Eight years of vetoes have left Wisconsin’s election law almost untouched. Republican lawmakers keep passing stricter voting rules, and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers keeps blocking them. Courts, not the Legislature, have become the main place where the rules get fought over. Votebeat, a nonprofit newsroom that covers election administration, reported in September that the November 3 vote could end that standoff.
Democrats want to keep the governor’s office and win both legislative chambers. Republicans want to hold the Legislature and flip the governorship. Either result would hand one party a trifecta, and with it a much clearer road to its election priorities before the 2028 presidential race.
It would not necessarily mean big change, though. “I don’t see big changes coming in state law, almost regardless of what partisan configuration the state ends up with after the election,” said Barry Burden, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor who runs the school’s Elections Research Center. Republicans used their trifecta from 2011 to 2018 to enact their biggest priorities, he said.
What Democrats could and could not do
Voter ID and a ban on private funding for election administration now sit in the state Constitution, so a Democratic legislature could not simply repeal them. Burden said Democrats could soften the voter ID law but would struggle to remove it. They could instead turn to automatic voter registration and possibly voting by people with felonies who are on parole.
Sen. Mark Spreitzer, a Democrat from Beloit, said his party would move at once to let election officials process ballots on the Monday before Election Day, giving them an extra day and likely speeding up unofficial results on election night. His list also includes writing the legality of absentee ballot drop boxes into law, expanding ballot tracking, letting voters spoil an absentee ballot, setting standards for fixing mistakes on absentee ballots, and ending the practice of numbering certain absentee ballots in a way that can risk voters’ anonymity. “These are very low-hanging fruit,” Spreitzer said.
Democratic gubernatorial nominee David Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive, told Votebeat the Monday processing change was his priority. It would help election workers and cut reporting delays, he said, “while maintaining the security and integrity of the election process.” He also backs better funding for local election officials. Other stalled Democratic bills could return, among them a shorter residency requirement, a ban on firearms near polling places and automatic voter registration. Crowley wrote an automatic registration bill himself during his short time in the Legislature, but it never got a public hearing or floor vote.
What Republicans might pursue
Republicans would also have limited room, Burden said, since they already passed one of the strictest voter ID laws in the country and a rule to reject absentee ballots missing a witness address. Citizenship verification is where they could go further, through documentary proof of citizenship or audits of voter rolls for noncitizens. Burden said pressure from the Trump administration would push them that way. Evers vetoed a noncitizen voter audit bill earlier this year.
Republican nominee Tom Tiffany, a U.S. representative from northern Wisconsin, voted for the federal SAVE Act and co-authored the bill that led to the state’s voter ID requirement as a state legislator. He told Votebeat he would sign legislation comparing Department of Transportation records with the voter registration database, plus other “election integrity reforms that Governor Evers vetoed that I believe deserve another look.” Vetoed bills that could return include one barring people with felonies from voting until they pay certain court fees, and one ending the voter ID exemption for people who are indefinitely confined because of age or disability. Tiffany acknowledged the Monday processing bill at an August press conference without saying whether he backs it.
If government stays divided
Burden expects the stalemate to continue under any divided government. Even with a Republican trifecta, Democrats would have a backstop in the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which has a 5-2 liberal majority. Republicans could take Democratic measures to federal court, where Burden thinks they may have the upper hand.
Spreitzer said a couple of ideas, including Monday processing, could still pass with split control. “Those are things we could very easily get done and demand in a split-government situation,” he said.
