’t go the way you want it to go, you don’t know how it’s going to go afterward.”
This article has been edited to update the numbers of doors knocked by LIT, and to correct a misspelled name.
Wisconsin Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski speaks at a press conference defending ballot drop boxes and local election officials on Oct. 30, 2024 in Madison | Wisconsin Examiner photo
As the 2024 campaign air war reaches a furious crescendo over our battleground state, a few groups of public-spirited citizens have been quietly organizing on the ground to shore up the foundations of our democracy.
Take just three events that occurred during the week before Election Day:
A bipartisan group of current and former elected officials signed a pledge to respect the results of the election — whatever they may be.
A separate bipartisan group of Wisconsin political leaders held a press conference to declare their confidence in the security of Wisconsin’s election system and to pledge to fight back against people who cast doubt on the legitimacy of the results — whatever they may be
Wisconsin Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski and grassroots pro-democracy advocates held an event in downtown Madison to support the use of ballot drop boxes and to defend local election clerks in a season of threats, intimidation and destabilizing conspiracy theories.
All of these public declarations of confidence in the basic voting process we used to take for granted show just how far from normal we’ve drifted.
U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan
As Democratic U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan put it in a joint press conference with Republican former U.S. Rep. Reid Ribble, “This is sort of no-brainer stuff.” Yet the two Wisconsin congressmen celebrated the announcement that they got 76 state politicians to sign their pledge to honor the results of the 2024 election.
Notably, however, the list of politicians who agreed to respect what Ribble described as “democracy 101” — that “the American people get to decide who leads them; candidates need to accept the results” — does not include many members of the party of Donald Trump.
Petition signers so far include 64 Democrats, one independent and nine Republicans. Worse, nearly every one of those Republicans has the word “former” next to his or her title.
Technically state Sen. Rob Cowles is still serving out the remainder of his term. But the legislative session is over and Cowles won’t be back. After announcing his retirement, he made waves this week when he renounced Trump and endorsed Kamala Harris for president. Other GOP officials who pledged to respect the election results include former state Sen. Kathy Bernier, who leads the group Keep Our Republic, which has been fighting election conspiracy theories and trying to rebuild trust in local election clerks, and former state Sen. Luther Olsen, a public school advocate who worked across the aisle back before the current era of intense political polarization.
On the same day Pocan and Ribble made their announcement, a different bipartisan group of Wisconsin leaders, members of the Democracy Defense Project – Wisconsin state board, held a press call to emphasize the protections in place to keep the state’s elections safe and to call out “bad actors” who might try to undermine the results.
Former Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes and former Republican Attorney General JB Van Hollen joined the call along with former Republican U.S. Rep. Scott Klug and former state Democratic Party Chair Mike Tate.
Mandela Barnes | Photo Courtesy Power to the Polls
“I can speak from personal experience, having won and lost very close elections, that the process here in Wisconsin is safe and secure, and that’s exactly why you have this bipartisan group together,” said Barnes, who narrowly lost his challenge to U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson in 2022.
Barnes said false claims undermining confidence in voting and tabulating election results “have been manufactured by sore losers.”
If you lose an election, he added, “you have the option to run again at some point. But what you should not do is question the integrity or try to impugn our election administrators just because the people have said no to you.”
Former AG Van Hollen, a conservative Republican, seconded that emotion. “I’m here to tell you as the former chief law enforcement officer for the state of Wisconsin that our system does work,” he said.
Van Hollen reminded people that he pushed for Wisconsin’s strict voter I.D. law, which Democrats opposed as a voter-suppression measure. “Whether you were for it or against it, the bottom line is that it is in place right now. If people pretended to be somebody else when they came in and voted in the past, they cannot do that any longer,” Van Hollen said.
For voters of every stripe, he added, “Get out and vote. Your vote will count. Our system works and we have to trust in the result of that system.”
Former Republican Congressman Klug underscored that Trump lost Wisconsin in 2020 “and it had nothing to do with election fraud. It just had to do with folks who decided to vote in a different direction.”
