Category: State news

Quoted: “What the Wisconsin Supreme Court said is that to the extent that these ballots are being dropped off with election officials, that it has to be the voters themselves that do it and not others,” said Robert Yablon, associate professor and co-director of the State Democracy Research Initiative at University of Wisconsin Madison School of Law. “But they specifically didn’t rule on whether that is also true when an absentee ballot is put in the mail. There just is not a definitive state level word at this point.”

“There are some people who just can’t physically get up to put it in the mail,” Newcomer said. “There’s a reason why they vote absentee. It is difficult for them.”

Quoted: Barry Burden, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Elections Research Center, said the spending dynamics are, in part, a result of Evers and Johnson being free from real primary challengers. For Michels and Barnes, Wisconsin’s August primary meant a later start to get their general election campaigns off the ground.

“The spending between incumbents and challengers might level out as election day approaches,” Burden said.

“It is striking that outside groups are spending more than the candidates themselves. Only Wisconsin residents get to decide who wins, but there is clearly tremendous interest from donors and party leaders across the country in what happens here.”

Quoted: “There’s a really diminishing number of people who are eligible for parole,” said Walter Dickey, an emeritus professor of law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who led the state’s corrections department from 1983 until 1987. “And most of them have been in prison for a very long time.”

Quoted: Maxine McKinney de Royston, an associate professor in the Department of Curriculum Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that tests were constructed as part of a system that has failed students of color. She also said tests aren’t completely predictive of future success.

“We use these tests to say, ‘Oh, now we’re in crisis,’ as opposed to saying, ‘Well, are we actually evaluating or assessing that which is important to us? Are we actually evaluating learning?” McKinney de Royston said.

Quoted: According to University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of political science Barry Burden, Republican voters in the state can be quite receptive to candidates who share Trump’s politics, but they do not always vote for such candidates when they don’t explicitly reference him.

“In races where the former president did not make an explicit endorsement such as the contest for attorney general, the ‘trumpier’ did not prevail,” Burden said.

Quoted: Barry Burden, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Elections Research Center, detailed shifting racial demography and white suburban backlash to the Trump era as central elements to the increasingly leftward tilt of what was once a bastion of Wisconsin conservatism.

“I think the population has changed over time, and that’s has made them (the Milwaukee suburbs) more politically competitive,” Burden said ” There’s also some evidence that white suburban voters became disenchanted with Donald Trump as a Republican candidate. Voters who normally would automatically vote for the Republican candidate for president were not comfortable with Trump.”

Quoted: “The winner in this race will probably get in the 20s I’m guessing in terms of percentage of the vote, because it is so widely split,” said David Cannon, UW-Madison professor.

Quoted: Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the Elections Research Center, said bringing the convention to Milwaukee is a strategic move by Republicans to take back the state.

“It has a lot of political value being in a key battleground state and in the Midwest, where there are other states up for grabs,” Burden said about the pick.

Quoted: “Given the importance of getting election administration right and the suspicion these candidates continue to express about the 2020 election, it is surprising that their plans for replacing the WEC are not more specific,” said Barry Burden, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Elections Research Center.

Noted: As absentee ballots are being cast across the state for Aug. 9 primary elections, Robert Yablon, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, recently joined Wisconsin Public Radio’s “Central Time.” He said leaving the voting rule debates unsettled amid an election is essentially asking for controversies.