The
United States Supreme Court throws a curveball into absentee voting, letting the Trump administration
move forward with more restrictive rules, but Wisconsin election officials say were a long
ways from November and there will be more lawsuits.
This is Inside Wisconsin Politics.
I'm Zach Schultz, filling in for Sean Johnson, here with my colleagues Anya Van Wegden-Dank
and Rich Kramer in Eau Claire.
Hello to both of you.
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court's shadow docket struck again, releasing an unsigned
opinion that allows the Trump administration to go forward with orders for the postal
service to create rules restricting who can send an absentee ballot through the mail.
Anya, this started as an executive order last spring, Wisconsin was one of the states that
sued to stop it.
So where are we now?
I mean, we're still in the court.
So this was the court did not rule on sort of the merits of the executive order themselves.
They ruled on the timing of the lawsuit that Wisconsin and other states filed, essentially
saying that because the postal service rule has not yet been put in place, they can't
argue that they have been harmed.
Meanwhile, the Postal Service did author and publish the rule that would go into effect
as soon as the order is cleared.
And so now things go back to a lower court, then they will go back to the Supreme Court,
which will eventually we assume kind of weigh in on whether the executive branch, the president,
is allowed to make such a kind of sweeping change to state elections, which are according
to the Constitution sort of supposed to be decided by the states.
So nothing happening at this exact moment, but everyone should be a little bit worried
and aware of what's going on.
Yeah, I mean, we're 10 weeks out from the midterm elections.
And so one of the things that we're hearing from election administrators is sort of,
well, what are we supposed to be doing in the meantime?
They are in the process of printing out these ballots, ballots that go to overseas and military
voters need to be sent out 45 days in advance of the election.
So that's like, I think September 19th.
So all this stuff needs to be happening, this nitty gritty administrative stuff.
And meanwhile, they're trying to figure out just like how the rules function.
Rich, Republicans have an interesting relationship with absentee balloting, going back years
where they've talked about restricting it, but they also love to use it, including Republican
nominee Tom Tiffany.
And President Donald Trump, I believe it was reported used it this year as well.
So it's an interesting paradox.
So going back to 2020, President Donald Trump has made these false claims about widespread
voter fraud that resulted in a stolen election.
But part of that, of course, was his railing against mail-in absentee voting.
And he said it's just a prime opportunity for fraud to happen.
So many of his supporters have bought into that.
And here in Wisconsin, we've got this paradox where you've got the state party chair, Brian
Schimming, the GOP party chair, who he said, well, I was one of the first state party
chairs in the country to advocate for absentee voting and early voting as a way to kind of
match Democrats who have been really successful with that in terms of getting out the vote
early ahead of election day, less work on election day.
At the same time, you've got people within the party that want to impeach the state's
election, top election official, Megan Wolf.
They've went after Republican speaker, outgoing Republican speaker of the Assembly, Robin
Voss, for not trying to de-certify the election, et cetera.
So it's really kind of a paradox between those two worlds in the Wisconsin GOP.
So Anya, what are clerks doing right now?
I guess in Wisconsin history, we've had a lot of lawsuits that happen.
Right before an election, but usually those involve state law.
This would be seemingly a much larger change than one that they really wouldn't have any
impact on.
Yeah.
Well, Wisconsin also is unique because it has sort of the most de-federated election administration
system in the country.
So a lot of other places, you know, it's county clerks who run who administer elections.
Here it is local clerks, and I'm blanking on the exact number, but it is close to 200.
And so they are all, again, doing this kind of nitty-gritty work of printing out the
ballots and checking their lists, and there's all of this work that goes on kind of behind
the scenes to prepare for this.
Every clerk I've spoken to says that, like, as soon as one election ends, the next one
begins for them in terms of their work.
And so the primary just ended.
They're all getting ready for the general.
And so as these rules kind of shift, and as they're waiting, again, for the back and
forth from the courts, it really kind of raises the question of how do they follow the rules
if they don't yet know what the rules are, and especially for something like this, with
the postal service being in charge of potentially determining who is allowed to receive a mailing
ballot and who is not, they could accidentally violate that rule if they're not very, very
careful.
And so they're kind of waiting to see, so we are just kind of in this wait and see moment
when, again, they actually need to be kind of hurrying up just to get stuff like formatted
for the printer.
Again, this very administrative details that really kind of determines how we all vote.
And there have been concerns about how the postal service will handle absentee ballots,
especially under the Trump administration, both two separate Trump administrations.
There have been questions and conspiracies about whether the postal service will lose
the ballots, whether they'll be processing them on time, are there enough postal workers
to handle all of these routes?
And so I know that the parties in the past have told their voters, hey, if you're worried,
make sure you deliver it in person, Rich, have we seen any of these groups, whether the Democrats
or Republicans, trying to make sure that their voters are aware, even if these don't
happen, like, hey, maybe it's safest to hand deliver these, or maybe you do absentee in
person, if you can.
Yeah.
And also some of the clerks, so the Wisconsin Elections Commission surveyed local clerks
this year, I believe, anyway, the results came out this year.
And a lot of them, the majority of them did mention there has been longer than expected
delays with regard to absentee voting.