He also praised local election workers and volunteers, like those who take his ballot at his Lutheran church, and “who make Wisconsin’s election system one of the best in the country.”
Tate, the former Democratic Party chair, warned that the unusually high volume of early voting and a state law that forbids clerks from counting ballots until polls close on election night will likely mean delays in results coming in. “There are good reasons for that,” he said, “because our good election workers are exercising extreme due diligence.”
In a separate press conference outside City Hall in Madison, members of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign and Secretary of State Godlewski also chimed in to defend Wisconsin’s hard-working election clerks and combat conspiracy theories.
Nick Ramos, Wisconsin Democracy Campaign
Nick Ramos, the Democracy Campaign’s executive director, connected recent news stories about drop-box arson in other states to the hijacking of a local dropbox by the mayor of Wausau, Wisconsin, who physically removed his town’s ballot drop box and locked it in his office. The mayor was forced to return the box and is now the subject of a criminal investigation. It’s important to hold people accountable who try to interfere with voting, Ramos said, because otherwise “people will try to imitate those types of bad behaviors.”
Besides sticking up for beleaguered election officials, the pro-drop-box press conference featured testimony from Martha Siravo, a founder of Madtown Mommas and Disability Advocates. Siravo, who uses a wheelchair, explained that having a drop box makes it much easier for her to vote.
Godlewski described conversations with other voters around the state — a busy working mom, an elderly woman who has to ask her kids for rides when she needs to go out, and a young man who works the night shift — all of whom were able to vote by dropping their absentee ballots in a secure drop box, but who might not have made it to the polls during regular voting hours. “These stories are real and that’s why drop boxes matter,” Godlewski said. Restoring drop boxes is part of “helping ensure Wisconsin remains a state where every vote matters.”
That’s the spirit we need going into this fraught election, and for whatever comes after.
The U.S. Supreme Court (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)
In a significant decision, the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday granted a temporary stay in the ongoing legal dispute over Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s executive order that resulted in the removal of over 6,000 Virginians from the state’s voter rolls.
The stay pauses a lower court’s ruling that would have required the state to restore 1,600 voters to the rolls, allowing Youngkin’s directive to remain in effect and voter removals to continue as the case proceeds.
The court’s six conservative justices supported the stay, with the three liberals dissenting.
Youngkin in a statement hailed the court’s decision as “a victory for commonsense and election fairness.”
“I am grateful for the work of Attorney General Jason Miyares on this critical fight to protect the fundamental rights of U.S. citizens. Clean voter rolls are one important part of a comprehensive approach we are taking to ensure the fairness of our elections,” Youngkin said, adding that the ruling would ensure a secure election on Nov. 5.
“Virginians can cast their ballots on Election Day knowing that Virginia’s elections are fair, secure, and free from politically-motivated interference,” he said.
The order comes after the Virginia Republican Party filed an amicus brief Tuesday supporting Youngkin’s efforts, arguing that removing noncitizens from the voter rolls should not be delayed due to the federally mandated “quiet period” — a buffer period around elections meant to avoid disruptions to voter records.
The Republican brief argues that the governor’s order was based on data from the Department of Motor Vehicles and focused on noncitizens, and thus does not constitute a “systematic” voter purge restricted by the quiet period.
Opposition to the order has come from various groups, including former GOP lawmakers such as Barbara Comstock, Denver Riggleman, and Adam Kinzinger, who filed a separate brief urging the Supreme Court to deny the stay. They argue that hastily removing voters could lead to eligible citizens losing their rights, citing concerns over the potential exclusion of legitimate voters.
Attorney General Jason Miyares and Youngkin’s administration maintain that the executive order is a necessary step for election security. Critics, however, argue that the purge risks disenfranchising Virginians and disproportionately impacts minority voters, calling the move part of a larger trend of restrictive voting policies.
With the stay in place, the case is likely to continue drawing national attention as the election nears, spotlighting debates over voting rights, citizenship, and electoral integrity.
