Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.
With years of continued gridlock between the Republican-controlled Legislature and Democratic governor, the Wisconsin Supreme Court has become the arbiter over some of the most heated election rule debates — from redistricting and drop boxes to the status of the state’s top election official.
That’s what makes April’s Supreme Court election a race to watch. It features two candidates with a stark ideological divide, competing for the seat of a retiring liberal justice and the chance to secure a majority in the current 4-3 liberal court. And it could determine how voters cast ballots in elections for years to come.
Conservative Brad Schimel is a Waukesha County judge and former Republican attorney general. Liberal Susan Crawford is a Dane County judge and former assistant attorney general under a Democratic administration. While the court is technically nonpartisan, both candidates are running with the support of their respective state parties, with partisan politicians providing endorsements on both sides.
“We don’t know what cases are going to come forward or what the facts or the arguments would be,” said Barry Burden, a UW-Madison political science professor and founder of the Elections Research Center. “But Crawford versus Schimel being on the court does send it in a different ideological direction.”
There are several election-related disputes the new justice may help settle. Fights over electronic voting, Wisconsin’s membership in the multistate Electronic Registration Information Center, and election officials’ ability to access citizenship data are brewing in lower courts.
More lawsuits may yet be filed if conservatives retake control of the court. Since liberals gained a majority in 2023, they have overseen a case that led the Legislature and governor to redraw the state’s previous Republican-drawn legislative maps in a way that didn’t give either party a built-in advantage. They also legalized drop boxes, which the conservative court banned in 2022.
A victory for Crawford would probably give liberals the final say on election issues for the next two years. That’s because the next two seats up for grabs — one in 2026 and one in 2027 — are both currently held by conservatives.
A Schimel victory would give conservatives the majority, but not as much security. One of the justices providing that majority would be Justice Brian Hagedorn, a sometimes swing voter whom Burden called “the least predictable justice.”
So a court with Schimel wouldn’t be “as reliably conservative as a 4-3 liberal majority would be reliably liberal,” Burden said.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court could have an outsized role in the coming years given the apparent willingness of President Donald Trump’s administration to defy some federal court orders, said Eileen Newcomer, voter education manager at the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin. That dynamic could send more issues to state instead of federal court, Newcomer said.
One of the most crucial roles the winning candidate may have during his or her tenure is may have during his or her tenure is participating if the court settles disputes over election results. In 2020, the then-conservative court narrowly rejected Trump’s lawsuit to overturn that year’s presidential election, which he lost.
Two candidates diverge on election law
The clearest difference between the candidates on election law is their stance on requiring photo IDs for voting. Crawford was among the lawyers to represent the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin Education Network in its challenge to the requirement soon after it became law in 2011. She later called the law “draconian.”
Schimel, on the other hand, said the requirement kept Wisconsin elections secure, crediting the law for President Donald Trump’s 2016 victory in the state. Schimel’s campaign has pointed out Crawford’s past opposition to the law.
Whoever wins may have a chance to weigh in on the photo ID issue.
The April ballot also has a question that could put the photo ID requirement in the state constitution.
If voters approve the question — which is likely given widespread support for the law and a muted campaign against the ballot measure — overturning the requirement would be all but impossible. Still, experts say, the court or Legislature may still be able to provide some exceptions to the requirement. That means the Supreme Court’s majority could decide just how broad those exceptions could be.
If voters elect Schimel and approve the measure, Burden said, the requirement would be secure. But if voters reject the proposal and elect Crawford, he added, “it’s very likely that some group brings a challenge to the voter ID law.”
Cases that the justices may weigh in on
One lawsuit that appears headed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court is over whether voters with disabilities should be allowed to receive, mark, and return ballots electronically. Currently, that privilege is reserved for military and overseas voters. Voters with disabilities in Wisconsin allege that their lack of access to electronic voting violates their rights.
Another issue that could come before the court is the legality of ballot drop boxes. The court under a conservative majority banned them in 2022, but liberals lifted the ban after they took over the court. A conservative group could bring a case seeking to ban them again if Schimel wins, Burden said.
“They seem very willing to entertain new arguments about the same issue,” Burden said.
Newcomer, from the League of Women Voters, said revisiting settled issues and reversing precedent a third time would “undermine people’s confidence in the court.”
Still more battles are taking place over noncitizen voting, an issue that Republicans are seeking to draw attention to, despite scant evidence that it actually happens in any widespread manner. As part of their campaign, Republicans have been seeking access to Department of Transportation data showing the citizenship status of registered voters. Much of the department’s information is outdated, but some conservatives have sued for access nonetheless to understand the scale of noncitizen voting in the battleground state.
“If that’s what conservatives want, they’re going to be dissatisfied,” Burden said. “But they might still go to the court and try to get some kind of relief or action if they feel like a bunch of officials around the state are not doing all they can to weed out noncitizens from the voting rolls.”
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.
