We have reached the bottom of the year. The shortest day of the year, the winter solstice, is Saturday, December 21, with the exact point of transition occurring at 3:21am Central Time. Technically speaking, the Northern Hemisphere's winter solstice occurs when the North Pole "reaches its maximum tilt away from the Sun" (Wikipedia). Now nights begin to shorten and days become longer. Although politically we may face many dark days ahead, we will not crouch in defeat. The sun will come out again. We have plans!

The first plan is to give North Shore Fair Maps a new name under which to pursue its priorities. Beginning January 1, it will be known as Worth Fighting For Wisconsin. Also known as Wffwi, pronounced "wiffy." Here's Debbie Patel's rationale for the change: "Since we began in January 2021, our membership has grown well beyond the North Shore Milwaukee borders (no matter how one defines them), and our pro-democracy work extends well beyond fair maps. Hence the name change" (Mailchimp). You can join the group's monthly meetings, always with stimulating topics and speakers. And action items.

As we prepare to celebrate the holidays, we need to take time to celebrate what we accomplished, both as Grassroots North Shore and as activists and progressives. First among those accomplishments is the TEMPORARY implementation of fair voting maps. I'll explain the temporary part below. What we need to remember is how we won such a welcome sea change for Wisconsin voters.

First, the Fair Maps Coalition, including Grassroots North Shore, worked for a decade or more to get the result we were seeking. Member groups held information sessions, met with county boards and city councils all over the state, distributed yard signs, mailed thousands of postcards, and supported non-binding resolutions, most of which passed with sizable majorities where they were allowed to occur. Some of this history is recounted on the Democracy Campaign's website. These efforts were so successful that the GOP-gerrymandered legislature passed a law prohibiting counties and municipalities from offering their voters non-binding resolutions and referenda. But by the time the legislature took away voters' right to express their views, 57 (79%) of Wisconsin's 72 counties had backed fair maps.

While we were participating in direct actions, we also elected three progressive justices to the Wisconsin Supreme Court: Justice Rebecca Dallet in 2017, Justice Jill Karofsky in 2020, and Justice Janet Protasiewicz in 2023. Those three justices, together with Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, comprise the progressive court we have today. We owe the unrigged voting maps we were able to use in November 2024 to those four jurists. Now Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, who was first elected to the court in 1995, has decided not to run for a fourth 10-year term. Judge Susan Crawford is running in 2025 for her seat. Her competition is Brad Schimel, Attorney General in the Walker administration and currently Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge. To protect the progress we have made on fair maps and a host of other issues, we will need to make sure Judge Crawford prevails. (Again, more on that subject below.)

Although nationally the November 2024 elections resulted in widespread despair about our rights, our democracy, and our freedoms, we triumphed in Wisconsin state elections. We re-elected Senator Tammy Baldwin and flipped four state senate seats and 10 assembly seats, making it possible for Democrats to win the majority in one or both houses in the 2026 elections. One of the newly elected senators is Jodi Habush Sinykin! She now represents most of Milwaukee County's North Shore communities as well as a large swath of Ozaukee County and some bits of Washington and Waukesha counties. Democrats made inroads in all three WOW counties, the only places in the battleground states with a blue shift rather than a red one.

And in a sign of our electoral muscle, we can see the effects of the work Grassroots North Shore volunteers made on the Constitutional Amendments we faced this year. In the spring 2024 election, there were two proposed amendments. Both passed even though a number of grassroots groups and nonprofits did make some effort to defeat them. The effort failed largely because the groups were late to the effort and they were only loosely affiliated with each other. In the August 2024 primary, two more ballot questions appeared and both were defeated, no doubt as a result of the much more concerted hard work of a wide coalition of groups.

In the November election, the ballot had one referendum: asking whether state and local governments should be prohibited from allowing noncitizens to vote. The question in one way made no sense: noncitizens are currently prohibited from voting and they very rarely try to! But what's telling about the statewide approval of the ballot question is that nearly everywhere Grassroots North Shore launched a strenuous campaign to defeat it, the ballot question lost.

Yes, it's true that the it won statewide. But the disparity between the outcome of the vote in the North Shore communities plus the four wards where large numbers of UWM students vote — the areas where GRNS was most active — and the statewide outcome is striking. The referendum passed with 70% of the statewide vote. In our areas though — where we did the most work educating voters about what the question really meant and what it portends — it went down to defeat, in some cases by large percentages. The difference in how the amendment fared elsewhere and how it fared in the North Shore tells us that the canvassing we did had a measurable and substantial effect. Download an Excel spreadsheet with the election data so you can see for yourself.

