Kiss Wisconsin goodbye
The Wisconsin Supreme Court is now controlled by the left. This is highly consequential:
The Democrat-backed candidate defeated her conservative opponent in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election of Wisconsin Tuesday night, giving the left a majority over the body that determines critical issues such as abortion and election integrity.
Election integrity. Wisconsin.
It wasn’t even close:
In a contest that smashed spending records for state judicial elections, Daniel Kelly, a former justice of the state Supreme Court, lost to Janet Protasiewicz, a circuit court judge from Milwaukee County, by approximately 10 points.
Abortion concerns apparently featured strongly in the results, but it’s that “election integrity” part that probably will have more far-reaching effects. Here’s what was at stake:
…[The newly flipped liberal Court will strike down Wisconsin’s current voter ID law. Additionally, proof of residency – which is required to register to vote – will be nullified. Furthermore, unmanned drop boxes, which were deemed illegal by the current conservative Court, will become legal. There will be drop boxes on every street corner in Madison and Milwaukee.
If those things happen, I doubt Wisconsin will ever vote anything but Democrat again in a presidential election. Although the Wisconsin legislature is currently strongly Republican, that wouldn’t stop a liberal Supreme Court from rulings such as those described.
I hadn’t followed the race closely till now, but apparently the fight was exceptionally bitter, as evidenced by Kelly’s concession speech:
“I wish that in a circumstance like this, I would be able to concede to a worthy opponent,” he said at an event held at the Heidel House Hotel in Green Lake. “But I do not have a worthy opponent to which I can concede.”
Kelly called Protasiewicz’s campaign “deeply deceitful, dishonorable and despicable.”…
…My concern is the damage done to the institution of the courts,” Kelly said.
“My opponent is a serial liar. She’s disregarded judicial ethics; she’s demeaned the judiciary with her behavior. This is the future that we have to look forward to in Wisconsin.”
Adding: “I wish Wisconsin the best of luck, because I think it’s going to need it.”
Here’s some of the background to the accusations about lying.
Judicial elections are astonishing to me. In Nebraska, all judges are appointed by the governor and then they stand for retention. Lawyers apply and then a committee of lay people and lawyers pass on qualified candidates to the governor. Many unqualified people don’t get sent on.
The Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court are composed of lawyers from all over the state. They are experienced and impressive. Many are former trial court judges and county attorneys.
That Janet P is just another unimpressive political hack.
Something like $45 million was spent in WI. What a waste of money. All states should adopt the Nebraska Plan.
Unmanned (personed?) ballot boxes?
Let’s fill them up. 100 million R votes.
Wow, she’s already given an opinion on legislative district maps. She thinks the current one doesn’t follow the law. First step to control elections is to put precincts you can control into legislative districts you can’t control. Then you only need 3 to 5% margin to make sure that district never flips. There will be slim needles of legislative boundaries that make their way into Madison and Milwaukee. Rather than say a few districts for Madison and Milwaukee and others representing more rural voters.
How in the world can over 50% of the population be in the bottom 25% of intellectual capacity?
Elephant in the room – the Republican candidate was involved in Trump’s challenges to the 2020 election, and that was used to tar him in the race.
There is a significant portion of the population to whom “conspiring to reverse an election result” is worse than lefist activism. Compared to general election voters, Republican primary voters are simultaneously more attuned to the dangers of leftist activism and less attuned to how normies view 2020 and January 6th. Until we figure that out, we’re going to continue to lose.
(So you don’t agree that Trump was trying to reverse an election result? Fine – go win the narrative so the normies understand. Can’t win the narrative against the left’s narrative machine? OK, then perhaps charging right into the gaping maw of that narrative machine is a bad idea?)
they stole this election like they did with walker in 2018, and just expanded the steal in 2020 and 2022, madison and milwaukee will contaminate the rest of the state, like a contagion,
No matter what it is CC™ will find The Great Orange Whale. Root of all evil that he is, and a foul, fell beast.
@Bauxite
Which points to the question of how we can muster such charges more effectively and take the sting out of the smear campaign.
Figuring it out is one thing. The question is: How do we address it?
Perhaps acting like a condescending asswipe who enjoys taking snipes at victims of what they admit is a systematic machine of corruption, fraud, propaganda, and demonization isn’t the best way to win people over. Actually, scratch the “perhaps” there.
Especially when you at best have a diagnosis of the problem (and often times not even that) without having any great situation to deal with that.
So let’s establish a few basic principles:
We WILL need to challenge official election results at various points, especially given the systematic, decades old fraud that is getting worse. Ignoring that fact just because of the candidate or candidates involved in a given case will merely be setting your own candidates up for a shock down the road.
