No Runny Eggs

I had hoped to bring you the results from the 21st Assembly special general election and the 82nd Assembly special primary election as they come in, but I will be otherwise occupied tonight. For those of you who want the results long before the rest of the media gets around to mentioning them, WisPolitics will have those results, as well as the results for the 69th Assembly special general election, on their election blog.

There are two special elections for the State Assembly today:

– The 21st Assembly District, in Oak Creek, South Milwaukee, and the strip of Franklin between 27th and 35th, and between Drexel and Central. I wholeheartedly endorse Jessie Rodriguez, who is going up against carpetbagging Democrat Elizabeth Coppola.

– The 82nd Assembly District, in the rest of Franklin (except the northwest corner bounded by Woods, North Cape, Forest Home, and the city limits), Greendale, and the eastern part of Greenfield. That is a primary election, with 4 Republicans looking to advance to take on the sole Democrat in 4 weeks’ time. I didn’t follow that primary because I don’t live in that district, but Kevin Fischer has endorsed Shari Hanneman.

Based on the unofficial results from Oak Creek’s Facebook site, The No Runny Eggs Decision Desk has called the 21st Assembly District Republican nomination for Jessie Rodriguez. Yes, South Milwaukee and Franklin have not posted results online yet, and the local media hasn’t reported anything, but Oak Creek does comprise more than half of the district, and a larger majority of those who are likely to participate on the Republican side of the primary even with an uncontested primary on the Democrat side.

The results in Oak Creek are:

Jessie Rodriguez 939
Ken Gehl 415
Chris Kujawa 350
Larry Gamble 89
Red Arnold 22

Revisions/extensions (9:09 pm 10/22/2013) – Franklin’s results are in, and push the totals to:

Jessie Rodriguez 996
Ken Gehl 425
Chris Jukawa 372
Larry Gamble 111
Red Arnold 22

R&E parts 2 and 3 (9:16 pm and 9:19 pm 10/22/2013 for more info) – Now South Milwaukee has reported, and it’s all over but the certification later this week. Jessie Rodriguez is the Republican nominee for the 21st Assembly District, and she will face Democrat Elizabeth Coppola on November 19.

The residents in the rest of Franklin and the other parts of Assembly District 82 will have a Repubilcan primary to begin the process of filling that seat on November 19 as well.

The unofficial final vote totals:

Jessie Rodriguez 1,512
Chris Kujawa 864
Ken Gehl 535
Larry Gamble 170
Red Arnold 73

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is reporting that the roughly-half of Waukesha County’s municipalities that can send their eleciton results directly to the Government Accountability Board will do so on future election nights. The reason, quoting from the MJS, is:

The move is being made so results get reported online more quickly and people have more immediate access to the vote totals through the GAB website, said Shawn Lundie, a spokesman for Waukesha County Executive Dan Vrakas.

Wait a minute. Neither the GAB nor the former State Elections Board has ever reported election-night numbers. The closest they have come is tracking the Prosser-Kloppenburg recount at the end of each business day.

I do have an inquiry into GAB spokesman Reid Magney to clear up a few questions. I will update this post when he gets back to me.

Revisions/extensions (4:40 pm 4/24/2012) – The GAB released a statement earlier today that provides some background procedural information. To wit, all of the Waukesha County municipal clerks (a change from the previously-reported half) will use the optional municipal-level features in the state-built Canvass Reporting System to enter the municipal-level results and electronically transmit them to the Waukesha County Clerk’s office, versus hand-delivering the results as was the case in prior elections. The county clerk’s staff, headed by Deputy Clerk Kelly Yaeger, will then use the CRS to publish the results in multiple formats.

It does not appear that the GAB will be independently reporting election-night results from Waukesha County. Indeed, the various methods used by county clerks to collect election-night results tends to prevent the GAB from collating that information in real-time.

In case you got here early, there’s a few good takes on what is happening today (besides mine) to tide you over until things start moving along from Kevin Binversie, Randy Melchert (focusing on the 12th) and Christian Schneider. Also worth reading is WisPolitics’ Election Blog, with a treasure trove of stories and links.

