Wisconsin Right Now

At the Wisconsin Election Commission’s request, the state’s Supreme Court agreed Friday to take up the petition to rule on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s lawsuit seeking his removal from the ballot, bypassing the court of appeals. The decision follows the  Dane County Circuit Court’s ruling Monday to keep Kennedy on the ballot. “Given the need for a prompt resolution of this appeal, the court does not contemplate holding oral argument in this matter,” the court announced . “The court will endeavor to issue a written decision as expeditiously as possible.” The action breaks with typical court procedure to reject premature petitions, leading Justices Rebecca Bradley and Annette Ziegler to issue a dissent. “A majority of this court grants the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s (WEC) petition to bypass the court of appeals before the WEC has filed its response brief, despite the majority’s professed practice in prior cases of ‘generally den[ying] as premature petitions for bypass prior to...

Since the primary election runoff in late May and ahead of the November election, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office has been prioritizing cleaning up the voter rolls and issuing guidance to local jurisdictions about election law. On Monday, Gov. Greg Abbott announced the result of a statewide effort: more than 1.1 million people were taken off the Texas voter rolls, including 6,500 noncitizens who were illegally registered to vote. Among them, documentation about 1,930 with a voting history was handed over to the Attorney General’s Office for a potential criminal investigation. The announcement comes after Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson issued warnings and guidance to local authorities about following state and federal election laws. One guidance directs elections officials to implement measures to ensure registered voters’ privacy rights. It was issued after complaints were filed about ballot information being publicized reportedly for political purposes. It direct...

(The Center Square) - Following the Wisconsin Election Commission's dismissal of a complaint from a Democratic National Committee staffer, who seeks to remove Green Party candidate Jill Stein from the ballot, the plaintiff has doubled down and filed an expedited appeal with the state’s Supreme Court. Court documents reveal it accepted the case Thursday and is requesting that the plaintiff provide additional information, actions that have caused two Supreme Court justices to dissent. “The majority issues an unprecedented order directing the petitioner – within two hours – to give the court contact information for the respondents, which is currently absent from the record because no one has entered an appearance on behalf of any of those parties. How is the petitioner – an employee of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) – supposed to know the name or physical address of an ‘attorney or other representative of each respondent who is authorized to accept service of orders is...

  The 2024 presidential election has grabbed most of the headlines recently, but the U.S. Senate races are taking shape under the radar. Here is a preview of the 10 most likely to flip. West Virginia – Open (D): It’s not that often that every elections analyst in the country concurs on something, but I suspect you will get unanimous agreement that this seat is far and away the most likely Senate seat to flip. Joe Manchin is a Democrat who has basically been swimming against a Republican tide since he won the seat in a 2010 special election. Two years prior, John McCain carried the state by 12 points over Barack Obama. Donald Trump won it by almost 40 points in 2020. It’s unlikely that even the popular Manchin, who won narrowly in the good Democratic year of 2018, could emerge victorious, but with his retirement, the seat is just gone. Montana – Jon Tester (D): Reasonable minds can disagree about whether Montana or Ohio is the more vulnerable seat. Tester is probably a bet...

Wisconsin’s election managers say as long as there is a house number and a street name, absentee voting witness slips don’t need a city, the state, a zip code or anything else. The Wisconsin Elections Commission clarified the rule for absentee ballot witnesses address information. The commission told clerks to error on the side of counting ballots and issued five specific clarifications as to when ballots are not to be rejected. An absentee ballot may not be rejected if: The witness’s street number, street name, and municipality are present, but there is neither a state name nor a ZIP code provided; The witness’s street number, street name, and ZIP code are present, but there is neither a municipality nor a state name provided; The witness’s street number and street name are present and match the street number and street name of the voter, but no other address information is provided; The witness certification indicates that the witness's address is the...

Few of the election reforms Wisconsin Republicans plan to pass will likely get the governor’s signature. The State Assembly late Thursday approved nearly a dozen or so pieces of legislation that deal with how people vote and how elections are run in the state. “There's no way that Wisconsin should experience what it did in 2020 in 2024,” Rep. Scott Krug, R-Nekoosa, said. Krug, who is the chairman of the Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections said the Republican election reforms either look to close loopholes exposed during the 2020 election or prevent new loopholes from being exploited. “It's been a great effort on everybody's part to try to make sure that election administration is changed permanently in the state of Wisconsin,” Krug said. Krug said that includes Democratic support for a few ideas, including a plan that would send voters a text message when they request and return their absentee ballots and the plan to allow local election clerks to coun...

  Election day comes Tuesday, putting a range of major issues up for grabs as both parties battle for control of the House, Senate and gubernatorial races around the country. The latest polling shows a tight but favorable electoral landscape for Republicans.  FiveThirtyEight’s  analysis and compilation of generic polls found voters overall prefer that Republicans control Congress by 1.2%. Real Clear Politics’  polling projects Republicans will pick up four Senate seats, three governorships and roughly 31 House seats. RCP has Republicans up 2.8% on the generic ballot, while a Yahoo News-YouGov poll released Thursday has Democrats up by 2%. This year’s midterm elections put several key issues up for grabs, including the future of many judicial nominees and the several-trillion dollars in congressional spending that kicked off during the pandemic and pushed the federal debt to more than $31 trillion this year. On top of that, Republican lawmakers have laid out dozens of ...

The Clinton campaign agreed to pay an $8,000 fine while the DNC agreed to pay $105,000, and both promised not to violate the requirements in the future. The Federal Election Commission has fined Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign and the Democratic National Committee for disguising payments through a law firm for the infamous Steele dossier that gave rise to the now-discredited Russia collusion allegations, according to a letter made public Wednesday. The commission found the campaign and DNC made total payments of slightly more than $1 million to the opposition research firm Fusion GPS through its law firm, labeling it as "legal and compliance consulting" when in fact it was for research related to the Steele dossier, according to the letter made public by the Coolide and Reagan Foundation that filed the original complaint. Investigators "found probable cause to believe" the improper labeling of the expenditure violated federal election law and reached a c...