We will also need to undermine the left’s narrative machine. Project Veritas and others have done great work in doing this, but it is not enough. I do think Trump’s suggestion of tightening libel laws to protect public figures was another possible step, as was Musk’s buyout and exposes, but that isn’t going to be enough.
We need people who have at least as motivated a ground game, as well as possible infiltration skills, as the Left does.
“Compared to general election voters, Republican primary voters are simultaneously more attuned to the dangers of leftist activism and less attuned to how normies view 2020 and January 6th. Until we figure that out, we’re going to continue to lose.”
True enough. But that won’t suffice.
Unless and until the Republican base can also accept Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization as a victory (in that the decision ended what Roe v. Wade had established as a federal right to abortion), Republicans will never win another national election. Ever.
Like it or not. I don’t like it, but there it is.
(So you don’t agree that Trump was trying to reverse an election result? Fine – go win the narrative so the normies understand.
I think “normies” is an unfortunate term for low information and single issue voters. Normals are the parents who protest the sexualization of children in schools. The white suburban women voters who vote on the single issue of abortion are not what I consider “normal” citizens. I do agree that Republican legislatures that do not adopt the Hobbs decision standard of 15 weeks or something similar are asking for trouble.
As for January 6 political prisoners, that is a historic violation of civil rights by the DoJ.
My brother-in-law voted in the primary for the Waukesha County judge who stood all the courtroom abuse from the Christmas parade killer and sent him to prison permanently. She might have done better. Kelly had already lost a Supreme Court seat, but he had the support of the Wisconsin GOP establishment.
I like Grunt’s suggestion. Republicans need to play the game as it is played today. Stuff those ballot collection boxes.
In the aggregate, Wisconsin voters are allowing the inmates to run the asylum. Those voters refusal to reflect upon the resulting consequences of the policies they support is how and why ‘good intentions’ pave The Road to Hell.
They could be forgiven for their boneheadedness but for the fact that they condemn future generations to reaping what they have sown.
Judicial elections are astonishing to me. In Nebraska, all judges are appointed by the governor and then they stand for retention. Lawyers apply and then a committee of lay people and lawyers pass on qualified candidates to the governor. Many unqualified people don’t get sent on.
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Dubious the screening committee. If I’m not mistaken, such committees screen out anyone of which the establishment bar disapproves. The other problem with systems like this was identified years ago by a Baltimore lawyer in an op-ed in The Sun. The method in effect then required a private practitioner to close his practice and then submit to a competitive election one year hence wherein there were always more competing judges than seats, so he stood a good chance of losing his clients and his seat. It was a set of risks he thought too discouraging.
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Suggest such a system should allow a generous grace period after one is confirmed in office – say, four years ‘ere one is subject to an up-or-down referendum. Suggest that a minimum number of years as a member of the bar active and in good standing should be required – say, six years for municipal judges, 13 years for superior trial judges. Appellate judges could be drawn from the ranks of those who had four years under their belt as superior trial judges. Another lawyer with whom I correspond and who has served on judicial selection committees tells me you get the same three aspriants, over and over – prosecutors, employees of the state attorney-general’s offices, and private practitioners who are not making a satisfactory living off it. IMO, the salary schedule of superior trial judges should be set with an eye toward persuading the more capable lawyers in private practice to give up their practice. Compensation for lawyers tends to be bi-modally distributed, as if it were two professions. So, perhaps you pay superior trial judges a salary at the point of inflection between the humps.
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One other thought: vest the advice and consent function in the legislature for appointments to the appellate courts, oddball trial courts with large jurisdictions, and coroners. For common-and-garden trial courts, you might vest that function in a convocation of county councillors, proceeding by weighted voting.
turtler – I feel like I’m watching a slow-motion train wreck, and I believe that we’re going to have to do a lot more losing before there is any winning, and there won’t be much left to win.
The profanity is unnecessary and unwelcome.
On the merits, if you want to challenge election results, you need proof. And you need proof immediately after the election. That proof just isn’t going to be available, especially not on a timeframe that would makes a difference. Someone needs to explain to me how you can challenge a 2020-like scenario without coming off as a crank. Trump, as is his wont, tried to bluster is way through, ended up making up bunch of nonsense, thereby discrediting the whole endeavor. Was there any other way to challenge 2020? After the ballots were in the box, I think the answer to that question is no.
