Author: Wisconsin Watch

Many states have postponed elections or moved to all-mail in voting. Wisconsin’s 1,850 municipal clerks must figure out how to hold safe in-person balloting. Tamia Fowlkes of Milwaukee was among thousands of voters in Wisconsin who reluctantly went to the polls on April 7. Fowlkes had voted absentee — like more than a million other voters in the state — but then helped her grandfather cast his ballot in person after the state Supreme Court ruled that Governor Tony Evers lacked the authority to delay the election because of the pandemic. “We were the only state in the entire...

During the 1918 flu epidemic, Wisconsin limited deaths with statewide stay-at-home measures. Some cities reopened early, however, with deadly results. Time will tell if history repeats with COVID-19. Roy Cummings, a movie house owner in Oshkosh, knew he would lose big bucks — some $400 to $500 a week — if the northeast Wisconsin city shut down his business and other public gathering places. But he believed it was a wise call. C.G. Baumann, another Oshkosh movie house owner, appeared less eager to shutter his business, “but stated he would be glad to do so if it was the...

The U.S. Postal Service is investigating the failure to deliver at least 175, and possibly hundreds, of absentee ballots requested by voters in the village of Fox Point and other communities in Milwaukee County. The scrutiny comes as scores of voters across Wisconsin say they never received ballots requested long before Election Day. Wisconsin voters requested a record 1.28 million absentee ballots, many of them seeking to avoid in-person voting during the coronavirus pandemic. But news outlets have found numerous voters in Madison, Milwaukee, Appleton, and elsewhere who said they waited to receive ballots that did not arrive before...

U.S. attorneys in Milwaukee and Madison and state officials ask consumers to report fraudulent cures and claims related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Vaccine kits. “Silver Solution” treatment. Even coronavirus-fighting toothpaste. The swindles have begun. As Americans struggle to cope with the spread of COVID-19, they will also need to brace themselves for “disaster fraud” — those cons that rely on post-catastrophe chaos to separate people from their money. In late March — two months after the first case was confirmed in the U.S. — the Justice Department filed its first enforcement action on the issue, seeking a restraining order...