The Nov. 8 midterm election resulted in incumbent Tony Evers being reelected as governor, Ron Johnson being reelected as state senator and a Republican majority in the Wisconsin State Assembly.
Republicans have held the Wisconsin State Legislature since 2011. Currently, the Assembly has 63 Republicans and 26 Democrats. A Republican majority means that Tony Evers will meet resistance in the senate and assembly.
Incumbent Ron Johnson held his seat in the state senate after a tight race against Mandela Barnes, a Democrat who won the Democratic primaries in August. Johnson ran on a hard-on-crime campaign and criticized Barnes for being “dangerously liberal” in his campaign ads.
Elected in 2018, Barnes is the current lieutenant governor of Wisconsin, alongside Gov. Tony Evers who was reelected Tuesday.
University of Wisconsin student Marija Markovic said she thinks Mandela Barnes’ loss to Johnson is due to a lack of voter turnout.
“Even though this is the highest number of voters we’ve seen for an election, a number of people still didn’t vote,” Markovic said. “I know a lot of people who said they felt uninformed or didn’t have enough time to go, or saw campaign messages that felt too biased, such as on TikTok, and didn’t want to vote.”
State Democracy Research Initiative Senior Staff Attorney Dustin Brown said they are unaware of anything suspicious in the counting process. Brown said it is very rare for a recount to swing an election because the ballots are counted correctly the first time. Electronic and paper voting are equally secure, but electronic is more efficient, Brown said.
There have been claims of election fraud by many politicians since the 2020 presidential election. Former president Donald Trump claimed multiple times that the election was rigged against him, according to The Cap Times. This has decreased trust in the United States Election system and has made election integrity an important issue for many voters.
In Wisconsin, there are 1800 municipal clerks who manage elections at the local level, then send those numbers to the Municipal Board of Canvassers, who certify the results again, Brown said.
Those results are then sent to the county clerks from each of the municipalities, who certify those results again and review the information given to them. Those results are certified and reviewed for statewide elections by the state-level clerks. This extensive certification means the results released are most likely the exact number of votes.