Another point that I think you underestimate – Democrats’ election shenanigans make fraud easier, but they are effective primarily because they increase base turnout. (I.e., among people who wouldn’t have voted if they didn’t have a ballot mailed to their home or had a ballot harvester knock on their door every day for a week.) That’s not fraud, and there’s no legitimate way to challenge it.
In short, attributing every election defeat to fraud and spending the next campaign whining about it is a loser’s move. I’m afraid its going to take a lot more losing before Republican primary voters figure that out.
Mike K – Point taken on “normies.” I was actually referring to people who (unlike most of us) do not obsessively follow politics and, instead, just tune in every two or four years to decide how to vote. I think there are a lot more of them (whatever you call them) than of us.
An additional point – I understand that Republicans now hold a super-majority in the WI legislature, which includes the power to impeach and remove the governor and SC justices.
I would not be opposed to the R’s in the legislature making it know that the legislature will start impeaching SC justices if the SC steps out of its lane on Act 10 or especially redistricting.
The left would scream bloody murder, but that’s probably one of the only ways available to check judges who want to be mini-legislatures. The problem would be the whole “goes around comes around” thing, although I seriously doubt that Ds are going to end up with 67 votes in the US Senate any time soon.
you make excuses for the people who are destroying this country, using every means at out disposal, they steal the governorships, use their emergency powers to kill thousands of inconvenient people, let riots destroy major cities, then steal the Presidency, with selective counts, in order to put in this crew of wreckers, which have emptied our military supplies, who have bled out cities white, who have allowed an invasion of military age men, all of these things they have done,
put a drooling idiot like fetterman, out there, because they have this utter contempt for the system they drowned the red wave, with scams like Arizona,
I have my reservations about some things trump has said, but the point is illustrative as obama’s hack david plouffe said ‘we must not only defeat him, but prevent any other from rising’
The Wisconsin results were mixed. Two conservative ballot measures passed, and an election in the north Milwaukee suburbs gave the Republicans a 2/3 majority in the state Senate. they remain two votes short of that 2/3 in the state House. I don’t know if, like NC, there are a couple of Democrats who aren’t totally crazy who could be talked into voting with the majority.
The Supreme Court win appears to be from the Milwaukee and Madison Democrat machines, and from huge out-of-state campaign expenditures from leftists. That political machine is why Dems keep winning state-wide races, but not local.
CC™:
Good that you aren’t opposed to WI Republicans fighting and not just loosing, a comfort to be sure, wouldn’t want it to be an unwelcome cause of angst. (sarc)
Turning out an imaginary base and getting that base counted and recounted as valid democrat (leftist) voters is and was the method (you didn’t notice in 2020) it seems. If you haven’t paid attention neo has covered the problems inherent in resorting to courts to rectify election fraud after the election has been fortified as the left has been doing.
Profanity is appropriate for such obstinate, intransigent, disingenous, behaviour in a “conservative” CC™.
Feel better?
“In short, attributing every election defeat to fraud and spending the next campaign whining about it is a loser’s move.” – Bauxite
2020 and 2022 were decided by “fraud” in several states. I actually agree with you we need to do a better job describing what was happening. There was malfeasance, a crime where election officials ignored laws to allow invalid or illegal votes to be counted.
When signature verification is ignored, not only is that malfeasance but those ballots are invalid.
Kari Lake’s suit has come close to what is the holy grail of Democrat fraud– poor or no signature verification. In the first trial, the judge mis-characterized her complaint (no doubt on purpose). The supreme court of Arizona had the fortitude to call that out. Now the fight will be over actually doing an audit of the signatures. Maricopa county will fight that to the supreme court, since they know the rejection rate will increase.
When a court somewhere allows an fair audit of the signature verification process in most if not all the states that use mail-in ballots, the effect will overturn close elections. How do we find a judge with the courage to allow that to happen?
Continuing to fight the battle in courts.
But I think being more accurate with what is actually happening with the ballots– whether it’s the malfeasance (or maladministration) by election officials ignoring election laws, invalid ballots where signatures don’t match or illegal tactics of ballot harvesting (in states where that is illegal) is a better tactic.
In the case of Washington state (where ballot harvesting is illegal)– this last election a group put signs near ballot drop boxes reminding people that it is a crime to harvest ballots and the box was being watched. The group was reported to the local police– who turned the case over to the FBI. The authorities, finally decided not to prosecute the group for intimidation, as long as they agreed not to place any signs near drop boxes.
We’ve got a long and winding road to fair and secure elections.
