Talk:2024 Wisconsin elections

2024 Assembly Elections

Should someone made a stub for the 2024 Wisconsin State Assembly elections? or expand its section on this page? Talthiel (talk) 16:36, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

@Asdasdasdff Do you know if LaKeshia Myers is planning on running for the 4th Senate district in the 2024 general election? Or just the special election? Talthiel (talk) 16:41, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

I think she is definitely planning that, but she can't make that official until she wins the Democratic primary for the special election (OR the filing deadline arrives for the fall general, whichever comes first). After posting that update though, I'm no longer 100% sure there will even be a special election. Evers may just let it sit vacant until the fall general. But I think we give him a month to see if he calls one; if he doesn't make a call for a special election by March 1, then most likely there won't be time for a special election. -- Asdasdasdff (talk) 17:46, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Alright yeah, makes sense, although according to the article you used as a source, I think it implies Evers will wait to set an official date until after the Court decides on a set of maps to use for the 2024 State Legislative elections, as that would be pertinent to knowing where candidates and state legislators will end up.

Additionally, do you think we should work on thr article for the 2024 Assembly elections? As of now it currently has a red link, while the Senate election page is a stub, should work be done to those pages at this point in the election cycle? Talthiel (talk) 18:01, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I think that's a good idea to at least set up these pages. But we probably can't do much beyond stubs with a summary table and a list of incumbents and any folks who have already announced retirement plans, because we're also still waiting on the redistricting lawsuit to even know which incumbents are drawn out of their districts, which districts will be competitive, etc. But I think its a good idea to get started. -- Asdasdasdff (talk) 18:18, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Yeah definitely, if you plan on making the page I can put in a summary table and a list of incumbents, as well as maybe an infobox. Talthiel (talk) 19:37, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Do you have any plans to make an Assembly election article? I have been holding off on making one just in case you were planning to make one or were in the process of doing so. Talthiel (talk) 21:39, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Ok, I just published a start of an article for this, feel free to fill in, I'm going to be on other things for the next couple days probably. -- Asdasdasdff (talk) 00:45, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Open Seats (state legislature)

@Asdasdasdff In light of Governor Evers signing the bill, do you think we should indicate in the 2024 Wisconsin State Assembly election and 2024 Wisconsin Senate election pages what districts are now open, or have multiple incumbents, or should we wait until we get closer to the August primary? I have charts for both which could be used to show incumbent pairings, although newly open seats or moved incumbents would take more time to parse accurately. Talthiel (talk) 18:04, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

I like that, but I'm going to wait a week or two to see if new litigation emerges. I still suspect Republicans want to try to invalidate this law and see if they can get one more election on the 2022 maps. But maybe we can start evaluating which fall into these categories. I also suspect there will be some legislators changing addresses to resolve some of these issues themselves, so taking some time will allow us to see who's going that direction. But you can handle that however you want -- When I feel confident that this map is going to stick, I'm going to be working on updating all the 132 legislative district pages (maps, descriptions, demographics) and that'll probably take me a month or more. -- Asdasdasdff (talk) 18:15, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Alright, in the meantime I do have charts showing incumbent pairings, open districts, and what districts incumbents now represent on my user-page. Granted this list is a lot less concise since I don't always have the exact addresses of every incumbent, and most articles online don't show whether a district is open or has a moved incumbent, so I have to base it off of articles such as this one to figure out pairings. Additionally, on the two mentioned pages. I have added a section on each pages' summary table for "open" seats.

