Author: Scott Bauer

Consultants hired by the Wisconsin Supreme Court to examine maps redrawing state legislative districts said on February 1 that plans submitted by the Republican Legislature and a conservative law firm are partisan gerrymanders, but they stopped short of declaring the other four maps constitutional. Only the court can make the determination of whether any of those four plans from Democratic Governor Tony Evers, Democratic lawmakers, and others are constitutional, wrote Jonathan Cervas, of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and Bernard Grofman, of the University of California, Irvine. Any of those maps could be improved based on criteria the court...

Democrats are appealing a judge’s dismissal of their lawsuit as they once again seek to allow Wisconsin voters to return absentee ballots in drop boxes, bringing the challenge one step closer to the liberal-controlled state Supreme Court. Absentee ballot drop boxes were barred in Wisconsin in 2022 following criticism by former President Donald Trump. Attorneys for the national Democratic firm the Elias Law Group filed notice on January 30 that it was appealing a circuit judge’s ruling last week dismissing its claims challenging the constitutionality of several voting rules in the battleground state. Dane County Circuit Judge Ann Peacock...

Wisconsin’s bipartisan elections commission, for a second time, has unanimously rejected a complaint against fake presidential electors who attempted to cast the state’s ballots for Donald Trump in 2020. The Wisconsin Elections Commission first rejected the complaint in March 2022. But a judge in May ordered the commission to rehear the complaint, this time without one of its members who served as one of the fake electors for the former president. The commission released its unanimous 5-0 decision to reject the complaint on December 20 without explaining why. The elections commission’s discussion of the complaint, as well as its...

Democrats urged the Wisconsin Supreme Court to overturn Republican-drawn legislative maps in late November, with conservative justices questioning the timing of the redistricting challenge, while liberals focused on the constitutionality of the current maps and what the process should be for adopting new ones. The fight comes ahead of the 2024 election in a battleground state where four of the six past presidential elections have been decided by fewer than 23,000 votes, and Republicans have built large majorities in the Legislature under maps they drew over a decade ago. The lawsuit was brought by Democratic voters the day after...