Category: State news

Quoted: “Face to face campaigning is a known positive … the positive on the Republican side is they know this can work. One of the negatives is that we don’t know that it works in a pandemic,” said Michael Wagner, a journalism professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison who specializes in political communication and behavior.

Quoted: “It’s definitely a trial run for November in terms of recruiting poll workers, finding new locations, and distributing personal protective equipment,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Barry Burden, who directs the Elections Research Center. “August is really good practice for that.”

Quoted: There are risks for both sides if one party embraces mail voting and the other doesn’t, said Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. If there is a surge of coronavirus cases near the election, those who had planned to vote in person may find it difficult to cast a ballot — and may not have enough time to request a ballot by mail, he said. Clerks short of poll workers might have to close polling locations, meaning some voters would have to go to new precincts and wait in longer lines.

Quoted: Miriam Seifter, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison said in an email that “the opinion seems to have had a chilling effect on further attempts at executive emergency response, with both the governor and the state (Department of Health Services) hesitating on or delaying actions not covered by the ruling out of fear they will lose in court again.”

“The result has been a governing gap in Wisconsin, with local governments left to try to address statewide problems,” said Seifter, who co-wrote an amicus brief in the case “on behalf of 17 legal scholars” that criticized the GOP controlled legislature’s challenge.

Noted: As a result, Kind has drawn challengers from both the left and right. In the Democratic primary, he’s facing Mark Neumann, a former missionary and pediatrician. Neumann has criticized Kind’s lack of support for Medicare-for-All, but his primary challenge hasn’t drawn much national attention. Kind is the clear favorite, according to Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: “Historically speaking, the back and forth of recent years is kind of unprecedented,” said Booth Fowler, a retired political scientist from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of “Wisconsin Votes: An Electoral History.”

“Most of the time it has been a one-party state,” said Fowler, referring to the dominance of the GOP during the state’s first hundred years.

Quoted: “We don’t want Wisconsin to become a poster child of how not to do an election,” said David Canon, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: “It takes a brave actor to stand up and run against the boss,” Lanny Glinberg, director of the University of Wisconsin Prosecution Project, says. 

Glinberg also points to the decline of local news as an impediment to contested races. If the community isn’t aware of the daily goings on in the courthouse, how will they know if there have been any problems?

“Another factor — how well informed is the public of the role of district attorney?” he says. “The most powerful actor in the criminal justice system in terms of discretion. The public needs quality investigative journalism to know that. That’s in shorter and shorter supply.”