Hi, folks,

The Wisconsin Supreme Court race is behind us, and folks have moved on quickly after liberal judge Chris Taylor’s blowout of conservative judge Maria Lazar. That’s evidenced by a candidate today already (come on!) announcing a campaign for next year’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race! 

But while the results weren’t close, the aftermath of the election was contentious, especially in Madison and Mequon.

In both places, clerks used their discretion in a way that operatives on one side of the political aisle disapproved of. 

In brief, Madison election officials decided to count 23 ballots that arrived at polling places after they closed, despite state law saying absentee votes had to get to polling places by 8 p.m. 

In Mequon, city officials threw out six ballots that had ZIP code and state missing on the witness address field on the absentee certificate. The courts have given clerks some wiggle room to decide what constitutes a valid address, but the judgment used in Mequon frustrated liberals (and some clerks I spoke with).

Attorneys for the state Republican Party told both municipalities not to count the ballots. Attorneys at Law Forward, a liberal election group, told Mequon to count the ballots and showed up at the Dane County meeting where the validity of the late-arriving Madison ballots were questioned.

The Madison ballots ended up counting, and the Mequon ones didn’t, at least for now. Litigation is possible in both cases.

In both cases, the contested ballots did not affect the outcome. But it reveals an essential truth ahead of the midterms: In Wisconsin, a battleground state where every ballot counts, there will be fights over how votes are cast and counted. And those arguments can be pivotal in the close statewide races that are all but inevitable in November elections in Wisconsin.

Those fights often land in court, and typically courts provide some clarity on Wisconsin election laws. But that’s perhaps not the case in the Mequon instance: A 2024 court ruling said that a sufficient witness address would allow a clerk to “reasonably identify a place where the witness may be communicated with.”

Reasonably identifying a place, it turns out, is a flexible rule that allows for different interpretations. Whether Mequon — and Madison in its slightly different scenario — abused their discretion is up for debate.

Those debates may become far more frequent between now and November, and are all but certain after the November election if any race is close. Stay tuned for more on that. 

But for now, let me know what questions you have about elections in Wisconsin. You can reach me at [email protected] or by replying to this email. 

And if you know someone who might like this newsletter, forward it to them! They can sign up for free here. 

You're invited: How the 2000 election set the stage for 2026

The 2000 presidential election didn’t just decide a presidency — it reshaped the way America runs elections. Join us on April 23 for a virtual conversation with election law scholar Rick Hasen and long-time Florida election administrator Paul Lux. Together, they’ll explore how the crisis in Florida led to the creation of the Help America Vote Act, the modernization of voter rolls, the birth of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, and a lasting debate over the federal government’s role in elections.

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