Many early voters in Dane County share uncertainty regarding statewide referendum questions on the 2023 spring election ballot.
The ballots in Dane County, especially in Madison, have two different purposes. The first two questions, regarding cash bail, are meant to amend the Wisconsin Constitution, and the third question is meant to gain public opinion but has no legal effect, Director of the Frank J. Remington Center Adam Stevenson said.
The first question in particular is subject to misunderstanding, Stevenson said. It’s written in a way that can leave voters with the impression that courts don’t currently have the authority to consider public safety and avoidance of harm when issuing bail conditions — the rules that people need to follow when out on bail.
The question makes it seem as though there are not already set conditions based on avoiding serious bodily harm, when in reality, the courts already have authority to implement conditions that would protect the community from serious harm, UW professor of law Keith Findley said in an email statement to The Badger Herald.
What the ballot question is actually asking is to remove the phrase “bodily harm” from the set conditions to expand the type of harm a court can consider when setting rules for bail, Stevenson said.
“In other words, it expands the authority to impose conditions to protect members of the community so that courts can restrict the liberties of accused individuals, not only to protect against potential future serious bodily harm, but also to guard against any sort of conceivable serious harm, and it provides no definition of what constitutes serious harm,” Findley said.
Similarly, the second question adds additional things that a court can consider when setting bail itself. As of now, the only thing a court can consider when setting a bail amount is the flight risk, or likelihood that someone will reappear in court, Stevenson said.
While the referendum would give judges the opportunity to consider a defendant’s history and risk of future harm when setting a cash bail, some of these factors are already in practice, Findley said.
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Voting yes to the second question would make wealth the basis for determining who is released pretrial, Findley said.
“The current law applies to all dangerous individuals equally regardless of their wealth,” Findley said. “But authorizing cash bail to be the tool, more widely, for holding dangerous people means dangerous poor people will be detained pretrial, but dangerous wealthy people, who can come up with even very high bail amounts, will not be detained. If protecting the public is the goal, relying on cash bail is not the way to get there.”
Findley claims that he will be voting no to both the bail questions on the 2023 spring election ballot as he believes they will stop the progress that the government has been making.
When going to polling locations, it’s advised that voters have researched what these questions mean and what a yes or no answer will do, Stevenson said.
“I would recommend folks do the research that they are able to and try to make an informed decision based on it because I think these are important questions,” Stevenson said. “They can impact a significant number of cases, and they can impact public safety.”
