NA long time members Ken and Mack were part of a nationwide team helping Wisconsin Supreme Court flip to a progressive majority. As you probably know, Judge Janet Protasiewicz won by 11% (over 200,000 votes!) and Ken and Mack’s team contributed 200 letters.
This work, collectively wrote more than 316,000 letters encouraging Wisconsinites to vote in the state supreme court election! We’re so grateful to you to ensuring more voters participate in the democratic process.
Wisconsin voters on Tuesday chose to upend the political direction of their state by electing a liberal candidate Judge Janet Protasiewicz to the State Supreme Court, flipping majority control from conservatives. The result means that in the next year, the court is likely to reverse the state’s abortion ban and end the use of gerrymandered legislative maps drawn by Republicans.
Protasiewicz overwhelmingly defeated Daniel Kelly, a conservative former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice. With most votes counted she led by 11 percentage points, a huge margin in the narrowly divided state.
Judge Protasiewicz, shattered long-held notions of how judicial candidates should conduct themselves by making her political priorities central to her campaign. She made explicit her support for abortion rights and called the maps, which gave Republicans near-supermajority control of the Legislature, “rigged” and “unfair.” Wisconsin’s liberals now have a 4-to-3 majority on the court.
Judge Protasiewicz made a calculation from the start of the race that Wisconsin voters would reward her for making clear her positions on abortion rights and the state’s maps — issues most likely to animate and energize the base of the Democratic Party.
The court has served as an important backstop for Wisconsin Republicans. It certified as constitutional Gov. Scott Walker’s early overhauls to state government, including the Act 10 law that gutted public employee unions, as well as voting restrictions like a requirement for a state-issued identification and a ban on ballot drop boxes.
The state’s abortion ban, which was enacted in 1849 is already being challenged by Wisconsin’s Democratic attorney general. The case is all but certain to advance on appeal to the State Supreme Court later this year.