Wisconsin

Wisconsin: FBI sought to interview top Milwaukee County election official | Shaquille Brewster and Kyla Guilfoil/NBC

The FBI tried to interview one of the top elections officials in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, according to the county clerk’s office. An FBI agent visited the home of county Elections Director Michelle Hawley and left her business card, County Clerk George Christenson said in a statement Wednesday. “It is unfortunate that the FBI chose to visit the private residence of Milwaukee County’s Elections Director rather than contact the Election Commission’s office directly,” Christenson said. “No dedicated public servant should be subjected to that type of intrusion simply for carrying out her responsibilities with integrity and professionalism.” Christenson said the county will follow up to determine the nature of the visit but added that “the 2020 Presidential Election was fair and transparent, and its results are accurate. This has been proven repeatedly over the last six years by the post-election canvass, the Presidential Election Recount, State court-based challenge, Federal court-based challenge, the forensic audit by the Wisconsin’s Legislative Audit Bureau, and two additional independent audits,” he said. “Continuing to relitigate settled questions does not strengthen public confidence in elections but it undermines it.” Read Article

Wisconsin: FBI questions election official about 2020 presidential vote | Molly Beck/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A Federal Bureau of Investigation agent interviewed a high-ranking state election official in recent days about the 2020 presidential election, according to sources with knowledge of the conversation. The agent sat down with Wisconsin Elections Commission deputy administrator Robert Kehoe earlier this week and discussed with Kehoe how elections are carried out in Wisconsin and various election theories. Kehoe debunked false claims and clarified how elections work, according to the sources. One of the sources called the conversation "a professional interview by a career FBI agent." The interview comes at a time when Wisconsin and Milwaukee election officials are bracing for potential action from federal authorities over their administration of the 2020 election, which President Donald Trump falsely claims he won. Read Article

Wisconsin Elections Commission sued for telling Madison not to count late-arriving absentee ballots | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

The Wisconsin Elections Commission is facing criticism from local officials and a lawsuit filed Wednesday after it ordered Madison not to count 23 absentee ballots that arrived late to the polls in the state’s recent Supreme Court race, a delay city officials say was caused by election administrator error. City officials also say the commission initially offered little guidance but later faulted them for making the wrong decision. As Madison officials discussed what to do with the late-arriving ballots the day after Election Day, Madison City Attorney Mike Haas reached out to Wisconsin Elections Commission administrator Meagan Wolfe for advice. Wolfe sent the relevant statute the following day, and told Madison officials to “decide, within their statutory discretion” whether the 23 ballots should be counted. Madison decided to count them. Three weeks later, WEC’s commissioners decided Madison made the wrong choice, ordering them to remove the 23 affected ballots from the count. The commissioners didn’t mince words. Chair Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, said Madison committed an “absurd error,” and GOP commissioner Don Millis called it an “epic failure.” Read Article

Wisconsin orders Madison, Mequon to revise election tallies over disputed ballots | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

The Wisconsin Elections Commission on Thursday overruled controversial ballot-counting decisions in Mequon and Madison, ordering the cities to revise final tallies in their Wisconsin Supreme Court election results. Madison counted 23 late-arriving ballots that the commission voted should not have been included, while Mequon threw out five ballots the commission said should have been counted. The commission voted 6-0 to investigate both city clerks’ offices and ordered changes to the counts — voting 5-1 to require Madison and Dane County to exclude the 23 ballots, and 6-0 to require Mequon and Ozaukee County to count the five. The deadline for the state to certify the election is May 15, but some commissioners acknowledged the likelihood that lawsuits over today’s decisions could come before then. Read Article