For those of you stepping in late, today’s recall elections of Democrats Jim Holperin (12th District) and Robert Wirch (22nd District) against, respectively, Kim Simac and Jonathan Steitz, are the last of the series of recalls that originally stemmed from the budget repair battle that saw all 14 Democrat Senators flee the state in an ultimately-futile attempt to keep all of the exhaustive and expensive collective bargaining privileges public unions had in Wisconsin. The Democrats were initially more energized once recall efforts began, and forced 6 of 8 Republican Senators to face recall elections, while Republicans were only able to force 3 of 8 Democrat Senators to face recall elections. Last month, the first of the Democrats, Dave Hansen, easily survived his recall after the better of the two potential challengers was tossed off the ballot. Last week, Republicans held onto 4 of 6 seats up for election to keep a 17-16 majority in elections that approached the turnout of November’s gubernatorial election (and in one case, exceeded the turnout).

The early reports suggest that, despite control of the Senate not being at stake, turnout in both the 12th and 22nd Districts are very high. While the claims that the turnout will approach Presidential elections will, like last week, almost certainly fall short, they appear to be close to the gubernatorial election last year, and greater than the Supreme Court election back in April.

Just a quick note before I direct you to the Cover It Live window (direct link/mobile link if for some reason your browser doesn’t suport iframes), which will open for business about 8 pm when the polls close – this is a “news” liveblog, so keep it clean.

Today is the last round of recalls in Wisconsin for at least a little while. This time, it’s the Democrats that have seats to lose, as the 12th District’s Jim Holperin (Conover) and the 22nd District’s Robert Wirch (Pleasant Prairie) face, respectively, Kim Simac and Jonathan Steitz. Since, unlike last week, I’m in town and will be able to better track the results, and also because Michelle Malkin linked to last week’s analysis, I’ll put down what trends I’m looking for once the polls close at 8 pm.

12th District

There are a pair of dueling polls, one from Public Policy Polling for their biggest partisan client, Daily Kos, and one from We Are America for the right-advocating Red Racing Horses (crosstabs of the latter courtesy WisPolitics). Even though both polled roughly the same number of people over the weekend and have an effectively-identical 2.6% margin of error, the top line can’t possibly be more different. While PPP/DKos has Holperin up 55%-41% overall, and 51%-43% among “independents”, WAA/RRH has Holperin up 51%-49% (actually a few tenths less) overall, and Simac up 52%-48% among “independents”.

The big difference is, as is often the case, the partisan weighting. PPP/DKos has the Democrat/Republican/”independent” ratio at 35%/26%/39%, while WAA/RRH has it at 28%/28%/43% (with 1% refused, and the Dems with a statistically-insignificant advantage). As followers of Wisconsin politics know, there is no such thing as partisan registration in Wisconsin, so one has to dig into the results to figure out which is right and which is BS. My “generic R-v-D” calculation, averaging out the 2008 Presidential and 2010 gubernatorial results, gives the generic Republican a 5.0 percentage point advantage. The high-water mark for the Democrats in competitive races this past decade was, ignoring minor-party and write-in candidates, a 7.0 percentage-point margin, gained by long-time incumbent state Senator Roger Breske in 2004 (who departed for a state job in 2008, opening the door for Holperin), US Senator Russ Feingold in 2004, and Barack Obama in 2008. Holperin, against the same opponent as Breske, managed only a 2.4 percentage point margin in 2008.

I could almost argue that both polls overweight Democrats, especially since Red Racing Horses cited Republican internal polls that have Simac up by at least 4 percentage points, and last week, incumbency was worth an average of roughly 3 percentage points over “generic”. However, the race is all about turnout, and despite both campaigns pouring everything into it (story via WisPolitics), nobody really knows what the turnout is going to be.

The problem is nobody is going to have fully-collated reporting-unit-level results, partly because not every county clerk will have them available on their websites. If those numbers are available, I’ll be looking at the following places for the trend:

Strong Republican areas – Towns of Minocqua (R+17) and Three Lakes (R+19) in Oneida County, towns of Boulder Junction (R+24), Lincoln (R+15, and Simac’s home) and St. Germain (R+25) in Vilas County
Strong Democrat areas – City of Tomahawk (D+8) in Lincoln County, Menominee County (D+60), city of Rhinelander (average of D+24 in the various wards) in Oneida County, town of Lac du Flambeau (D+17) in Vilas County

22nd District

There haven’t been nearly as much focus on this district, though WTMJ-AM’s Charlie Sykes got an interview with Steitz (go to the 39:00 mark), and WISN-TV’s Mike Gousha did a joint interview with both candidates. I haven’t seen any TV ads the past week (though I don’t watch much TV) and what little music radio I catch (including a Kenosha-licensed station) has been essentially ad-free, though Steitz’s ads have been on conservative talk radio stations.