It could also lead to confusion at the polls next Tuesday, because it remains unclear what information voters who have been purged would need to show for same-day registration, said Henry Chambers, a professor for constitutional law at the University of Richmond School of Law.
“The administration is claiming that there is sufficient evidence to knock someone off the rolls. If that’s true, and if a registrar has said this person shouldn’t be on the roll, I’m not sure what kind of information would convince the registrar that the person should be on the rolls and should have their provisional ballot counted. And that’s a tricky issue.”
Chambers added that it also remains unclear what the Supreme Court ruling means for the federal suit filed by the Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights and the League of Women Voters of Virginia earlier this month which alleges that the process used to purge the rolls violates the 90-day quiet period and therefore disenfranchises eligible voters while raising concerns over transparency and accuracy in the state’s voter registration system.
“In theory, the case goes back to the drawing board and you need to run it as a sort of a regular merits case as opposed to just an injunction case. But the problem with that is that the point of the case is that the 90-day quiet period is going to be over once election day is done,” Chambers said. “Then the question becomes, is the purge program in and of itself unlawful in general?’”
Some state lawmakers have signaled they are ready to tackle that question, and the law that undergirds it.
State Sen. Travis Hackworth, R-Tazewell County, said in a phone interview Wednesday that in the 2025 legislative session, he would “be open to looking at anything” in the 2006 law that would limit potential confusion at the polls.
“The bottom line is, if you are a U.S. citizen, we want you to vote, it’s your right and duty to vote,” said Hackworth, a member of the Senate Privileges & Election who was “very disheartened” when the lower court ruled to halt Youngkin’s order.
If any among the affected 1,600 Virginians believe they have been removed from the voter rolls in error, Hackworth urged them to still cast a provisional ballot bringing documentation proving their citizenship status and let the local electoral board “figure that out.”
“I think that maybe we are kind of overcomplicating this process, because anybody still has the right on the day of to say, ‘I have been purged from the voter rolls, I am a citizen of the United States, and I want to vote.’ If you have that much conviction to go to the polls and vote provisional, you will bring something that’s going to back up your claim that you are a citizen.”
Virginia Mercury editor Samantha Willis contributed to this report.
Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Samantha Willis for questions: info@virginiamercury.com. Follow Virginia Mercury on Facebook and X.
With early voting underway and only six days until Election Day, on the streets around the State Capitol and on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, we asked people who they want to become the next president of the United States and what are the issues that matter to them.
Wisconsin is one of the key swing states that could determine whether former President Donald Trump returns to the White House or Kamala Harris makes history to become the first woman to hold that office.
At one end of the iconic State Street is the Capitol and at the other lies the UW-Madison campus, home to nearly 50,000 students.
On your way down State Street, you can see shop windows with posters of Kamala Harris while around the Capitol on Monday a “Japan supports Trump” demonstration carried Trump flags.
At the Farmers Market on Saturday there were campaign tables set up with leaflets and flags. The election is hard to escape.
In a series of vox populi interviews, voters who gave only their first names spoke with reporter James Gould.
Jim, a middle-aged man who stopped to talk, said he was voting for “Trump, definitely.”
Asked why, he said former President Donald Trump “has proven he can do the job” and is “hands down” a more capable candidate than Kamala Harris.
The main issues in this election for Jim are the “economy and immigration.”
UW student Zoe said her top concerns as she casts her vote will be “abortion rights, women’s rights and housing.”
She said women anywhere in the United States should have the “ability to get our help.”
Zoe said it is “truly difficult” for anyone in the “middle class to get affordable housing and live comfortably,” adding that Madison “has recently got so expensive.”
With all that in mind, she is voting for Kamala Harris.
Backing up that claim about the rising cost of living was another UW student, Austin. He added that anyone “working in the middle-class” is having a really hard time. Austin said he believes that “Kamala Harris has a plan to fix it” and doesn’t think Donald Trump has.
