Category: Experts Guide

“These laws, they do nothing but make it more difficult to vote,” said Kenneth Mayer, a professor of American politics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who has conducted research on the effects of voter ID in his state. “And for every possible case of voter impersonation that you might prevent, you’re talking about thousands or tens of thousands of people who face these burdens.”

Michael Wagner, director of the Center for Communication and Civic Renewal and professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said voting against the Young/Cotton amendment is not tantamount to supporting “giving stimulus checks” to nonresident immigrants.

“Stimulus checks only went to people with a Social Security number,” Wagner said in an email to PolitiFact Wisconsin. “Some noncitizens legally employed by DHS can get a Social Security number, and a small number of people in the U.S. on legal temporary working visas may also have been eligible for stimulus checks.”

“If the Fifth Circuit accepts the argument that the RNC is making, this would have very broad implications, and could conceivably make it up to the Supreme Court,” said Daniel Tokaji, dean of the University of Wisconsin Law School.

The appearance is damaging enough, said Kathleen Bartzen Culver, a media ethics expert and director of the journalism school at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

“You’ve given the source a really strong incentive to give you not just information but whatever kind of information you want,” she said. “There is a very good reason we don’t pay sources for information. The reason is the source would feel they have to please us in some way.”

“The lives of people in many countries like Venezuela and Nicaragua, their lives have become almost intolerable,” said Benjamin Marquez, a political science professor at UW-Madison, with a focus on immigration and Latino populations.

“The native-born population has always reacted very negatively to large numbers of immigrants coming to the United States,” he added.

University of Wisconsin Law School Immigration Justice Clinic Director Erin Barbato discusses detention of immigrants amid more restrictions on people coming to the United States seeking protection.

“It is risky for the Republicans to write off Dane County entirely,” said Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “There are simply too many votes here.”

Interview with Howard Veregin on “Wisconsin Today.” Veregin iss Wisconsin’s state cartographer, based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and he’s mapping Wisconsin, real and imaginary.

During a recent interview with WPR, University of Wisconsin-Madison Sociology Professor Michael Light said anecdotes used by politicians don’t always reflect the broader trends related to crime and immigration.

“Yes, immigrants have committed crimes. And immigrants commit less crimes than native born U.S. citizens,” Light told “Wisconsin Today” in July. “Both (of) those can be true.”

Wisconsin students aren’t required at the state level to take a government class. Some districts may have their own requirements, or government classes may be offered as an elective, but that lack of a state requirement can prevent students from learning about government itself, much less discussing and understanding current political events, said Jeremy Stoddard, a professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a researcher in the Wisconsin Center for Education Research.

Kathleen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said it is rare for political operatives or issue advocates to become news reporters.

“As a news consumer myself, I’m questioning whether the New York Post’s reporting is fairly covering races in our critical swing state,” Culver said. “That’s not a question for this staffer alone but for the overall content and tenor of the material the Post is putting out.”

Expect the leaves to really start showing off their radiant yellow, orange and red hues in mid-October, says an expert at UW-Madison.

“It’s really early October when we start seeing the peak colors across the state — particularly in parts of northern Wisconsin,” said Steven Ackerman, emeritus professor with the UW-Madison Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences.

The types of allegations Story has laid out can lead to expensive and difficult-to-win lawsuits, according to Steven Wright, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and former attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division.

“These are very hard cases to bring, both in terms of they’re expensive to develop the facts. The law is against your side,” said Wright. “It’s unequivocal that horrible things are happening at Waupun … But I am not certain, as somebody who’s a civil rights lawyer and who has worked for federal judges, that this is a problem that the federal courts are going to weigh in to solve.”

According to UW-Madison political science professor Kathy Cramer, political ads aim to achieve two primary goals.

“One is activate people who are already leaning towards them or their party — and ads can definitely help kind of remind people both that an election is coming up and reconnect them with their party and the leading candidate. But the other thing that they do is persuade people on the margins,” Cramer told the Cap Times.

“It’s hard to say,” said UW-Madison Journalism Professor Michael Wagner. “Most of the literature in political science has suggested that debates don’t tend to matter in terms of who people vote for.”

Jake Vander Zanden directs UW-Madison Center for Limnology — the study of lakes. He says both zebra and quagga mussels feed on phytoplankton, the base of the aquatic food chain.

“In effect, what they do is they will undermine the basis of the food web, and that can have impacts on fisheries,” Vander Zanden said. He added that the mussels create good conditions for algae growth, which gets smelly when washing up on beaches.

Whether information on elections and current events comes from a dedicated civics course or another type of social studies class, University of Wisconsin-Madison education researcher Jeremy Stoddard said covering those topics is vital to creating informed, engaged citizens. It can also reduce political polarization.

“Schools might be the only place where they actually get exposed to different views on key issues of the day,” Stoddard told “Wisconsin Today.” “Otherwise, people get their news filtered in through one way … If they’re not doing it in schools, that’s a real problem.”