Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Governor suspends Tuesday's in-person voting in Wisconsin

Wisconsin voters

This is what voting in Milwaukee looked like in 2018. Now, there may not be any in-person voting there tomorrow.

Darren Hauck /Getty Images9

With just hours to go, there's still no certainty whether Wisconsinites will have to venture outside Tuesday for one of the most chaotic and potentially dangerous elections in memory.

Gov. Tony Evers issued an executive order Monday suspending the scheduled in-person voting, saying it would be irresponsible during what's projected to be the deadliest week yet in the coronavirus pandemic, which includes more than 2,300 cases across Wisconsin. Already, dozens of polling places had been abandoned and others were to be staffed by the National Guard because poll workers are staying home.

Whether the Democratic governor has the power to unilaterally postpone the election is unclear, and a Republican court challenge seemed certain.

Partisan operatives and voting rights advocates say what happens as Wisconsin conducts its voting and tabulates the results will shape elections for the rest of the year. It's been at least a century, they say, since a public health emergency has threatened to cripple the public's ability to participate in democracy and have confidence in the result.


Evers called for a day of in-person voting June 9. Until he acted, the main suspense looked to be whether the Supreme Court would step in at the last minute, not to postpone the election but to extend it — by permitting absentee ballots to be completed and delivered until next week.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Eleven mayors of Wisconsin cities have also urged state Health Services Secretary Andrea Palm to use her emergency powers to shutter all polling places Tuesday.

Of the 11 states that had primaries scheduled for this month, Wisconsin alone had been pressing ahead with in-person voting — even after the governor issued a statewide stay-at-home order. The main races are the Democratic presidential primary and a hotly contested battle for a state Supreme Court seat.

Democrats say the GOP's main interest in pressing ahead is to assure a suppressed turnout, which they are confident will help their incumbent, Daniel Kelly, fend off a well-financed challenge from liberals hoping to shift the court's ideological balance

The national and state Republican parties have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a judge's order allowing the return of absentee ballots through next Monday. Usually they must be received by election night to get counted.

The absentee extension, effectively postponing the end of the election by six days, was the biggest accommodation approved by District Judge William Conley in response to lawsuits filed by elderly and minority voters.

He also ruled last week that people who live alone did not have to get someone to witness their absentee ballots, as state law requires. But the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision and asserted that the Wisconsin Election Commission had offered several viable options for getting a ballot countersigned without risking health.

They include:

  1. Having the witness watch the voter mark their ballot through a window.
  2. Having people who deliver the mail or groceries sign the ballot.
  3. Having the witness watch the process over video chat and then leave the ballot outside the door or in the mailbox for the witness to come by and sign it.

Evers and the Republicans who run the Legislature initially agreed it was imperative for the election to proceed because hundreds of mayoralties, county executive posts and other local offices are on the ballot and those offices become vacant in two weeks weeks unless there's a winner.

After weeks of court challenges and partisan maneuvering as the pandemic worsened, it appeared that the election was finally going to be delayed when Evers changed course Friday and called the Legislature into a special session. But Republicans dismissed the governor's plan — which would have extended the period for absentee balloting several weeks but scrapped the in-person vote — adjoining the special meeting Saturday after a few minutes.

If the governor's order does not survive legal challenges, how many voters end up going to polling places on Tuesday and what they will find there remains unknown.

As of Monday, nearly 1.3 million absentee ballots had been requested and more than 724,000 had been returned, record-shattering numbers for the state that raised questions about the ability of election officials to process all the paper in anything close to a timely and reliable way — even if the deadlines aren't extended..

Meanwhile, a severe shortage of poll workers — who are often eldelry and therefore at risk if they catch the coronavirus — had already forced the closing of many voting sites.

In Milwaukee, which normally has 180 polling sites, officials announced Friday that there would be only five.

The National Guard was distributing supplies, including hand sanitizer, to polling sites across the state. In Madison, city workers were erecting plexiglass barriers to protect poll workers and voters were encouraged to bring their own pens to mark the ballots.

Read More

"Voter Here" sign outside of a polling location.

"Voter Here" sign outside of a polling location.

Getty Images, Grace Cary

Stopping the Descent Toward Banana Republic Elections

President Trump’s election-related executive order begins by pointing out practices in Canada, Sweden, Brazil, and elsewhere that outperform the U.S. But it is Trump’s order itself that really demonstrates how far we’ve fallen behind. In none of the countries mentioned, or any other major democracy in the world, would the head of government change election rules by decree, as Trump has tried to do.

Trump is the leader of a political party that will fight for control of Congress in 2026, an election sure to be close, and important to his presidency. The leader of one side in such a competition has no business unilaterally changing its rules—that’s why executive decrees changing elections only happen in tinpot dictatorships, not democracies.

Keep ReadingShow less
"Vote" pin.
Getty Images, William Whitehurst

Most Americans’ Votes Don’t Matter in Deciding Elections

New research from the Unite America Institute confirms a stark reality: Most ballots cast in American elections don’t matter in deciding the outcome. In 2024, just 14% of eligible voters cast a meaningful vote that actually influenced the outcome of a U.S. House race. For state house races, on average across all 50 states, just 13% cast meaningful votes.

“Too many Americans have no real say in their democracy,” said Unite America Executive Director Nick Troiano. “Every voter deserves a ballot that not only counts, but that truly matters. We should demand better than ‘elections in name only.’”

Keep ReadingShow less
Why America’s Elections Will Never Be the Same After Trump
text
Photo by Dan Dennis on Unsplash

Why America’s Elections Will Never Be the Same After Trump

Donald Trump wasted no time when he returned to the White House. Within hours, he signed over 200 executive orders, rapidly dismantling years of policy and consolidating control with the stroke of a pen. But the frenzy of reversals was only the surface. Beneath it lies a deeper, more troubling transformation: presidential elections have become all-or-nothing battles, where the victor rewrites the rules of government and the loser’s agenda is annihilated.

And it’s not just the orders. Trump’s second term has unleashed sweeping deportations, the purging of federal agencies, and a direct assault on the professional civil service. With the revival of Schedule F, regulatory rollbacks, and the targeting of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs, the federal bureaucracy is being rigged to serve partisan ideology. Backing him is a GOP-led Congress, too cowardly—or too complicit—to assert its constitutional authority.

Keep ReadingShow less
One Lesson from the Elections: Looking At Universal Voting

A roll of "voted" stickers.

Pexels, Element5 Digital

One Lesson from the Elections: Looking At Universal Voting

The analysis and parsing of learned lessons from the 2024 elections will continue for a long time. What did the campaigns do right and wrong? What policies will emerge from the new arrangements of power? What do the parties need to do for the future?

An equally important question is what lessons are there for our democratic structures and processes. One positive lesson is that voting itself was almost universally smooth and effective; we should applaud the election officials who made that happen. But, many elements of the 2024 elections are deeply challenging, from the increasingly outsized role of billionaires in the process to the onslaught of misinformation and disinformation.

Keep ReadingShow less