Wisconsin: Judge rules against ex-Trump attorney in Wisconsin fake elector case | Molly Beck/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A state prosecution will proceed against a top architect of an effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election on felony charges related to a plan to gather signatures of Republicans falsely claiming to be electors for President Donald Trump. A Wisconsin judge on Thursday ruled against former Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro in his effort to keep statements he made to investigators in other battleground states about the fake elector plan from being introduced in the criminal filed by Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul against Chesebro and others over the scheme. Kaul in 2024 filed 11 counts of felony forgery charges against Chesebro, former Trump campaign attorney Jim Troupis and former Trump aide Mike Roman. The charges allege the three lied to the Wisconsin Republicans who signed paperwork falsely claiming to be electors for Trump in the lead-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, joint session of Congress to certify the 2020 election for former President Joe Biden. Read Article

Wisconsin: How Rock County got new clerks ready for Supreme Court election | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

Town of Lima Clerk Pam Hookstead’s election operation is a well-oiled machine. She comes to the polls at 6 a.m., a pot of cowboy beef stew in hand to warm up for her poll workers, and takes a backseat as she lets the town’s longtime staffers settle into their rhythm. Having run well over 100 elections, administering the Wisconsin Supreme Court race on April 7 in the 1,200-person town felt like second nature. Hookstead, now 65, has spent three decades in the role — a depth of experience many towns have lost since 2020. Twenty miles south sits Clinton, where 59-year old Town Clerk Shannon Roehl-Wickingson was administering her first election on her own. It will take years for her muscle memory to rival Hookstead’s. But, she may get there faster than many of her peers in Wisconsin — or across the country. Rock County has a support and training system that most new clerks can only dream of. Read Article

Wisconsin updates election certification law; Evers vetoes HAVA complaint bill | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers on Wednesday signed a bill bringing Wisconsin in line with a federal law seeking to prevent the kind of post-election chaos that President Donald Trump and his allies sowed after the 2020 election. The Democrat also vetoed a Republican-authored bill that would have required the state election commission to hear administrative complaints against itself alleging violations of the federal Help America Vote Act, in line with a U.S. Justice Department demand for the state. That vetoed bill also would have required the state’s Legislative Audit Bureau to conduct audits for potential noncitizen voters. The bill Evers signed updates Wisconsin’s deadlines for certifying presidential election results and casting electoral votes to match federal timelines set by Congress in 2022, after President Donald Trump claimed to have won the 2020 election and hundreds of individuals stormed the U.S. Capitol to prevent certification of President Joe Biden’s victory. Read Articlea>

Wisconsin: Madison voters disenfranchised in 2024 are are split on city’s response, lawsuit | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

Months before becoming one of the nearly 200 Madison voters in 2024 whose absentee ballots were never counted, Nathan Haimowitz did what he thought he was supposed to do. As a journalist living in Spain and out of the habit of voting, the 26-year-old former poll worker said he wanted the 2024 presidential election to “be the thing that would spur me to vote more consistently.” To make sure everything was in order, he emailed Madison officials to confirm they had received his absentee ballot application. They told him they had, so he filled out his ballot, sent it in, and assumed his vote would be counted. It wasn’t. The mistake that disenfranchised Haimowitz and nearly 200 other voters set off a chain of consequences: the longtime city clerk resigned, state and local officials launched investigations, a lawsuit was filed, and the city began overhauling its voting procedures. Haimowitz hasn’t cast a ballot since. Read Article

Wisconsin: FBI action could reveal how Milwaukeeans voted in the 2020 election | Molly Beck/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

How nearly 180,000 Milwaukee residents voted in the 2020 presidential election could be at risk of becoming public if the FBI compels election officials to hand over voting data here in its pursuit to relitigate President Donald Trump's election loss in key battleground states. State and local election officials in the Badger State were on alert Monday after the FBI issued a grand jury subpoena for voting information in Maricopa County, Arizona − the second battleground state where federal authorities have compelled the release of records related to the 2020 election. There has not been any movement in Wisconsin, but if federal authorities expanded their probe to include the pursuit of voting data in Milwaukee, where Trump has leveled baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 election, poll books and around 176,000 absentee ballots with an attached ID number could be turned over. Read Article

Wisconsin Senate lags on election bills without dedicated committee | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