This was in the April Supreme Court election, but so some of them in the summary of the survey
responses from those clerks have said that people are just saying, well, I won't even
try to absentee vote.
I'll go a different route.
And so some of the clerks were also advising that they consider in-person absentee voting
or other forms, which is really something.
And I got a chance to ask Republican Congressman and candidate for Governor Tom Tiffany about
this specific executive order from the president and what he thought about it.
He deflected and kind of went along the lines of saying, most clerks do a great job, but
he said some without naming them have gone beyond what the color of the law dictates.
So without naming them, we can assume that it might be Dane County and Milwaukee County
that he has an issue with because we've heard that from other Republicans.
So it's just a really interesting situation, and we're right on the cusp of this election,
so this uncertainty definitely has got a lot of eyebrows raised.
So this has only happened to the last, obviously, day or so.
How much can this change the conversation in the gubernatorial election?
Because for the past few weeks, since the candidates have been set, it's been about
data centers.
And that's been the driving force of Tiffany attacking David Crowley and Crowley trying
to defend and put it back in his candidacy.
But could this change the topic and bring up those connections Tom Tiffany has to Donald
Trump?
Or the fact that these almost all come out of election conspiracies from 2020, can this
be an opening to change the narrative of what people are talking about?
To a richest point, I think one of the consequences of something like this isn't just
that it's confusing for election officials, but that it can kind of sow confusion and
doubt among voters.
And so for voters who are kind of already concerned about American democracy, who do
tend to skew Democratic, this is kind of part of that pattern.
For voters who maybe have questions about the 2020 election, or are Trump supporters much
like Tom Tiffany, who was somebody who voted to de-certify 2020 election results in certain
other states, this is just kind of an example of the chaos that they say is just kind of
baked into the system.
And so it kind of gives them an opportunity if things don't necessarily go their way in
November to point to the shifting rules, the back and forth, the courts, the judges as
a reason for that.
And so at the very least, even if it does kind of resolve in a way that allows administrators
to do their job sort of without a hitch, it still creates this sense of chaos in the kind
of basis of our democracy, which is voting.
Yeah.
So Rich, do you think Republicans want to change the conversation here, or is this particularly
the Democrats would love to be able to pin this back, even if it causes confusion and
say this is what you get with Tom Tiffany and Donald Trump?
Yeah, it seems like Democrats are much more eager to talk about this sort of thing than
Republicans.
When Tom Tiffany has been asked about his 2020 votes and his signing on to a Texas lawsuit
that year, that would have tossed out Wisconsin's votes in the presidential election.
He just differs.
Like he'll quickly say Joe Biden is president and then he moves on.
So based on that and also based on some Republican commentary I've seen from people in Wisconsin,
they definitely don't want Tom Tiffany talking about this.
They don't necessarily want him talking about issues that President Trump is pushing that
are unpopular.
But you can rest assured that Democrats are very excited to talk about this development
from the Supreme Court, the president's attempts, his plans, et cetera, because we got a press
release first thing this morning about it.
So another topic that could come up in the governor's race that we're paying attention
to, Governor Evers' Commutation Advisory Board met for the first time last week to
hear a dozen, from a dozen inmates who've applied to have their sentences reduced.
What do we know about this board and then how will that filter out into Tom Tiffany versus
David Crowley?
Why would it have anything to do with them?
Yeah, so it's the first time that this board has met since 1995 that was under Republican
governor Tommy Thompson.
And so this has been sort of a priority of Governor Evers' to make some changes to criminal
justice in Wisconsin.
He has not delivered on many of those, but this was kind of one of his final, you know,
Wisconsin office is to potentially reduce a sentence of grant commutations to some
incarcerated people.
And so this is a big deal in part because crime is just always an issue in any election.
I mean, we've seen it even with Supreme Court races where they don't really have any, you
know, role in fighting crime, but crime is just something that motivates voters.
And so this issue of potentially, you know, lessening the sentence of people, some of
whom were convicted for nonviolent crimes, some of whom were convicted for violent crimes.
According to a series of kind of criteria, including they've served a majority of their
sentence.
They've proven that they've sort of rehabilitated in certain ways, but all of that can be the
type of thing that Republicans in particular who like to say Democrats are kind of easy
on crime can really seize upon.
And you know, I'm from Massachusetts.
And so I grew up learning about sort of the Willie Horton case, which was a person who was
released from prison, went on to commit another very violent crime.
And then this swung the governor's election in a little bit before my time.
But I grew up learning about this.
And that is the kind of thing that can really sink elections.
And so I think as this is going forward, you know, it is popular among voters of many
different stripes to do some sort of criminal justice reform.
But when you kind of look at what that actually looks like, it can be a bit of a tightrope
walk for politicians.
It's interesting you bring up Willie Horton because that came out in the Democratic primary
in 1988.
It was Al Gore versus Dukakis.
And then it ended up playing a major role in the presidential campaign in 1988, where
it was Lee Atwater, who was one of the first negative ad gurus out there, ran it against
Dukakis.
And it was considered one of the things that showed weakness in him and why he went from
high approval ratings to losing that election in 1988.
