Written by Sarah Halpern-Meekin, director of UW-Madison’s Institute for Research on Poverty and a professor of public affairs with the La Follette School of Public Affairs and the Vaughn Bascom Professor of Women, Family, and Community in the School of Human Ecology.
It would “require something extraordinary” for a court to strike down voter ID if it’s in the constitution, said University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Barry Burden, unless justices decide it conflicts with another part of the constitution.
“Some voters don’t even know that there’s a constitutional amendment on the ballot until they get to the polls,” said Bryna Godar, a staff attorney at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative.
“The first time that you’re encountering those typically is when you’re going to vote, which gives you less time to talk to other people about it and to look up more information about it,” she said.
Steph Tai, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School, said many insurers wanted to avoid paying for cleanup costs. Despite broad language, some insurance companies were ordered to pay hundreds of millions of dollars. Tai said that’s prompted more express exclusions, such as those for PFAS.
“I think it’s partly because a lot of insurance companies have realized how much they’ve been spending on defending companies in this litigation,” Tai said. “They just want out.”
UW Health Distinguished Psychologist Dr. Shilagh Mirgain has advice for talking to your kids about school shootings. She says if they are old enough to hear about it from friends at school, that’s an appropriate age and time to sit them down and talk it through.