When this legislative session began, Wisconsin Senate leaders made the unusual decision not to create a committee dedicated to election policy for the first time in nearly two decades. That choice has had a measurable consequence: The Senate has taken up far fewer election bills than the Assembly, and several measures that cleared the lower chamber are now stalled with no clear path forward. Of the 19 election bills that Votebeat has tracked this legislative session, 18 have gotten at least a public committee hearing in the Assembly, compared with nine in the Senate. Fourteen of those bills passed the Assembly, compared with six in the Senate. Even in a session when the Senate has generally moved more slowly than the Assembly on many issues — as of Feb. 25, the Assembly has passed 439 bills since the start of the current two-year session, while the Senate has passed 276 — the disparity is especially stark on elections. Read Article

Wisconsin: Who will run the next election in small-town Wisconsin? No one knows. | Alexander Shur |Votebeat

Inside the mostly empty town hall on County Road Z last week, a handful of voters cast ballots in wooden booths for a school board race. The biggest question on the minds of local election officials wasn’t who would win — it was who would run elections next year. After two clerks left within a year, longtime town supervisor Sharon Hunter stepped in because no one else would. Hunter’s term ends next April. Nomination papers for a potential successor are due in January 2027, but local officials still don’t know who comes next. “Sharon’s not going to do 29 years,” Deputy Clerk Amy Meyer said, referring to the long tenure of the clerk who resigned in late 2024, setting off the cascade of brief replacements. Hunter, 72, laughed. “I’d be over 100 years old,” she said. “I don’t think you want me here with my walker.” Read Article

Wisconsin: In unhinged brief, GOP compares not giving the Trump DOJ voters’ personal data to Jim Crow | Yunior RivasDemocracy Docket

The Republican Party of Wisconsin filed a disturbing amicus brief Tuesday urging a federal court to force the Wisconsin Elections Commission to hand over the state’s unredacted voter rolls to Trump’s Justice Department. The Wisconsin GOP didn’t just file a typical “friend of the court” brief supporting the DOJ’s attempt to seize the state’s unredacted voter rolls. Instead, it delivered a culture war-addled screed complete with typographical errors, segregation-era comparisons, anti-immigrant panic and ad hominem attacks. Instead of leading with sober legal analysis, the 27-page brief opens with a quote from a “self-help” author, implying that defending privacy rights is an admission of guilt or obstruction. From the outset, the brief frames anyone opposing the federal demand as corrupt, dishonest or afraid of being exposed. Read Article

Wisconsin: Lawsuit against Madison over uncounted ballots will move forward | Sarah Lehr/WPR

A Dane County judge is allowing a lawsuit to move forward against the City of Madison over uncounted ballots. On Monday, Judge David Conway rejected motions from the city and from former Madison Clerk Maribeth Witzhel-Behl that sought to have the case dismissed. The progressive law firm Law Forward launched the lawsuit on behalf of 193 Madison voters whose absentee ballots went uncounted in November 2024. Those untallied votes would not have changed the outcome of any race or referendum. But Law Forward argues that Madison violated the constitutional rights of those nearly 200 voters. Read Article

Wisconsin Elections Commission challenges Madison absentee voting argument | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

The Wisconsin Elections Commission, filing its first ever friend-of-the-court brief, challenged Madison’s controversial legal argument that it should not be financially liable for 193 uncounted ballots in the 2024 presidential election because of a state law that calls absentee voting a privilege, not a right. The argument presented by city officials misunderstands what “privilege” means in the context of absentee voting and “enjoys no support in the constitution or case law,” the commission wrote in its filing Tuesday, echoing a similar rebuke by Gov. Tony Evers last month. “Once an elector has complied with the statutory process, whether absentee or in-person, she has a constitutional right to have her vote counted,” the commission said. Read Article

Wisconsin: Social media post shared by Trump misinterprets the way state manages its voter rolls | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

