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What’s going on with Reopen Wisconsin?
As connections to large right-wing organizations are uncovered in the growing movement to reopen the economies of states around the country, organizers of the rally planned in Wisconsin continue to say they’ve turned down any outside influence. One of the organizers, Madison Elmer, posted in the private Facebook group associated with the rally, set for […]
Milwaukee Common Council moves toward mail-in voting for 2020
Weeks after thousands of Milwaukee residents went to the polls to vote in the April 7 election during the COVID-19 pandemic, the city’s newly sworn in common council passed a resolution to move the city to entirely mail-in voting. The new program, called SafeVote and introduced by Ald. Marina Dimitrijevic, would send an application for […]
Wisconsin’s missing absentee ballots
Maria Nelson, a 35-year-old Appleton resident, was diagnosed with stage two breast cancer in February 2019. A little more than a year later, on March 31, she requested an absentee ballot to vote in Wisconsin’s spring election. She thought she was following the rules, believing she had until April 13 to get her ballot in […]
Rally to reopen Wisconsin set as Wisconsinites face an unknown future
A #ReopenWisconsin Facebook group displaying anti-government memes, a few MAGA hats and joined by thousands of participants, including Milwaukee County Supervisor Dan Sebring, is planning a rally in Madison April 24 to protest Gov. Tony Evers’ stay-at-home order. The event, “Wisconsin Freedom Rally #ReopenWisconsin,” has nearly 800 people saying they’re going and 3,600 saying they’re […]
Days after spring election, another hurdle: how do candidates gather nomination signatures?
Before the ink has completely dried on Wisconsin’s 2020 spring election, the state is already moving ahead to the fall primary and general elections. Starting April 15, candidates for elected office can begin circulating nomination papers and collecting signatures — a process made much more complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Normally, the process of collecting […]
Zoombombing, phishing and the threats of our increasingly online world
With kids home from school, many people working from home and many essential services beginning to function remotely, the world is moving more online than it ever was before. With that move come more vulnerabilities. Just last week, the Milwaukee Elections Commission fell victim to a practice known as “Zoombombing,” which involves people logging into […]
With no guidance from WEC, 1,850 municipalities left to make 1,850 different ballot decisions
“Each municipality must determine whether the ballot was postmarked timely.” That is the guidance provided by the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) to local election clerks around Wisconsin for how to handle absentee ballots with postmarks that are unclear or that have no postmark at all. This is important because of a U.S. Supreme Court order […]
Relief funds support nonprofits, just when their services are needed most
The Sheboygan County United Way sprang into action the week area schools started to close. At a meeting on March 13, board members discussed how the organization could step up. The very next day, on Saturday, March 14, after contacting 60 area nonprofits, the group launched the Sheboygan County Covid-19 Relief Fund, to help with […]
Elections Commission descends into partisan bickering with important questions to be answered
Facing the prospect of interpreting court orders and state law as well as coming to a consensus on how the U.S. Postal Service works, the Wisconsin Elections Commission spent a Friday meeting bickering on mostly partisan lines. The meeting was held to provide guidance for what ballots local clerks should count as valid. A U.S. […]
Sorting through a ‘flawed’ election
The arguments over Wisconsin’s 2020 spring elections will go on for a long time. But for now, people across the state are still trying to pick through the pieces of what happened when Wisconsin attempted to hold an election during a pandemic. With the reporting of results delayed until April 13, the state is in […]
Picture still murky one day after election
One day after Wisconsin’s spring election, the state has just a smattering of the data needed to get a full picture of how the COVID-19 pandemic influenced voting behaviors. Since polls closed, a handful of municipalities have reported the number of ballots received so far; a presidential candidate on yesterday’s ballots dropped out of the […]
‘All things considered’ Wisconsin does its best to vote
Wisconsin’s 2020 spring election will be graded on a curve — well, two actually. The first curve is how well election officials were able to handle holding in-person voting during a pandemic. The second curve is how sharply the number of Wisconsin’s COVID-19 cases will jump after thousands of people around the state were forced […]