Author: Scott Bauer

The Wisconsin Ethics Commission has recommended that state prosecutors file felony charges against a fundraising committee for former President Donald Trump and a Republican state lawmaker related to an effort to unseat Assembly Speaker Robin Vos. The ethics commission on February 20 referred the alleged violations to several county prosecutors, based on documents the commission provided on February 23. The commission alleged that Trump’s fundraising committee and state Representative Janel Brandtjen, a Trump ally, conspired in a scheme to evade campaign finance laws to support the Republican primary challenger to Vos in 2022. Vos angered Trump after he fired...

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...