A misleading claim that Wisconsin has more registered voters than people eligible to vote is gaining traction on social media, including in posts shared this week by President Donald Trump. It’s just the latest in a long-running series of claims that misinterpret basic data about voter rolls to create alarm about the risk of voter fraud. The posts circulating this week cite videos asserting that Wisconsin’s voter rolls contain more than 7 million names — far more than the state’s voting age population — and are overlaid with text reading, “This Is Not a Glitch — This Is Election Fraud Waiting To Happen.” But the claim conflates two different datasets in Wisconsin’s voter registration system: the Wisconsin voter list and active registered voters. Read Article

Wisconsin Governor pushes back against Madison argument in absentee ballot lawsuit | Molly Beck/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Gov. Tony Evers is pushing back against arguments Madison city officials made in a recent lawsuit contending they can't be sued for failing to count nearly 200 mail-in ballots in 2024 because absentee voting is not a right but a privilege. A group of Madison voters represented by the liberal law firm Law Forward sued city and county election officials in March over the city's failure to count 193 absentee ballots cast during the 2024 presidential election. The voters are accusing the former Madison clerk of disenfranchising their right to vote in a class-action lawsuit. The clerk, Maribeth Witzel-Behl, and city election officials named in the lawsuit argue the voters' constitutional rights were not violated when city officials failed to count their ballots because of a state law that says: "The legislature finds that voting is a constitutional right, the vigorous exercise of which should be strongly encouraged. In contrast, voting by absentee ballot is a privilege exercised wholly outside the traditional safeguards of the polling place." Read Article

Wisconsin case raises a question: Do absentee votes count less than other votes?’ | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

The city of Madison, Wisconsin, and its former clerk are arguing in court that they can’t be sued for failing to count 193 absentee ballots in the 2024 presidential election, in part because a Wisconsin law calls absentee voting a privilege, not a constitutional right. That legal argument raises questions about how much protection absentee voters have against the risk of disenfranchisement — and could reignite a recent debate over whether the law calling absentee voting a privilege is itself unconstitutional. That law, which appears to be uncommon outside of Wisconsin, has been cited repeatedly in recent years in attempts to impose more requirements and restrictions on absentee voting, and, at times, disqualify absentee ballots on which the voters have made errors. It does not appear to have been invoked to absolve election officials for errors in handling correctly cast ballots. Read Article

Wisconsin Judge Allows Election Case to Proceed Against Trump Advisers | Danny Hakim/The New York Times

A Wisconsin judge ruled on Monday that there was sufficient evidence for two men to face trial on charges that they illegally tried to keep President Trump in power after his 2020 election loss. The two defendants are James Troupis, a lawyer and former judge who is accused of being an architect of the plan to deploy fake electors in a number of states that Mr. Trump lost; and Mike Roman, a top staff member in the 2020 Trump campaign. The preliminary hearing for a third defendant, Kenneth Chesebro, another lawyer who also faces charges, was delayed amid questions of whether statements he had made to investigators were admissible. The defendants face 11 forgery-related charges in connection with the drafting of false elector certificates, representing an alternative outcome to Wisconsin’s presidential election that year, when Mr. Trump lost to former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Defense lawyers argued that their clients were seeking to preserve Mr. Trump’s options should a long-shot court challenge to the official results succeed. Read Article

Wisconsin clerks hope new law can alleviate statewide election official shortage | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

Wisconsin clerks say two decisions on legislation this week — a new law expanding towns’ ability to hire clerks and a veto that blocks broader standing to sue election officials — will help ease mounting pressure on local election offices, which have faced record turnover and increasing legal threats. The new law allows small towns to more easily hire clerks that live outside of municipal limits, a change clerks say is urgently needed as finding small-town clerks has become harder in recent years amid increased scrutiny, new laws and ever-evolving rules. As the new law moved through the Legislature, some small towns ran elections with no clerks at all. “There are lots of townships that will benefit from this,” said Marathon County Clerk Kim Trueblood, a Republican. “It’s going to help tremendously.” Read Article

Wisconsin election reform proposals stalled by GOP infighting | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