What I have learned from the last election cycle is that putting our collective shoulders to the wheel, as vigorously as we can, yields dividends. And that's especially going to be true in the low turnout election we're expecting to have on April 1, 2025. Nomination papers are circulating now and can be accessed from our bare bones Election 2025 pages. You'll find the nomination papers for Susan Crawford, Jill Underly (Superintendent of Public Instruction), and Jeff Wright (candidate for Superintendent of Public Instruction) plus nomination papers for Judge Danielle Shelton (Judge for Milwaukee County Circuit Court, Branch 40). Please act expeditiously: candidates will want you to return completed nomination papers next week! Once candidates have been certified for the ballot — after January 7, 2025 — we will fill out our Elections 2025 pages so that you have a one-stop spot to learn about the candidates and issues.

Now about the work to cement fair maps for the future. The voting maps now in place were the product of extensive litigation and are current law only by virtue of the Wisconsin Supreme Court's recent ruling that the previous maps violated the Wisconsin Constitution. A change in the composition of the court, with Brad Schimel rather than Susan Crawford occupying the "swing seat," could mean a quick reversal of the decision that brought us unrigged maps for November 2024. But even if no case is brought before a newly conservative court next year, gerrymandered maps could make a comeback after the next census in 2030. That's because new maps must be drawn every 10 years to reflect population changes revealed in a new census. Without a constitutional amendment, or at least a state statute, prohibiting gerrymandering, the party in power can begin the cycle all over again! Electing Judge Susan Crawford, then, is vital to maintaining fair voting maps.

As crucial as it is to elect a progressive justice for the Wisconsin Supreme Court on April 1, 2025, that success would go only so far to cementing what we have already achieved. Iuscely Flores, Organizing Director of the Fair Maps Coalition, has outlined a three-pronged approach to achieving a constitutional amendment requiring that our voting maps be constructed by an independent redistricting commission.

1. Public Education and Input: Education is the cornerstone of the reform movement.
2. Legislative Advocacy Efforts: Legislative advocacy is essential to driving change.
3. Constitutional Amendment Proposal: Changing the Wisconsin Constitution is crucial for lasting reform.

Common Cause has produced a report, Unlocking Fair Maps: The Keys to Independent Redistricting, analyzing the issues and structures for independent redistricting. The new maps we had this November show what unrigging the maps actually means. The new legislature that will be sworn in in January 2025 actually represents the voters in this closely divided state. And that means we can expect legislators to listen to and to act on the issues their constituents care about.

I apologize for this rather long newsletter, the final one in 2024. I am taking the next two weeks off to rest, refresh, and reconnect with family and friends in Baltimore. I hope all of you will find the year-end festivities restorative. We are going to need you engaged in the fight for our freedoms and our future come the new year. So I will leave you with this uplifting video of Vice President Kamala Harris speaking to students at the Maryland Corps service year program on Tuesday, December 17: “As we then approach the end of this year, many people have come up to me telling me they feel tired, maybe even resigned. But let me be very clear. No one can walk away. We must stay in the fight. Every one of us."

Happy Holidays everyone.

In case you missed it, Attorney General Josh Kaul just added 10 additional felony charges against Kenneth Chesebro (a lawyer affiliated with Trump's 2020 campaign), Jim Troupis (a lawyer who represented Trump in Wisconsin in 2020), and Mike Roman (a former aide to Trump). Here's the meat of the article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (published Dec. 10, 2024):

"The additional charges allege forgery to defraud the Republican electors who cast their ballots for Trump in 2020, even though Joe Biden won the state.

"The new charges join the original single charge of felony forgery filed earlier this year. Chesebro, Troupis and Roman are scheduled to appear in court in Madison on Thursday."

Note that the new charges focus on defrauding the fake electors! In other words, the three men are charged because they deliberately lied to the 10 Republicans who were gullible enough to believe that their signatures on the forged documents would only be presented to Congress if the courts ruled that Trump had actually won the election in Wisconsin. The false electors themselves are not being criminally charged because most of them said "they did not consent to having their signatures presented as if Trump had won the state without a court ruling saying so."

You may remember that the Biden electors sued the fake Republican electors, in an unprecedented case. In settling that suit last year, the 10 Republicans "acknowledged their actions were used in an attempt to overturn an election." Here's how Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (ICAP) — one of several parties representing the lawful Democratic electors — described a crucial part of that settlement: the 10 false electors "have agreed not to serve as electors in the next election and not to sign such a certification in any future election in which they are not the duly certified electors under state law."

Four other states — Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and Georgia — still have pending charges related to the fake electors scheme in state and federal courts.

