Author: Wisconsin Public Radio

For the first five months of the coronavirus pandemic, Wisconsin’s three state veterans homes did not see any positive cases among residents. Diane Lynch, administrator for the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs, said the long-term care facilities quickly adopted precautions like restricting visitors, wearing masks and monitoring staff and residents for COVID-19 symptoms. “Early on, I think our ability to keep things at bay had largely to do with our infection control procedures, but also with kind of the slower spread around the state,” Lynch said. “As time has passed and people are starting to be in more confined...

Milwaukee County completed its presidential recount on November 27 with President-elect Joe Biden widening his margin of victory. A few hundred votes were added to the county’s election results during the recount. Biden picked up 257 votes and President Donald Trump gained 125 votes, according to numbers announced on November 27 by Milwaukee County Elections Director Julietta Henry. On November 24, Milwaukee officials discovered 386 previously unopened and uncounted ballots during the recount. Claire Woodall-Vogg, executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission, said at the time simple human error led to the ballots being previously overlooked. Biden went into...

A group with Republican ties has asked the state Supreme Court to throw out the results of Wisconsin’s presidential election and force the Legislature to certify the state’s presidential electors instead. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of a group called Wisconsin Voters Alliance, which tried unsuccessfully before the election to block $6.3 million in grant funding to help run elections in five Wisconsin cities. The group’s attorneys include Erick Kaardal, a past officer for the Republican Party of Minnesota and a lawyer for The Thomas More Society, a Chicago-based conservative law firm. While repeated studies have shown that...

Partisan tensions remain high in Wisconsin as the state begins a partial presidential recount in two counties that helped deliver the state to President-elect Joe Biden. It is Wisconsin’s second presidential recount in as many elections, but the circumstances in 2020 are far different than they were in 2016, with a sitting president asking for the recount, and the state and national Republican Party apparatus firmly behind him. Trump’s campaign paid $3 million to conduct the recount in Wisconsin’s Democratic strongholds — Milwaukee and Dane counties — alleging poll workers mishandled absentee ballots despite following advice given to them...