A Republican lawmaker’s plan to regulate drop boxes and give Wisconsin’s clerks more time to process absentee ballots ran into obstacles last week, including skepticism from fellow Republicans and a rival GOP bill to ban drop boxes entirely. The cool reception for Rep. Scott Krug’s ideas, especially to let clerks process ballots on the Monday before an election, underscores the GOP’s persistent internal divide over election policy in Wisconsin, with advocates of reforms long sought by election officials of both parties running into distrust fueled by conspiracy theories and misinformation. Last week, the resistance appeared strong enough to stall or complicate efforts by Republicans who aim to address clerks’ needs and craft workable policy that can gain Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ support. That split was on full display at a Nov. 4 hearing of the Assembly Elections Committee, chaired by Rep. Dave Maxey. Read Article

Wisconsin: Trump pardons Republicans named in efforts to overturn 2020, but state prosecutions aren’t affected | Molly Beck/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

President Donald Trump has pardoned a handful of Wisconsin Republicans who participated in a scheme he created to try to overturn his 2020 election loss. Trump pardoned most of the Republicans who signed paperwork falsely claiming to be electors for Trump when former President Joe Biden, a Democrat, was elected in Wisconsin instead. He also included two attorneys with Wisconsin ties who are alleged to be the architects of the plan. The list posted by Trump's pardon attorney late Sunday night, includes: Carol Brunner, Mary Buestrin, Darryl Carlson, Andrew Hitt, Kelly Ruh, Bob Spindell and Pam Travis. Read Article

Wisconsin: Monday absentee ballot processing bill stalls again due to lack of GOP support | Rich Kremer/WPR

Despite past bipartisan backing, a Republican state lawmaker says he has to “punt” an initiative to let election clerks process absentee ballots before election day because it doesn’t have enough GOP support. In September, Republicans and Democrats in the state Assembly stood side-by-side and unveiled a series of bills to update Wisconsin’s election laws. One of those initiatives is known as early processing or Monday processing. Requested by clerks, it would let them process absentee ballots the day before an election so that results can be released sooner once the polls close. The Monday process concept has been unable to clear the Legislature for several years. It was last introduced in 2023. Read Article

Wisconsin Assembly committee debates ‘reality-based’ vs. conspiracy minded solutions to absentee drop boxes | Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner

At a public hearing of the Wisconsin Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections Tuesday, legislators engaged in an occasionally tense debate over proposed changes to the state election system. In attendance at the hearing were some of Wisconsin’s most prominent election deniers, including former state Rep. Janel Brandtjen and Peter Bernegger, a self-styled elections investigator who has been convicted of mail fraud Bernegger stood in the back of the hearing room with a group of companions, muttering and complaining about assertions by the election clerks and legislators who testified. Read Article

Wisconsin Attorney General appeals ruling requiring election officials to verify voters’ citizenship status | Molly Beck/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Attorney General Josh Kaul is appealing a Waukesha County judge's ruling that requires election officials to verify the citizenship status of all Wisconsin voters before the next statewide election in February. Kaul filed an appeal Monday of Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Maxwell's Oct. 6 decision that mandates the Wisconsin Elections Commission to review the state's voter rolls over the next five months to determine whether anyone who is not a U.S. citizen is registered to vote. "The circuit court’s decision and order drastically alters voter registration and elections in Wisconsin, violates state law, and threatens voting rights," Kaul wrote in the Oct. 20 filing to the Dane County-based District IV Court of Appeals. Read Article

Wisconsin: Bill to allow candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to withdraw from ballots is sent to Governor | Molly Beck(Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Wisconsin lawmakers this week sent Gov. Tony Evers a bill that seeks to avoid a scenario that played out during the 2024 presidential election when independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was blocked in attempting to take his name off the ballot in an effort to widen President Donald Trump's vote tally. The bill allows independent candidates for president and all candidates for statewide and legislative offices to remove their names from ballots before Election Day — a move currently barred for all reasons except death. Kennedy sought to remove his name from ballots in Wisconsin and other swing states after ending his presidential campaign as an independent candidate and endorsing Trump. Read Article