I think the articles can be updated to show pairings/open seats/moved incumbents, as the new districs are now the current constitutional maps, having been signed by Evers. And the tables on those pages can be updated if/when various legislators change their addresses. Or, in the - in my opinion unlikely - scenario that the new maps are overturned, then any changes can be reverted. Talthiel (talk) 18:33, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Works for me! You can find all the candidates' addresses in the WEC election summary reports here's 2022. Every candidate is listed with their actual self-reported "voting address" (no PO Boxes). -- Asdasdasdff (talk) 20:03, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

@Talthiel: Actually, looking at the Senate page now, I'd like to suggest a different approach. As an example -- putting Howard Marklein as the incumbent in the 14th district doesn't really make sense, since he's never been elected in that seat and he's going to continue as the senator from the 17th district unless he's elected to a different seat (I have no idea if he will try to run for 14th district this year, but his term in the 17th district lasts through the end of 2026). I think instead we should list the actual incumbent in each district regardless of residency, and in the status column indicate issues with their residency or if they've declared they're running in a new district. Like, the incumbent is still the incumbent, even if they can't run for re-election on the new map. Example of the way they handle this in congressional election summaries when an incumbent was drawn out of their previous district: 1882 United States House of Representatives elections#Wisconsin. -- Asdasdasdff (talk) 02:53, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

I would agree that it is weird to an extent, One approach I've thought about was displaying it as the following (from my user-page):

	Incumbent
	Member	Party	First elected	Status
14	Howard Marklein (Redistricted from the 17th district)	Rep.	2014	Serving as Senator for the 17th district

Additionally, much of the article structure is based off of federal election article's precedent, such as for Alabama's 1st and 2nd CDs which follow a similar format. Barry Moore no longer lives in the 2nd Alabama congressional district he's still it's incumbent, but he lives in the 1st district and as a result, the 2nd Alabama CD lacks an incumbent who resides in the district. Additionally, if you look at maps for congress for 2024, Alabama's 2nd and Colorado's 3rd districts are greyed out, even though they have current reps, those reps do not reside in, or are not running in, the districts they do not currently represent. Although this is all tangential, and I refer to the little table above for how I think we could show odd-numbered incumbents who got drawn into even numbered senate districts. Talthiel (talk) 03:04, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

EDIT: links to examples: 2024 United States House of Representatives elections#Alabama, 2024 United States House of Representatives elections#Colorado, 2022 United States House of Representatives elections#Arizona (some more examples of redistricting moving incumbents into different districts with the small text clarification). Talthiel (talk) 03:06, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Ok, I don't feel strongly about it. Maybe it'll be clearer when we know who ends up running in which district. -- Asdasdasdff (talk) 04:49, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Alternatively, a footnote could be used to explain things. Talthiel (talk) 05:04, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Spring victories

@Asdasdasdff Do you know if Goyke, and more importantly Cabrera, are required to resign their seats upon taking office, or are they both allowed to hold both seats until Jan. 2025? Talthiel (talk) 15:16, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Cabrera is definitely required to resign. Not sure about Goyke, but he will most likely resign even if not legally required. -- Asdasdasdff (talk) 05:05, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

Special election

Could there not still be a special election @Asdasdasdff, since I thought the law was that if a seat was vacated before the Spring deadlines a special election had to be held before the fall general election, was there some recent announcement I missed or more your intuition on the situation? Talthiel (talk) 01:44, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

No announcement and I wouldn't expect one. What tipped me was that both would-be "special election" candidates have filed to run for the seat in the general election and neither is filing for their old Assembly seat, which suggests to me that they know there's no special election happening. And practically speaking, there's no time left (nor need) for such an election now -- any such election would require at least 3 months to complete (time for filing, a primary, and a general at least a month later). So if the election were called today, you'd probably be looking at a primary in July and a general in August (probably concurrent with the fall primary) for a term that expires 140 days later, in a legislature that's already adjourned for the year. Realistically, if there was going to be a special, Evers would have called it in February so that they could at least have the special primary concurrent with the April general election. That also would have been a much nicer option for the two legislators in his party who want to run for the seat, because it would have allowed whichever one lost the primary to still have time to run for re-election in her old Assembly seat. So, weight of all the evidence, I'm calling it dead. -- Asdasdasdff (talk) 02:10, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

@Talthiel: I'm so fucking annoyed right now. I love being wrong all the time. I honestly cannot believe Evers would do this now. I bet Drake and Myers are furious. -- Asdasdasdff (talk) 17:47, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

That could be true, I guess it would be better to have it after the session is done, that way Republicans would be unable to do any trickery. That could've been Evers' logic I guess Talthiel (talk) 17:52, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