I repeated this many times, but in 2021 Washington state did an audit of the election signature verification process– looking for bias. They found no discernible bias by election workers– but they did find that of the 7200 ballots they audited, more than 2% of the signatures should have been rejected (the state average is 0.7%). When using signature verification software, the rejection rate was much higher.
https://kuow.org/stories/no-charges-in-washington-ballot-drop-box-surveillance-investigation
@Bauxite
Which is a major problem by any indication. So the question is: how do we manage it? Ditching Trump MAY be part of that answer, but it is very obviously not the only part. It isn’t even most of it.
Oh, Bauxite finds my profanity unwelcome?!?!
Well, it’s nowhere near as unnecessary, unwelcome, and utterly disingenuous as your gaslighting BULLSHIT.
So kindly Sit the Fuck Down and Stop pissing in my ear and telling me it’s raining like you tried to do in the other thread. Because if there’s one thing I dislike more than being lied TO, it’s being lied ABOUT. It was a major reason why I considered boycotting the 2016 election before I remembered what Hillary was like and the stakes there, and it’s a major reason why I went off on you accusing me of being the delusional one while completely missing the point.
Treat me with honesty and decorum and I will do the same to you. Try to gaslight me and insult me intelligence, and I will have to conclude very unflattering things about me. Because while I do not find it welcome to use profanity, I do think some things and people warrant it.
Do you fucking understand that, Bauxite?
Oh, and don’t try to claim you were not trying to gaslight or lie to me. There’s a reason I format my posts this way, precisely so that I can keep my writings organized and catch attempts like this.
Which is a borderline Catch 22 precisely because gathering proof usually takes time, energy, and work. Which is why our host has pointed out several times over that it is absurdly hard and even borderline impossible, especially in terms of overturning the stated results of an election.
This is made worse when the authorities in question blatantly disregard valid evidence (as they did several times over in many of the 2020 election challenges) on various grounds, starting with the idea that the occasion was not ripe ie that it was too late to challenge it.
This is going to be difficult enough with a more or less united front ad a lot of pressure. So forgive me if I find sniping bullshit on a blog to be manifestly unwelcome.
Start by gathering evidence and publishing it, which is what was often done. The proof doesn’t even need to be outright evidence of fraud so long as it demonstrates staggering disregard for the norms and rules of an election, such as breaches in chain of custody, the appearance of impropriety (like say a candidate simultaneously holding a position of trust with election integrity and being a partisan political actor in an election), and so forth.
THEN rally around the flag and demand to be heard as a united party over the din of the Left’s organized propaganda. Move the Overton Window so that honest, hard-nosed discussion of corruption and voter fraud can be discussed more widely. And don’t peel off just because you don’t like the candidate, are afraid of the optics, or see it as a chance to push for your sub-team within the overall team.
If they can ignore it, they will. So make it so that they can’t. As has been the case in some successful election challenges.
Considering the amount of evidence we have, that is clearly not. Also, “bunch of nonsense”?
This is a hell of a way to confess you haven’t been paying attention to the exact allegations and the grounds (or lack thereof) they were dismissed. The fact that you reflexively talked about Trump “lying” about Dominion in spite of the fact that many of the allegations – especially the ability to reassign or split votes – are objectively true does no credit to you or your posturing.
And you wonder why I emphasize the fact that credible challenges to an election have to be made as a united body, especially given the issue of the RINOs and others like David Frum?
It’s also notable that by doing so you monumentally disregard and indirectly insult the work and labor of a host of other people who put serious work into uncovering the fraud regarding those elections, such as Keri Lake.
Even if you want to argue that a given case is futile, it should be made. And we should build up the evidence to justify voter integrity laws at home and possibly a Supreme Court case. Because the way we win – to the extent we do it at all – is by underlining the corruption and fraud at the heart of much of the Left’s power, especially in the urban political machines and the swing states. Make it toxic for people to associate with it.
As I already underlined, I do not underestimate that fact. However, there is vanishingly little distinction between many forms of ballot harvesting (especially handholding low information voters through crippling mistakes) and outright voter fraud, especially on the point of use. There is also the fact that the number of accepted invalid signatures (especially evident in Pennsylvania) and other issues show that yes, there is grounds to reject much of this.
But that does underline the fact that we have to get into the Harvesting game too (which also requires a united camp and less focus on backbiting, and that goes for both Trumpists and the anti-Trumpists as Frederick pointed out).
However, there’s only so much THAT will work when our poll watchers are restricted from what they can do or even flatout ejected, polling stations are kept concealed, grounds for challenge are ignored for no good reason, and there is not a united focus on drowning out the Media’s drumbeat of nonsense.