Trump himself, of course, is successfully wriggling out of his two federal cases (the Insurrection case and the classified documents case). The fate of the RICO case in Atlanta, a state case and therefore not subject to the Department of Justice's prohibition on indicting a sitting president, seems to be in limbo.

And now Alvin Bragg, who successfully prosecuted Trump for 34 felonies stemming from his payments to silence Stormy Daniels, is now pleading with the court not to dismiss the case outright. According to Talking Point Memo's Morning Briefing this morning, Bragg is proposing "freezing the case until Trump is out of office, or agreeing that any future sentence wouldn’t include jail time. Another idea: closing the case with a notation that acknowledges his conviction but says that he was never sentenced and that his appeal wasn’t resolved because of presidential immunity." (To get to this morsel, you have to scroll down past the main article, "What We Take For Granted" — also worth a full read — and a few other short pieces.)

Yet we continue to see prosecutions of the January 6 insurrectionists and of the fraudulent electors. The rule of law, so foundational to our beloved country, continues to apply, albeit to the smaller fish to fry. The reality is, justice grinds exceedingly fine but way too slow. And it seems unable to reach the top of the kind of criminal pyramid Trump operates.

As a sign of our government's prosecutorial disfunction, FBI Director Wray told employees that he would be stepping down at the end of the Biden administration. The replacement Trump intends to nominate is deeply embedded in the rot of MAGAism. In his resignation announcement Wray hopes that the Bureau will be able to maintain its core values: "When you look at where the threats are headed, it's clear that the importance of our work --  keeping Americans safe and upholding the Constitution -- will not change. And what absolutely cannot, must not change is our commitment to doing the right thing, the right way, every time. Our adherence to our core values, our dedication to independence and objectivity, and our defense of the rule of law -- those fundamental aspects of who we are must never change" (ABC News, December 11, 20024). We shall see.

On that troubling note, let me end this edition of the newsletter with two actions you can take from home in front of your computer, laptop, or phone.

1. The Brennan Center for Justice held an event on December 10 Analyzing Trump's Plan to Invoke the Alien Enemies Act. The full video recording of the event is now available. The panel discusses various aspects of the problems Trump may face if he tries to use the Alien Enemies Act, passed in 1798, to rationalize his mass deportation scheme.
   
   
2. Please sign the League of Women Voters' petition to President Biden asking him to publish the Equal Rights Amendment. Here's the page for more information and to sign the petition.

Are you still struggling to right yourself after the November 5 election knocked you down? I am. But I am taking to hear Vice President Harris when she said: "only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. I know many people feel like we are entering a dark time, but for the benefit of us all, I hope that is not the case. But here's the thing, America, if it is, let us fill the sky with the light of a brilliant, brilliant billion of stars. The light, the light of optimism, of faith, of truth and service." We all need some time to recover from from what seemed to be a grievous blow. But I'm here to tell you that it was, after all, only ONE election. And not the end of the Democratic Party or the world. You can probably tell I'm in the "buck up, buttercup" phase of my post-election journey.

In fact, democracy, both as an idea and as a sytem of governance, is asserting itself even as our own system seems under attack from within. I speak of the recent events in South Korea and the ongoing events in the country of Georgia. In South Korea, the president declared martial law at 23:00 (11:00pm local time) on December 3. Almost immediately, thousands of people gathered outside the National Assembly compound. Some 300 elite military personnel landed helicopters within the grounds of the National Assembly, apparently to prevent the Assembly from overturnting the martial law declaration. Meanwhile, 190 members of the National Assembly hurriedly broke into the National Assembly building — equivalent to our Capitol Building — some of them clambering over fences. At 1:00am, the National Assembly voted to overturn martial law. As 5:18am the South Korean Cabinet rescinded martial law. Although martial law has been rescinded, the crisis continues as protesters call for the president to resign. An impeachment process is taking place in the Assembly.