The only recently-released poll is a PPP/DailyKos poll from the weekend that had Wirch up 55%-42%. While the partisan split is 39% D/28% R/34% I, given the generic Democrat has a 4.8 percentage point advantage, and up until last year, the only Republican to win a district-wide election the past decade was Congressman Paul Ryan, that split is actually closer to reality.

It’s basically the city of Kenosha (and to a lesser extent, the town of Somers) versus the rest of the district. If Steitz can get to 41% in the city of Kenosha (what current RNC chair Reince Priebus did in his unsuccessful run at Wirch in 2004 and a couple points less than what Scott Walker did in the 2010 gubernatorial election) and 64% in the city/town of Burlington (again, a couple points less than what Walker did, though several points more than what Priebus did), he may well pull off the upset.

Yesterday over at Hot Air, I ruminated on what to look for out of the results from yesterday’s round of elections. There’s one bit of good and a whole boatload of ugly that came out of last night, including something I didn’t quite foresee that should shake my side to its core.

The one bit of good came from the 12th Senate district, where the number of votes for winner Kim Simac (11,301 votes according to the Associated Press) and Robert Lussow (7,767 votes) came very close to the 19,255 signatures that Simac and her group gathered to force the recall election of incumbent Democrat Jim Holperin. Among what can be fairly described as the “anybody but the incumbent” crowd, that 99% “retention” rate from the recall to the election is the second-best of any effort.

The percentages were not nearly as good in the 22nd Senate district, where the votes for winner Jonathan Steitz (5,981 votes, again according to the Associated Press) and Fred Ekornaas (3,369 votes) totaled under 55% of the 17,138 signatures gathered by the recall group. That is the worst “retention” effort of the bunch, even worse than Democrat Nancy Nusbaum’s 59% “retention” rate last week or David VanderLeest’s utter failure against Sen. Dave Hansen in the 30th last night, with a 71% “retention” rate.

That leads me to the 30th Senate District. The 66% (once write-ins are considered, something the Associated Press did not track) of the vote Hansen received went above the 65% “trouble” level I set based on a DailyKos/PPP poll that had Hansen beating VanderLeest 62%-34%.

More troubling than the percentage is the raw number of votes Hansen received. Special elections, which is what a recall election is, are “turnout” elections. The 22,052 votes Hansen received is nearly 88% of the 25,192 votes fellow Democrat Tom Barrett received in the gubernatorial election last November. It is also greater than the number of votes either Supreme Court Justice David Prosser (20,536) or challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg (18,706) received in April, and far greater than the 15,540 signatures VanderLeest’s group gathered to force the recall election.

I toyed with the idea of titling this “Big Trouble in Little Suamico” because the results from that town in Oconto County and the 30th Senate District perfectly illustrates the current enthusiasm gap. In November, now-Governor Scott Walker beat Barrett 1,115 to 554. In April, Prosser beat Kloppenburg 549-348. Yesterday, Hansen beat VanderLeest 520-385.

That is not, to say, all is lost. The two challengers to the incumbent Democrats still under election threat who I consider to be stronger won last night. As we found in both November 2010 and April, a “max effort” from the Left can be beaten; however it takes a “max effort” on our part. We also know, thanks to the Supreme Court election, even a belated “max effort” can carry the day. In this regard, I am (almost) thankful John Nygren screwed up on his nomination papers – we know there is an enthusiasm gap and there is just under three weeks to counter it.

Revisions/extensions (9:34 am 7/21/2011) – Craig Gilbert took a different tack on turnout, looking at total turnout versus “opposition” turnout. While he noted that none of these races were expected to be competitive, he also noted the one serious precedent, the recall of George Petak down in Racine County after he flipped on the Miller Park tax vote, saw a turnout of estimated 37% of voting-age-population.

Assuming the Democrats actually had a “max effort/near-max turnout” in the 30th, Hansen would have been in trouble had turnout been 34% instead of 25%, may well have lost had turnout been the 37% it was in Racine in 1996, and would have lost had turnout been the 42% it was in November.