Ah, the Concerned Conservative appears as the very epitome of measured pragmatism, and points out that maaaybe not all the election defeats were due to fraud alone and thus spending the next campaign whining about it is a “loser’s move!’
You freaking strawmanner.
OBVIOUSLY not every election defeat was due to fraud, but a GREAT DEAL OF THEM was. This fraud came both directly in the form of ballots without voters, and INDIRECTLY in the form of criminally reckless harvesting and lack of accountability in doing so (something that has been well documented in Arizona and Pennsylvania but which you “conveniently” seem to ignore). In particular the Bellweather states and the urban areas are so transparently different from the norm of the election on such a grand scale that it indicates great prima facie evidence of fraud. Which would be sufficient to justify an audit on legal terms, but which were drowned out.
So the question is: How do we lay the groundwork to justify sweeping audits of elections after they are done?
And while you are happy to denigrate Trump and other challengers looking like Cranks and discrediting themselves, and there MAY be something to do that, at least they recognize the problem for what it is and are taking steps to try and work on it.
And have generally gotten demonized by the left and abandoned by many others.
One does not need to pretend that every ballot that voted for Team D was a poor fraud from China in order to recognize that this is an absolutely important front that must be fought on, especially to justify any measures for voter integrity. Brian E did a good job at summarizing this.
I agree, but that doesn’t change the key issue: how do we persuade the low information voters and the Normies? How do we get measures such as fraud, electoral malfeasance, and corruption before them? And in a way that can’t be easily drowned out by the Left’s propaganda machine?
It can’t be too easy, given the state of Chicago and even Arizona. But it isn’t impossible. We saw this a fair bit of times even during and in the aftermath of 2020. One thing I will say is that a key failure of Trump’s campaign was the lack of preparation to tackle voter fraud and challenge it as the election was going on.
But another was the massive divides in the GOP that meant that when fraud and malfeasance was challenged, a large number cleaved off to be the “reasonable” people and disavow it.
January 6th I think was another failure, given the nature of DC as a Company Town and the ability to control the optics and narrative. A lot of this will have to take place behind the scenes in grubby litigation and in dark alley investigation.
Agreed, but there’s also the issue that as soon as they do that the left starts demonizing them as cranks, conspiracy theorists, and people trying to steal the election. Which brings us back to the issue of narrative control and how we undermine the Left’s powers there.
All I know is this: Trump’s endless blotting out of the sun from anything other than Trump is going to end us–and really, already has. Anyone arguing for any more “hair of the dog” for ’24 is just wanting to lose at this point.
Trump couldn’t be more of a leftist plant than he seems to be at this point; maximum escalation, mafia-like demands for loyalty, and the ability to landlslide win a nomination (like all his nutjob Senate picks) only to hand it all over to the left in the General. This is on him. All of it.
Wisconsin is simply America in 2025, after all the “stand down DeSantis” people finally have their Trump flags watergunned down their esophaguses by their trans interlocutors.
Remember “Let’s go Brandon?” felt good, didn’t it. And while all that useless, auto-erotic chanting was going on, the left was moving the goalposts.
really, who went the extra mile to ratify mayorkas austin and garland, and they had to know better, mcconnell cornyn murkowski, romney, graham (he cheered the murder of ashley babbitt) in wisconsin, vos is the same sort of trash weasel, that collaborates with evers, and enables the unverified mail ballots,
we know now that the looting of ftx and silicon valley bank was in part to keep schumer and warnock that powder keg in the senate, and the perpetrators of same avoid all accountabiliity, they didn’t directly go after walker, not for lack of trying, not that the 7th circuit court of appeal had much to criticise it of course john chisholm is an abbatoir of any hope that justice exists in wisconsin,so they could prop up a cadaver like evers, (jmhi) who is not death warmed over, but killed people in great numbers, as cuomo, and whitmer, and mccauliffe did, I think the method of criminality is much clearer there,
Marley’s ghost:
Joins the Concerned Conservative Club. “Brandon” is Joe’s name now, saddens you? Joe is a caricature of competency. Bothers you? Information warfare.
who was wielded power to allow the Democrats their injuries to the body politic, the dozen senators that voted to hypercharge our inflation, who voted to makes border enforcement impossible, as pointed out before who let the censorship paradigm prevail, that’s not Trump, it’s the opposite of what trump wanted,
I know there are only so many lines on the cue card,
Mcconnell instead of denouncing warnock, a racial arsonist, knocked walker, instead of pointing out that fetterman was barely sentient, and was insane when he could articulate, went after oz, do we need to review what he did in the arizona senate race and how murkowski was supported,