A ballot drop box damaged in a suspected arson incident in Vancouver, Washington, on Oct. 28, 2024. (Monika Spykerman/The Columbian)
State and federal authorities are investigating a deliberately set fire that destroyed ballots inside a drop box in southwest Washington on Monday morning.
Ruined ballots were pulled from the drop box at Fisher’s Landing Transit Center in Vancouver. Some may still be able to be duplicated and tallied, officials said.
“It’s heartbreaking. It’s a direct attack on democracy,” said Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey.
Kimsey said hundreds of ballots were destroyed. It was not immediately known exactly how many ballots were burned or damaged. The FBI is among the agencies investigating the incident.
Vancouver is located in the 3rd Congressional District, where Democratic U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is running for reelection against Republican Joe Kent. The race is one of a handful nationwide expected to determine partisan control of the U.S. House. In 2022, Gluesenkamp Perez beat Kent by 2,629 votes.
In a statement, Gluesenkamp Perez called for “an overnight law enforcement presence” at all drop boxes in the county through Election Day. “Southwest Washington cannot risk a single vote being lost to arson and political violence,” she said.
At about 4 a.m. on Monday, Vancouver Police responded to a report that the ballot drop box at 3510 SE 164th Ave. was smoking and on fire. When officers arrived, they located a suspicious device next to the box, according to a police report.
The fire was extinguished and the Metro Explosive Disposal Unit collected the device. Arson investigators from the city police and fire marshal office responded.
After viewing the damaged box, Kimsey said it appeared to him that the fire was set outside and got inside the box.
Ballots were last collected from that box at 11 a.m. Saturday. “Anyone who used that drop box after 11 a.m. should get a replacement,” he said.
Clark County first installed ballot drop boxes in 2005. It now has 23. The one at Fisher’s Landing will be replaced on Monday, Kimsey said.
As a result of the incident, he said the county will modify its pick-up schedule to ensure ballots are retrieved each evening.
Earlier this month, before voting began, someone caused minor damage to a drop box in downtown Vancouver. Kimsey said law enforcement is investigating and did not know if it is related to what occurred Monday.
Meanwhile, police in Portland, Oregon are investigating the discovery of an incendiary device inside a ballot box at around 3:30 a.m. Monday.
In Oregon, the Multnomah County elections division said in a press release that fire suppressant inside the box protected nearly all of the ballots. Three were damaged, and the elections office plans to contact those voters so they can receive replacement ballots.
Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs on Monday denounced the arson and said he’s confident any “impacted voter” will get a replacement ballot in time to participate in the Nov. 5 election.
“I strongly denounce any acts of terror that aim to disrupt lawful and fair elections in Washington state,” he said. “Despite this incident, I have complete confidence in our county elections official’s ability to keep Washington’s elections safe and secure for all voters.”
The leader of the Washington State Republican Party said what occurred in Vancouver reinforces the need for Washington to ditch vote-by-mail.
“Washington needs to get back to in-person, same-day voting,” party chairman Jim Walsh said in a statement. “Our experiment with ‘100% mail-in-voting’ is not secure, because of the broken chain-of-custody issues inherent in mail-in voting. These arson attacks are proof of that.”
Washington State Democratic Party Chair Shasti Conrad urged voters who used the dropbox to check the status of their ballots.
“Voting is safe and easy, and Washington state is proud to have one of the most secure elections systems in the country,” Conrad said in a statement. “We take the rights of every voter extremely seriously.”
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Election officials have expressed confidence in Wisconsin’s election system and its ability to withstand any 2020-style attempts to overturn the results — yet some members of the state’s Republican party, and Donald Trump himself, have continued their work of the past four years to undermine trust in the system.
On Friday, Trump posted on X that if elected he would prosecute people who “cheated” in the election.