In case you’ve been in a cave since mid-day Friday, the county-level canvasses of the election have been completed, and Justice David Prosser has a 7,316-vote (or a 0.4881-percentage-point) lead. The 3-business-day clock is running on challenger Joanne Kloppenburg’s and her campaign’s ability to ask for a recount of any or all of the wards in the state, with the costs to the counties being borne by the taxpayers as the margin is just under the 0.5-percentage-point cut-off. The word on the ether, or at least WISN-AM and the Jay Weber Show, is that the Kloppenburg campaign will have a press conference this afternoon, even though they do have until 5 pm Wednesday to inform the Government Accountability Board (Wisconsin’s state-level election authority) of their decision.

There are two choices the Kloppenburg campaign has at this point. They could decide to not ask for a recount, and let the pending GAB re-canvass be the final word. That would result in GAB announcing on May 15, the date assigned for the announcement, that Justice Prosser has won another 10-year term on the Supreme Court.

They could also decide to ask for a recount. It doesn’t matter how many or few wards they request, because, if they choose this path, the goal is not going to be to overcome the 0.4881-percentage-point lead Prosser has. No recent recount with at least 1.5 million votes at stake has resulted in a change of margin of more than 0.05 percentage points, even with a post-recount judicial challenge to boost the margin-of-change.

Assuming that the Kloppenburg campaign strategy is to “win” by any means possible, their goal, under this scenario, is to get a post-recount judicial appeal into what will amount to a kangaroo court, presided over by a reserve (retired, for those of you outside Wisconsin, and thus no longer accountable to the voters) judge appointed by Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson, who has a thinly-veiled vested interest in a specific outcome. Their strategy will be to have declared, at a minimum, the city of Brookfield (which Waukesha County clerk Kathy Nickoulas forgot to report to the Associated Press on election night, but which was reported on the county-level canvass) incompetent to determine the affairs of Wisconsin the Kingdom of Dane. Assuming no margin change in a recount, tossing out the city of Brookfield results woudl give Kloppenburg an 87-vote “lead”.

Of course, if the recount finds a further net gain for Prosser (after all, the county-level canvass found, not counting Brookfield, a net gain of 117 for Prosser over the election-night numbers collated by the AP), they might be forced to have declared the entirety of Waukesha County incompetent to determine the affairs of the Kingdom of Dane. Tossing the entirety of Waukesha County would give Kloppenburg a 52,000-vote “lead”.

Any state-level appeal would probably be pointless on its own as it would first go to the Madison-based 4th District Court of Appeals. They would be expected to uphold whatever novel “judicial finding” the kangaroo court creates out of thin air to justify disenfranchising either an entire municipality or an entire county. At best, since either Justice Prosser would need to recuse himself or the seat would be vacant pending a final disposition, a further appeal to the Wisconsin Supreme Court would result in a 3-3 deadlock.

However, whatever novel “judicial finding” the kangaroo court would create out of thin air would almost certainly invoke an equal protection claim a federal court could latch onto. I would expect that, no later than the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, that claim would find a friendly judicial panel, and after tens of millions of dollars wasted under this scenario, the result would end up being what it is as of today – a Prosser victory.

The ball is in the Kloppenburg campaign’s court. I urge them to consider that, at the end of the day, they can’t win, and spare the state the pain and expense of a “by any means necessary” strategy.

Revisions/extensions (11:43 am 4/18/2011) – I swear that, while Kevin Binversie and I discussed the Butch Coolidge/Marcellus Wallace question, I didn’t crib from Kevin’s take (both his and mine are featured on this morning’s WisOpnion’s round-up). His close – “Because the worst fear the Kloppenburg legal team truly has, is not ‘losing’ a recount. It’s if Waukesha County is allowed to re-run its ballots through its machines again, and the numbers come out the same.”

Just as a reminder, if Kloppenburg opens the recount door, Prosser will be able to force a recount in any ward Klopenburg doesn’t have recounted before any judicial appeal. Given the last anybody heard of GAB’s investigation into Waukesha County was that the as-canvassed numbers from Brookfield were legitimate, one has to wonder if Kloppenburg wants to politically go down that road.