The only way it could possibly make sense to me was if he was going to make the special primary line up with the Fall Partisan Primary, to try to boost Milwaukee turnout for the constitutional amendment questions. But he didn't even do that! It's totally inexplicable. -- Asdasdasdff (talk) 17:56, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

The logic I am going with is that the session will be completely done by this summer, so it'd make sense Evers might want to preserve his veto power as long as possible, which is already down to 2 Dem votes protecting it, so when Myers or Drake goes, it will be set at 1 Dem vote protecting Evers' veto, and when Cabrera goes it will be 0, and will remain so for the rest of the session, where there is no legislation left to veto, pass, or work on, thus, no risk to Evers' veto power, but that's just my speculation. Talthiel (talk) 18:03, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

This is the only theory I've heard so far that KIND OF makes sense. But only "kind of". Because (1) he didn't have to call a special election at all, hence he never would have had to worry about creating a vacancy (yes, technically the law says he shall call one in this circumstance, but there's no recourse if he doesn't and its not that unusual to just not have a special when its this close to the legal deadline). AND (2) if he had just called the special Senate election in February for late April (special primary on April 2) the Assembly vacancy would have occurred before the May 14 deadline to call another special for the vacant Assembly seat and we could have had it filled by August 1 when Cabrera has to resign. My Wisconsin municipal clerks are not happy. -- Asdasdasdff (talk) 19:47, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

yeah, well I guess it will happen either way. The race I am more curious about is why or even how he called a special for the 8th CD, given most media outlets said it wouldn't happen, and iirc WI law says it couldn't happen. Talthiel (talk) 20:21, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

I also think part of the reason he waited this long was due to the uncertainty of the maps, the Supreme Court refused to explicitly state which maps to use, and the WEC has so far been silent on the matter, so I am assuming that is why Evers took matters into his own hands with the EO. Talthiel (talk) 21:22, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

But neither SD-4 nor CD-8 maps changed at all in the 2024 redistricting! Aaaaah! -- Asdasdasdff (talk) 22:24, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Very true, I guess without an official, or unofficial, explanation from Evers, all we can do is speculate Talthiel (talk) 22:40, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Local elections

@Asdasdasdff Another thing I've been wondering is how we should handle local elections, I assume we wouldn't want to overload the page with dozens upon dozens of different local elections, but where do we draw the line, if at all, on what races to include in that section of the page? Talthiel (talk) 20:47, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I dunno if we can fully enforce a rule, but what I generally use as a guideline is that the race has to meet a few of the following requirements (2 or more, generally):

• Takes place in one of the top 20-ish most populous cities or counties or metro areas (whatever)
• The race is actually contested (has two or more candidates)
• The race features a notable person (someone with a Wikipedia page)
• The race features an unusually long term office-holder or "near-notable" candidate or otherwise interesting matchup.
• The race is noteworthy because of other circumstances (like a particular issue or controversy or spending)
• The outcome was surprising or noteworthy in some way (write-in victory or something)

I don't know if that's a complete list of criteria, but that's off the top of my head. -- Asdasdasdff (talk) 21:02, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Fall general referendum

@Asdasdasdff Do you think we could rephrase the Fall Amendment's description on this page? I know we can both (presumably) disagree with what the amendment would do on a fundamental level, I do think the way it is/was written in the section feels very partisan compared to the other amendments, do you think we could at the very least clarify what parts of it are from the League of Women Voters or other groups? Talthiel (talk) 18:20, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

-After all, WP is supposed to go off of what reliable sources say, even if we disagree with them, but there is/should still be a place for things like statements from the LWV and others, I feel. Talthiel (talk) 18:21, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm probably not going to rewrite it but I won't oppose changes as long as they're factual. I felt like the sharp language was more necessary this time because the ballot question is so intentionally misleading. -- Asdasdasdff (talk) 19:45, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Your version was overall an improvement. I had to try to clarify the stakes a bit. -- Asdasdasdff (talk) 21:58, 14 October 2024 (UTC)