“I, together with many Attorneys and Legal Scholars, am watching the Sanctity of the 2024 Presidential Election very closely because I know, better than most, the rampant Cheating and Skullduggery that has taken place by the Democrats in the 2020 Presidential Election,” he wrote. “It was a Disgrace to our Nation! Therefore, the 2024 Election, where Votes have just started being cast, will be under the closest professional scrutiny and, WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again. We cannot let our Country further devolve into a Third World Nation, AND WE WON’T! Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials. Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.”
After the 2020 election, Wisconsin Republicans formed the plan that became the fake elector scheme. In Wisconsin and six other states where President Joe Biden won, slates of Republicans cast fraudulent Electoral College votes for Trump. Those votes became the basis for Republican members of Congress’ effort to vote to change the results of the election and give the victory to Trump on Jan. 6, 2021.
In the months leading up to the 2024 election, election experts here have pointed to legal developments that should prevent a similar effort this year. The Republicans who took part in Wisconsin’s fake elector scheme have been barred from serving as presidential electors, Congress passed a law making it harder for them to dispute election results and more people are watching than in 2020.
Absentee counting
But some conspiracy theories that abounded after 2020 have persisted. Republicans in Wisconsin claimed that voter fraud had occurred in Milwaukee because thousands of votes from the largely Democratic voting city were “dumped” in the middle of the night, flipping the election to President Joe Biden.
The votes hadn’t been dumped. Instead the city — dealing with a massive increase in absentee voting because of the COVID-19 pandemic — took longer to count those ballots at its central count location.
While most communities in the state count absentee ballots at the same polling place where the voters who cast them would vote in person, 36 communities send their absentee ballots to be counted together at one location.
In response to the conspiracy theories about late night “ballot dumps,” the state Legislature considered a bill that would allow local election officials to begin processing absentee ballots on the Monday before the election. Local clerks would be able to open absentee envelopes and get the ballots ready to be counted, though not actually fed into tabulating machines, ahead of time, which would have allowed the counting on Election Day to move faster.
The bill passed the Assembly, but Republicans in the state Senate killed it.
On Thursday, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) blamed state Rep. Janel Brandtjen (R-Menomonee Falls) for the bill’s failure. Brandtjen has been one of the Legislature’s most outspoken election conspiracy theorists. Some of Wisconsin’s most prominent election deniers had opposed the bill’s passage during public hearings — alleging that if the ballots were processed ahead of time, nefarious actors could figure out exactly how many fraudulent votes were needed to swing the result.
Wisconsin Elections Commission Chair Ann Jacobs expressed her exasperation on social media: “It was based on her conspiracy theory that (somehow) if the 10’s of 1,000’s of envelopes were opened early, someone could figure out the exact # of fake ballots (how? Who knows!) would be filled out & added to the ballot count. Complete nonsense yet here we are!”
Because the bill failed, and because many voters have continued to use the absentee and early voting processes after the pandemic, it’s likely that Milwaukee will again report results long after polls close on Election Day.
Wisconsin’s system
Unlike most other states, Wisconsin’s election system is decentralized. Administration of elections is handled by the 1,850 municipal clerks working across the state. Each clerk is responsible for the election within their community.
At a virtual event hosted on Friday by Keep Our Republic — an organization that has spent four years trying to rebuild trust in the election system by explaining to skeptics exactly how the system works — former Wisconsin Congressman Reid Ribble said that if a person can’t trust politicians that the system is safe and secure, they should trust their local clerk and their friends and neighbors who volunteer as poll workers.
“Elections in Wisconsin are fair and safe and the 1,800 county and municipal clerks that are running those elections, and the thousands and thousands of local volunteers and poll workers, are working very hard to do their jobs in a non-partisan manner,” Ribble said. “I’ve often told friends of mine and other citizens … I get it if you don’t trust politicians. One person you should be able to trust is that — usually a senior citizen — poll worker at your local precinct that’s checking your ID and giving you a ballot and making sure that everything is done correctly. You often see these people at your grocery store. They might sit two or three rows in front of you at church and these are your friends. They’re your neighbors. They’re people that are concerned about defending democracy and seeing it unfold in front of their very eyes.”