So, the high drama began at 11:00pm and in essence ended six hours and 18 minutes later when the Cabinet lifted the declaration of marital law. Wow: it came and went in a flash.The president's imposition of martial law came late at night: was he counting on having the remainder of the night to solidify power? People of all ages turned out in a cold night by the thousands. How did so many people know about the declaration so quickly? And why did they rush to the National Assembly quickly enough to help prevent the police and the military from seizing it before the Assembly members could reach the building and hold a vote? Whatever the answers to these questions are, the moral of the story is crystal clear: in democracies, power emanates from the people. (See AlJazeera, December 3, 2024. )

Although still unfolding, the story in Georgia (the country not the state) is similar in some ways but far more intense and existential. This small country was part of the United Soviet Socialist Republics. Yet now an overwhelming majority of its citizens — more than 80% according to "In Georgia’s capital, a new fury fuels street protests" (Washington Post, December 4, gifted) — want to move toward integration with Europe. The current leadership, however, decided to postpone negotiations with the EU until 2028. In the face of public disapproval, the Dream Party, the party of the head of government, is trying to strengthen relations with Russia. "The country’s president and figurehead for the opposition, Salome Zourabichvili, is calling it Georgia’s 'Maidan,' referring to the uprising in Ukraine in 2013 that spelled the end for the country’s pro-Russian leadership" (Deacon Herald, December 4, 2024). It's unclear what the outcome of the impeachment vote — now scheduled for 7:00pm Saturday, December 7 — but we can see some starts twinkling in the darkness. Like Ukraine's, the trajectory in Georgia seeks democracy and a strong relationship with the West.

I bring these somewhat obscure stories of events in other parts of the world to help us see our own situation in their light. People in these two countries, and in Ukraine, care deeply about their democracies and their futures. And they have turned out in the streets in huge numbers to demonstrate their profound disagreement with their government. It's unlikely, perhaps, that millions of Americans will rush into the streets to mount peaceful yet continuous protests as our own wannabe dictator makes his moves. Yet it is important to see that people joining together can exert their collective power. In that vein, I also recommend Malcom Nance's Five Steps To Resist The Coming Tyranny.

Vance speaks of resistance. And in some ways that may be necessary. But we want to be more that resisters. We will form an opposition — so that we can both defend (resist) and act to change the world around us. Unlike Korea or Georgia, we live in a federalist system, one that relies on states acting independently of federal government. The outcome of our last elections show the promise: while Wisconsin, by the narrowest of margins of course, awarded its 10 electoral college votes to Trump, on the same ballot we profoundly changed the make-up of the Assembly and the Wisconsin Senate. And we re-elected Senator Tammy Baldwin, Representative Gwen Moore, and Representative Mark Pocan. At the state and local level, we have shown our power, and we can do it again in 2025.

So let us begin: on Monday, December 9, the North Shore Fair Maps group is holding its monthly meeting — MASS DEPORTATION NOW! — online at 7pm. The presentation will briefly lay out plans for 2025, outline the work ahead on enshrining fair maps first as a statute and eventually as a constitutional amendment, and shine a spotlight on the immigration threats. North Shore Fair Maps friend and one of the thousands of Dreamers, Iuscely Flores, who is one of those Dreamers, will explain what it's like to live under threat of deportation and what we can do to resist and oppose. Plan to register now for the event on Monday.

What you can do: help DACA recipients renew their papers at December workshops. Help by spreading the word: Sign up link for Dreamers to attend a workshop. Also tax-deductible donations needed to fund this vital work (DACA renewal costs $555) will be accepted through the project’s fiscal agent The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. Please write “For the Dreamers” in the memo line. Donate here.

The spring election is usually a pretty low-turnout election. And this one may be also. So every vote we can rustle up for a progressive on the ticket is vital. Here's what's at stake in this Supreme Court election. When we elected Justice Janet Protasiewicz, we reoriented the Wisconsin Supreme Court. And as the Court was better aligned with our values, it reversed a previous SCOWIS ruling on our voting maps to give us, finally, fair maps that would yield a legislature that actually represents the voters. And the new maps did just that. Justice Ann Walsh Bradley was part of the four member coalition that brought us our current maps but she has announced that she intends to retire in 2025. So it is imperative that we keep the current SCOWIS progressive orientation.

So start helping to elect a new Supreme Court Justice by downloading and circulating nomination papers for Judge Susan Crawford. Here's who you'd be supporting as a nominator and circulator: As a prosecutor, private-practice attorney, and now as a Judge, Susan Crawford has always believed in protecting the basic rights and freedoms of Wisconsinites. She has a deep understanding of our justice system and knows how important it is to have Supreme Court justices who understand how to keep communities safe, who are fair and impartial, and who will reject efforts to politicize the constitution to undermine our most basic rights. She’s running for Wisconsin Supreme Court to protect the progress we've made and ensure we have a progressive majority that won’t rubber-stamp an extreme right-wing agenda to take our state backward.