And Rich, obviously this is something that Republicans have a history of looking at his
crime in Milwaukee and especially people of color.
We've already started to see some of those connections they're trying to draw between
David Crawley and any bad thing that happens in Milwaukee County.
It's a little bit of like throwing spaghetti at the wall, see what sticks right now.
But this is definitely something they will use against him, even if it's the weakest
of links.
Yeah, that's right.
This is something that is proven to be able to stick in the past.
I mean, I think back to 2022, the U.S. Senate race between Republican incumbent and now
Senator Ron Johnson and former Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes.
That race, the Republicans supporting Johnson and Johnson himself just blanketed the Wisconsin
airwaves with ads about how Barnes was, you know, about defunding the police or he was
anti-ice and he was weak on crime.
I mean, these sort of things, again, a U.S. Senator doesn't have a ton to do directly
with crime fighting, but these are the kind of topics that stir up people's emotions.
Also back in 2022, the Marquette University Law School did a survey that I found really
interesting.
It showed that, you know, 77% of respondents said they feel safe in their daily activities,
but 85% reported being either somewhat concerned or very concerned about increasing crimes.
So that kind of shows how the emotions can get in the way of numbers on paper.
And Anya, it's interesting, the crime statistics came out for Wisconsin showing a decrease,
as we've seen nationally, including in Milwaukee, but they're still going to be allegations.
We saw it with videos of incidents at the state fair and all of a sudden the connection
we saw was Republicans saying, this is David Crowley's Wisconsin.
And I didn't know that the Milwaukee County exec was in charge of the state fair and like
making sure everyone stayed in line there, but this will keep coming up, right?
Yeah.
I mean, as Rich said, statistics and people's feelings kind of have almost nothing to do
with one another.
In fact, there's been research that shows that as crime rates have steadily gone down
minus the COVID spike, you know, from the 90s, coverage of crime has gone up in local media.
And so it gives the impression to a lot of people, you know, I talk to people from outside
of Milwaukee who are convinced that it's kind of on fire just 100% of the time.
And so if you feel that way, it kind of doesn't matter what the statistics say.
And you can really leverage that concern, especially for somebody like David Crowley,
who is so Milwaukee, right, that he is of Milwaukee, he is the county executive, the
Tom Tiffany campaign will try to tie him to every single problem that Milwaukee has,
including crime rates that are higher than elsewhere in the state because that is just
kind of the nature of urban centers.
So one last area I want to talk about today and talking about changing the topic in the
governor's race.
If we ever get away from data centers being this primary driver, there is the obvious
tariffs coming in, and we have a couple different aspects of one is Trump is escalating
a new trade war with Canada.
And we're also seeing questions about whether he would allow imported beef coming in from
South America to come into the market and reducing tariffs there.
And rich tariffs have an interesting, another interesting aspect of Republicans of when
Trump imposes them that they don't change the cost according to Republicans, but when
he lowers them, it's supposed to lower the cost of beef coming in.
What's been the reaction to some of these different tariff war battles going on?
So again, this is something that I would imagine Republicans aren't excited to talk about,
but Tom Tiffany has in the past, he's talked about how the president is doing these things,
these tariffs, in order to re-shore manufacturing in Wisconsin.
He said the media doesn't talk about the success stories.
He mentioned something about Harley-Davidson plant, something happening with that in Tomahawk.
So they don't want to talk about the downsides of that.
I did see something, I honestly wasn't able to go through the whole article, but that
Tom Tiffany might have been creating some distance between the president on this latest batch
with regard to Canada, but again, I'm not as super well versed on that.
It's definitely a topic, though, with affordability being top concern among voters in general,
and Democrats are going to try to make hay with it.
And Anya, in our last minute here, talking about these tariff issues, Democrats were
quick to pounce on this, Governor Evers saying, we have $7 billion in trade with Canada, our
closest neighbor.
These have real-world implications, not just political implications.
Right, but again, it's the work of politicians to draw those connections and make people
understand.
When you go to the grocery store, it doesn't say like this came from XYZ, you just sort
of pick up your eggs and your milk and you go on your way.
And then likewise, especially kind of further out on the supply chain, we get a ton of wood
from Canada, for example.
I don't see a sticker on this table kind of explaining how this table came to be.
And so it's easy to feel kind of distanced as just a normal person going through the
world from some of these policies.
So it's the job of Democrats if they want to make hay with this, as Rich said, to make
that hay, which also involves a little bit of complicated explaining a sort of geopolitical
maneuvering, which is a little tricky in like a 30-second ad as we've talked about.
Yeah.
And you have to have the money to run those 30-second ads over and over to explain perhaps
nuanced geopolitical maneuvers in an election.
Well, that is all the time we have for today.
Our colleague, Sean Johnson, will be back next week.
This has been Inside Wisconsin Politics.
Be sure to follow us on pbswisconsin.org, wpr.org, YouTube, or wherever you get your
podcasts.
Did I say that Willie Horton was in the governor's race?
Fuck.
Because he was my governor.
I wasn't alive, but he would have been.
Do caucus was the governor.
Yes.
I knew where you were going with it.
Yeah.
Thank you.