Once polls close on Election Day and the votes are tallied, unofficial results get sent to county clerks, who report those preliminary numbers. It’s from those initial reports that media organizations use statistical processes to “call” races, declaring who has won. But the actual winners aren’t officially declared until the results are certified at multiple levels.
This multi-step process gives election experts another layer of assurance that despite continued conspiracy theories, Wisconsin’s system is resistant to meddling.
Each municipality convenes a Board of Canvass, a multi-member body that reviews the community’s election results and makes sure that there aren’t any irregularities — making sure that the number of ballots cast equals the number of people who signed the poll books, for example.
Board of canvass members live in that community, which experts say makes it hard for them to throw a wrench in the process and refuse to certify results, because they’d be declaring that their friends and neighbors’ votes shouldn’t count. This differs from states such as Georgia, where fears have arisen after last-minute process changes that partisan officials placed in this step of the process could throw out results, swaying the election to Trump.
After the local board certifies the results, in Wisconsin, a similar body at the county level does the same. Then the state elections commission reviews the tallies and the chair of the commission certifies the results. Gov. Tony Evers will then certify whether the Democratic or Republican slate of electors has been chosen.
On Dec. 17 this year, the electors will meet and cast their Electoral College votes for the winner of each state.
Lawsuits
Ahead of the 2020 election, many lawsuits were filed as questions arose over how to conduct a presidential election during a pandemic. After Biden won, Trump and his campaign undertook a flurry of legal efforts in an attempt to overturn the results.
UW-Madison Law School Professor Robert Yablon said at the Keep Our Republic event Friday that 2024 has seen even more litigation than 2020.
“In Wisconsin and around the country, election contests are increasingly being waged, not just in the court of public opinion, but in actual courts,” Yablon said. “The volume of litigation that we have seen in Wisconsin in 2024 is already higher than we saw in 2020, despite the fact that we’re no longer dealing with a pandemic that’s creating an array of controversies and questions about what sort of voting accommodations to be providing.”
The most significant lawsuit ended when the Wisconsin Supreme Court overturned a previous decision that outlawed the use of absentee ballot drop boxes. Drop boxes became very popular with the rise in absentee voting in 2020, but Republicans turned against them as conspiracy theories spread, claiming the boxes are vulnerable to fraud. Hundreds of drop boxes were in place across the state in 2020, but despite being legal again this year, only 78 are being used.
A lawsuit has also changed rules guiding absentee witness signatures. Absentee voters are required to have someone witness their ballot by signing the absentee ballot envelope and providing their address. If the address isn’t included, the ballot can’t be counted.
In the past, local clerks have been given some discretion to add missing information to the address line. If, for example, a married couple filled out their ballots together and a voter’s spouse wrote “ditto,” the clerk could write in the complete address. Or if the clerk knows where the person lives, they could add that information themselves, similarly if the person left off a zip code or city name, the clerk could complete it.
This practice was banned by a 2020 court decision, but subsequent lawsuits have clarified that the ballot must be counted “as long as the certificate contains enough information for the clerk to reasonably be able to identify the place where a witness may be communicated with,” Yablon said.
A number of other lawsuits amount to what Yablon said are efforts to sow distrust in the system, even if they won’t be resolved ahead of the election. Two of these lawsuits involve the state’s voter rolls and when election officials are required to deactivate a voter’s registration.
Some Republicans have become obsessed with the voter registration system in recent years, claiming that election officials are keeping voters active in an effort to allow fraudulent votes.
“To some extent, it seems like these cases are serving to perpetuate and reinforce dubious doubts about legitimacy of the election, and to feed into narratives that the results shouldn’t be trusted,” Yablon said. “They’re trying to implicitly suggest that our voter rolls are bloated, and so there are many people on them who might vote who shouldn’t be voting.”
“The reality is that this is a lawsuit that is not likely to create any action,” he added. “We’re not going to start purging voters days before the election.”
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