Category: State news

“The court continues to be a place in Wisconsin politics where big issues are decided,” said Barry Burden, a political scientist and elections expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The state still has a Democratic governor and Republican Legislature who don’t get along and don’t do much productive lawmaking together … so a lot of the disputes between the parties end up being settled in the courts and eventually in the state Supreme Court.”

The same issues that animated the 2023 race in which liberal Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz defeated former Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly are likely to come up again this year, said Howard Schweber, professor emeritus of political science and legal studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

It would “require something extraordinary” for a court to strike down the voter ID law if it’s in the state constitution unless justices decide it conflicts with another part of the constitution, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Barry Burden.

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.

“It tends to be the court where the big battles get fought out,” said Barry Burden, a political science professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the university’s Elections Research Center. “Without a kind of regularly functioning legislative branch and executive branch working together, the court is the venue where the hot items, big ticket items, are being decided.”

Howard Schweber, professor of political science and legal studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explained that some of the issues worth keeping an eye on are abortion, elections, Act 10 — Walker-era legislation that curtailed collective bargaining rights for many public employees — redistricting and religious freedom.

I drove south out of Madison, Wisconsin, along solitary rural roads until I arrived at a secluded home set amid scattered forest and open prairie. Waiting inside for me were two men: Michael Samuel, a retired professor of wildlife ecology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and Bryan Richards, the emerging-disease coordinator at the US Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center.

Barry Burden, who directs the UW-Madison’s Election Research Center, said Hovde’s decision to not yet concede represents a new but troublesome trend. “It’s been happening in the United States over the last few years, of candidates not conceding immediately or graciously as often as they did in the past,” Burden told the Wisconsin Examiner. Donald Trump’s refusal to concede his reelection loss in 2020 “provided a model for some candidates.”

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

President Donald Trump cast doubt on the integrity of votes cast and returned through drop boxes. It’s a stance that lacks proof, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Emeritus Howard Schweber.

“There is no evidence that anyone has ever tried to stuff drop boxes with fake ballots or multiple ballots or noncitizens’ ballots, and there’s no evidence that improper ballots that get into drop boxes end up being counted as votes,” Schweber said.

That election had an unusually high number of absentee ballots because of the COVID-19 pandemic. But Milwaukee’s results came out after midnight in 2018 and 2022, too, said Barry Burden, who directs the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“So it’s not just tied to COVID — it’s really the process that’s used in our state and in Milwaukee causes that to happen,” he said. “There’s nothing illegal about it. There’s nothing unexpected about it. Actually, we all know this is going to happen, but nonetheless, there are people who are skeptical about it, and in some cases, will intentionally spread disinformation about it, but it’s just part of the process.”

Barry Burden, professor of American politics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said it is difficult to compare the numbers to the past two presidential elections because of the pandemic and the longer period allowed for early in-person voting in 2016. However, he said the interest in early in-person voting appears widespread and that there is “clearly a new desire among Wisconsin voters to cast their ballots in person early this year.”

“It is happening at higher rates in communities of different sizes and with different partisan tendencies,” he said in an email.

Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the university’s Elections Research Center, called the spending “astounding.”

“I think the competitiveness of the state legislature this year is the main driver. This is the first time in 14 years that the Assembly has truly been up for grabs between the two parties,” he said. “And there’s no shortage of people who want to give money to try to flip it in their direction.”