Right after the November election, UW student Todd Stevens asserted so, and I retorted using the AP’s countywide numbers. On Wednesday, the Government Accountability Board certified the results and, more-importantly, released the ward-by-ward data. For those who don’t remember, the 2nd Congressional District, which incumbent Democrat Tammy Baldwin defeated Chad Lee by a 61.77%-38.16% margin (with the remainder writing in somebody), covers all of Columbia, Dane and Green Counties, significant parts of Jefferson, Rock and Sauk Counties, and almost the entirety of the part of Whitewater that is in Walworth County.

Meanwhile, Republican Scott Walker (and his running mate as lieutenant governor, Rebecca Kleefisch) beat Democrat Tom Barrett (and his running mate, Tom Nelson) by a statewide 52.25%-46.48% margin, with the remainder either voting for a couple other candidates who qualified for the ballot or writing somebody in. With that background, let’s take a county-by-partial-county look at how Walker did versus how Lee did:

• Columbia County (whole county, 21,385 votes in the gubernatorial election and 21,149 votes in the Congressional election) – Walker 51.71%/Barrett 46.83%, Lee 52.93%/Baldwin 47.01%. Advantage – Lee by 1.03 percentage points.
• Dane County (whole county, 220,273 votes in the gubernatorial election and 218,865 votes in the Congressional election) – Barrett 67.96%/Walker 30.98%, Baldwin 66.56%/Lee 33.38%. Advantage – Lee by 3.80 percentage points.
• Green County (whole county, 13,187 votes in the gubernatorial election and 13,227 votes in the Congressional election) – Barrett 49.00%/Walker 48.46%, Baldwin 51.03%/Lee 48.92%. Advantage – Walker by 0.78 percentage points.
• Jefferson County (just the portion in the 2nd Congressional District, 18,194 votes in the gubernatorial election, 18,005 votes in the Congressional election) – Walker 54.45%/Barrett 43.98%, Lee 52.24%/Baldwin 47.66%. Advantage – Walker by 5.90 percentage points.
• Rock County (just the portion in the 2nd Congressional District, 23,657 votes in the gubernatorial election, 23,606 votes in the Congressional election) – Barrett 53.07%/Walker 45.01%, Baldwin 53.18%/Lee 46.79%. Advantage – Lee by 1.68 percentage points.
• Sauk County (just the portion in the 2nd Congressional District, 11,228 votes in the gubernatorial election, 11,262 votes in the Congressional election) – Barrett 51.41%/Walker 47.13%, Baldwin 51.52%/Lee 48.42%. Advantage – Lee by 1.18 percentage points.
• Walworth County (city of Whitewater specifically, 3,377 votes in the gubernatorial election, 3,346 votes in the Congressional election) – Barrett 52.09%/Walker 46.14%, Baldwin 55.77%/Lee 44.11%. Advantage – Walker by 5.70 percentage points.

The bottom line:

Out of 311,301 total votes in the gubernatorial election, Barrett beat Walker by a 62.44%-36.33% margin. Meanwhile, out of 309,460 total votes in the Congressional election, Baldwin beat Lee by a 61.77%-38.16% margin. By my math, Lee did better than Walker by 2.50 percentage points, and I don’t hear anybody (other than the sore losers on the far left) calling Walker a “bad” candidate. I’m sorry to have to break the bad news to Stevens that the 2nd District will elect a Democrat as long as the district has roughly its current borders.

I see the federal government has rejected Wisconsin’s request for a one-time exemption from the new-for-2010 45-day window for sending out federal absentee ballots to overseas and military voters while I was away. Since Wisconsin’s primary election is 49 days before the general election, on September 14, it would be logistically impossible to comply with the requirement that absentee ballots be available to overseas and military voters by September 18, 45 days before the general election.