Wisconsin Elections Commission challenges order on citizenship verification | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

Wisconsin state agencies on Monday asked a Waukesha County Circuit Court judge to stay his ruling requiring election officials to verify the citizenship of existing voters and those seeking to register. The Wisconsin Department of Justice filed the motion on behalf of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, the Department of Transportation, and related state officials. In it, the respondents called Judge Michael Maxwell’s Friday ruling “impermissively vague,” because the order bars election officials from processing new registrations without “verification” of applicants’ citizenship but doesn’t define the verification process. The filing says that any new citizenship verification process for online voter registration would require months of testing and development, and that disabling the electronic registration system in the meantime would conflict with state law requiring that system to exist. Read Article

Wisconsin lawyer Michael Gableman faces suspension over 2020 election probe | Tom Kertscher/Wisconsin Watch

A formal recommendation of punishment for Michael Gableman, whose career rise and fall set him apart in Wisconsin legal and political history, signals the end of a case that has been humiliating for the former state Supreme Court justice and the court itself. In a report issued Friday, a referee in a state Office of Lawyer Regulation case against Gableman found that Gableman committed 10 lawyer misconduct violations in his probe of the 2020 presidential election in Wisconsin. The partisan probe was authorized at the behest of then-citizen Donald Trump, who lost that election to Joe Biden. The referee, Milwaukee attorney James Winiarski, recommended that the state Supreme Court suspend Gableman’s law license for three years. Read Article

Wisconsin bill would repeal ‘outdated’ ballot drawdown law and require risk-limiting audits | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

Wisconsin’s controversial practice of randomly removing ballots to resolve discrepancies between the number of ballots and the number of voters would be prohibited under new draft legislation that requires meticulous audits in every county. The draft proposal, obtained by Votebeat from Republican Rep. Scott Krug, will be formally released this week. Krug said the proposed ban on removing random ballots, known as drawdowns, was inspired largely by a Votebeat investigation highlighting election officials’ reluctance to use the practice and questions about its constitutionality. Wisconsin’s law allowing drawdowns is almost as old as the state, and it appears to be used most often in recounts. Other states have had similar laws, but most have repealed them. Read Article

Wisconsin has a new bill to allow early start to absentee ballot processing. Can it pass? | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

Wisconsin Republicans are reviving a plan to let poll workers process absentee ballots on the Monday before an election, a change long sought by election officials, but blocked by a small but influential group of conservative lawmakers. This time, the proposal is tied to measures conservatives want, including regulations for ballot drop boxes and an explicit ban on clerks fixing, or curing, errors on ballots. By bundling the measures together, GOP leaders hope to finally unite their party on a plan that would shorten the wait for election results, reduce the opportunity for election misinformation, and avoid a veto by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. The proposal, which Votebeat obtained in draft form from Republican Rep. Scott Krug, is set to be publicly released next week. Krug, former chair of the Assembly Elections Committee and now assistant majority leader in the Assembly, said he “will use every little ounce of political capital effort I created on elections to get Monday processing done, because that’s 90% of our problem in the state: perception.” Read Article

Wisconsin: What to know about the investigations into the Wausau absentee ballot drop box saga | Anna Kleiber/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Nearly a year after Wausau Mayor Doug Diny's removal of the city's sole absentee ballot drop box located outside of city hall, investigations into the drop box, its removal and return continue. In its May 27 ruling, the commission found that city officials did not violate the law or abuse their discretion in establishing and operating the drop box. The commission found the drop box acceptable as officials properly secured the box to the ground throughout its use and there were no allegations that ballots deposited in the drop box were not properly accounted for and processed on Election Day. Additionally, the commission rejected allegations related to security measures for the drop box, noting there were clear camera views of the drop box and adequate lighting illuminating the area surrounding it. The ruling also stated the city correctly labeled the drop box with an 8 p.m. deadline on Election Day. Read Article