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We can’t forget 2011, and we can’t forget 2019. We can take nothing for granted. [1]
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Date: 2023-03-21
Early Vote starts TODAY in the April 4 Wisconsin Supreme Court race. This could be CLOSE—and losing can be disastrous.
In 2011, we missed by 7,004 votes, and in 2019 by just 5,981 votes. We can’t afford to repeat history. Chip in to help us flip the court.
To get a sense of one possible consequence if Dan Kelly wins the Wisconsin state Supreme Court race this April 4—just two weeks from today— check out this post .
But, as recent history brutally demonstrates, the danger goes way beyond just 2024.
In 2011, after a recount, the final tally gave the incumbent conservative Justice Prosser the edge by 7,004 votes—a margin of 0.4%. The official winner was declared. And the GOP majority on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court was sealed.
Republicans have held the state Supreme Court majority ever since. Terms last ten years. The winner of the 2023 Supreme Court election will be in office through 2033—three presidential elections.
As painful as the memory of 2011 might be, 2019 was even tougher.
Because, if we’d won that year, then our 2020 victory would’ve given us a majority on the state Supreme Court.
Instead, we lost by an even smaller margin than in 2011: just 5,981 votes.
In the final stretch before Election Day in 2019, Republicans’ own internal polling found the GOP-backed candidate down by 8 points.
Then came the deluge: a $1.3 million one-week flood of money that grabbed the seat for the right-winger .
Because we lost that race, the GOP still held a 4-3 majority on the state Supreme Court after the 2020 census. And then, after Governor Evers vetoed the GOP’s gerrymandered legislative maps, the Supreme Court chose ultra-GOP-tilted maps anyway .
The same thing played out with voting rights. Wisconsin Republicans joined their counterparts in other states by proposing laws to roll back voting rights in 2021 , going after, among other targets, absentee ballot drop boxes. Governor Evers vetoed the GOP’s voter suppression bills. But the Republican activists in judicial robes on the state Supreme Court decided to ban drop boxes anyway
So many major elections in Wisconsin are close. Trump won by 0.8% in 2016, and lost by 0.6% in 2020. Mandela Barnes lost to Ron Johnson by 1% in 2022. Supreme Court decisions that suppress votes at the margin can tilt the whole state.
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