Before I get to the “Who the hell screwed up and how?” question, I first must clarify what the new requirement is. From page 133 of the National Defense Authorization
Act for Fiscal Year 2010’’, which is amending the states’ requirements under the Uniformed and Overseas Absentee Voting Act:

(a) IN GENERAL.—Section 102 of the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (42 U.S.C. 1973ff–1(a)(1)), as amended by sections 577 and 578, is amended—
(1) in subsection (a)—
(A) in paragraph (6), by striking ‘‘and’’ at the end; (B) in paragraph (7), by striking the period at the end and inserting a semicolon; and
(C) by adding at the end the following new paragraph:
‘‘(8) transmit a validly requested absentee ballot to an absent uniformed services voter or overseas voter—
‘‘(A) except as provided in subsection (g), in the case in which the request is received at least 45 days before an election for Federal office, not later than 45 days before the election; and
‘‘(B) in the case in which the request is received less than 45 days before an election for Federal office—
‘‘(i) in accordance with State law; and
‘‘(ii) if practicable and as determined appropriate by the State, in a manner that expedites the transmission of such absentee ballot.’’;

The first part is going to be blown because Wisconsin takes 19 days to certify the primary results and get the ballots printed. However, the second part won’t be a problem becuase Wisconsin already allows military/overseas absentee ballots to be sent out if the request comes in 30 days prior to the election, and as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel pointed out, somewhere less than 4% of the military/overseas ballots were rejected in the 2008 general election for all reasons, not just for being late.

So, what is the consequence of not having the absentee ballots out 45 days prior to the election? That is covered by 42 USC § 1973ff–4, which gives the US Attorney General the power to seek federal judicial relief. The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, which handles those lawsuits, says in their FAQ on the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act:

If a county is late in mailing absentee ballots to soldiers, what can the Department of Justice do?

Under Section 105 of UOCAVA, the Attorney General is authorized to bring civil actions to enforce UOCAVA requirements. When states have failed to make sure that ballots are sent to qualified servicemembers in a timely manner, the Department of Justice has successfully obtained court orders and consent decrees. Many of these have required states to extend their deadlines for receiving these ballots and to count the late-mailed ballots, even when they arrived after Election Day. In some cases, the states were required to make permanent changes to their laws or procedures to make sure the problems are not repeated in future elections. Through these cases brought to enforce the federal law, the Department has ensured that qualified servicemembers were able to cast their ballots, and know that they were counted.

In short, we may not know who won the Senate race on 11/3 (the day after the election), or even on 11/11, when military ballots postmarked by the day of the election can arrive and still be counted under current state law.

Now, for who screwed up. As much as I dislike the Government Accountability Board, the date of the election and the timing of certification is really out of their hands. That is all set by state statute, with the final state certification due on the third Wednesday after the primary. Indeed, because state law (under the direction of federal law) requires military ballots postmarked by the day of the primary to be counted if they arrive up to 7 days after the primary, they cannot certify a federal election in the 4 days between September 14 and September 18.

The ball falls squarely on the Legislature and Gov. Jim Doyle. The MOVE Act became law on 10/29/2009. While the Legislature was in session at the time, I’ll give them a pass for not dealing with it in that particular floorperiod because that ended on 11/5/2009. However, they had three more floorperiods to deal with it – 1/19/2010-1/28/2010, 2/16/2010-3/4/2010, and 4/13/2010-4/22/2010. The Legislature didn’t even attempt to deal with any part of complying with the MOVE Act until the last session possible, and then rolled a very-partial attempt into the “Driver/Voter” bill that would have automatically registered everybody who receives a driver’s license, given the information to ACORN’s successors, and in general would have made vote fraud even easier to accomplish. Notably, they didn’t even attempt to change the date of the primary in that bill. From the Legislative Reference Bureau’s summary of the version that went the farthest along the legislative process (AB895, Assembly Substitute Amendment 1):

Under current federal law, states are required to transmit absentee ballots to military and overseas electors no later than 45 days before each federal election at which the electors are entitled to vote, if the electors have requested their ballots by that time. However, a state may request a hardship waiver from the federal government, for a single election only, if the state’s primary election date does not permit compliance with this requirement and the state takes other actions to ensure expeditious delivery of absentee ballots to military and overseas electors. This substitute amendment directs GAB to report to the appropriate standing committees of the legislature no later than January 1, 2011, concerning GAB’s recommended method for compliance with the federal timeline for the absentee voting process. To achieve compliance, this state will likely need to advance the date of the September primary, beginning in 2012.

Even after the last day of the general floorperiod of the Legislature passed without so much as a token effort to comply with just a part of the MOVE Act passing the Legislature, Doyle could have called the Legislature back into session to ensure compliance with something their fellow Democrats in DC wrote. I guess that lack of desire to do anything without further encouraging vote fraud by the Wisconsin Democrats trumps all else.