Judge Crawford's announced opponent is Brad Schimel, former Attorney General in the Scott Walker administration. His Wikipedia page asserts, "Schimel is a practicing Catholic and supports pro-life causes." After Attorney General Josh Kaul defeated him in 2018, lame duck Governor Walker appointed him to the Waukesha County Circuit Court. Schimel was subsequently "reprimanded by the chief judge of the 3rd Judicial District" for failing to obey a statewide stat court directive to wear a mask during in-person court proceedings. Finally the head of the Wisconsin state court system, Justice Patience Rogensack, "barred Schimel from presiding over cases in person due to his refusal to wear a face covering (or hold proceedings all remotely via videoconference). The ban was lifted after Schimel agreed to wear a face covering in court."

You should also know that Dr. Jill Underly is running for re-election as State Superintendent of Public Instruction. You can download her nomination papers and detailed instructions. At least one other progressive — Jeff Wright, Superintendent of the Sauk Prairie School District — is also planning to run. As of today, he does not have a working website and his LinkedIn site does not appear to offer a way to acquire his nomination papers. As soon as I can locate them, I will make sure to alert you. As you probably know, you cannot sign nomination papers for more than one candidate in each race for one seat.

Take the next step to codify fair voting maps in state law. TELL YOUR LEGISLATORS TO PASS NONPARTISAN REDISTRICTING LEGISLATION. Sign the petition.

Finally, thanks to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, we have a preview of the spring 2025 races and potential candidates. Our 2025 Elections page provides an overview of all the races in the North Shore and in southern Ozaukee County, with links to specific communities and school boards. Nominations are not certified until after January 7, 2025, so we won't know for sure who is on the ballot or whether a primary will be necessary. Right now, we believe there will be primaries on February 18 for the Cedarburg School Board and the Mequon-Thiensville School Board. No other races currently will require a primary. But if a third candidate for Superintendent of Public Instruction emerges, there will need to be a statewide primary for that race on everyone's ballot on February 18.

Let me start by thanking every one of our supporters who DID SOMETHING to try to elect Kamala Harris and Tim Walz: writing postcards, making phone calls, canvassing, handing out informational flyers on campuses, giving generously to candidates, putting out yard signs, even just urging like-minded family and friends to vote. Nationally, we fell well short of the goal; among the other battleground states we fell short, too. But Wisconsin came the closest of all the battleground states: Harris/Walz lost by a mere 1.5%. And while almost every county in the US shifted toward Republicans, our so-called WOW counties all shifted LEFT! Together we did vital work. So take some time to refresh and renew. We will need to go back to work in a big way after the New Year to elect Susan Crawford to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, thus preserving the liberal majority.

There's of course plenty to say about the national political scene. Every day, the news is full of Trump's activities. And his nominations for key government positions — like Secretary of Defense, Attorney General, and Secretary of Health and Human Services — are abominations. Amid questions about whether any House Republicans on the Ethics Committee will vote to release the Matt Gaetz report to the Senate Judiciary Committee or to the public, the New York Times and the Washington Post provide endless coverage of the president-elect's picks with scant critique. Left-leaning cable news hosts wring their hands. Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski traipse down to Mar-a-Lago to make nice and make up to Trump. I could spend the entire newsletter lamenting these events. But I won't.

It's just my view, but watching as each individual car is added to the train whose wreck we can easily foresee is mostly pointless and a waste of our collective breaths. Instead, I want to focus on the election results in Wisconsin where, in fact, the outcomes were fantastic. You already know that Democrats flipped 10 Assembly seats and four key state Senate seats, including the seat now to be held by Jodi Habush Sinykin. And Tammy Baldwin won re-election even if her opponent remains petulant and obstinent. What I have to add to the story is evidence that the work Grassroots North Shore (and the Democratic Party) collectively did has a visible outcome once you look at the data. A subset of the data is available on our website. (You can download the full spreadsheet here. )

Ninety-two percent of all US continues shifted red — toward Republicans. Although Harris lost Ozaukee County by about 10.40%, the "blue shift" in county was about 1.1%. Here's Ben Wikler's take:

Harris WON Cedarburg with 50% of the vote to Trump's 48% (the remaining 2% having gone to third party candidates or write-ins). She also won Thiensville, 50.21% to 49.79%. Tammy Baldwin lost Cedarburg by a mere 92 votes and Jodi Habush Sinykin by only 49 votes. In Mequon, Harris lost the city by 92 votes out of 17,268 ballots cast for the major party candidates for president. Hovde squeaked by Baldwin in Mequon by 1233 out of 16,675 votes for US Senator and Stroebel beat Habush Sinykin by just 341 votes out of 17,191 cast.

Democratic candidates — Kamala Harris, Tammy Baldwin, and Jodi Habush Sinykin — won big in all seven North Shore communities. Harris's margins ranged from a low of 57.60% in River Hills to a high of 84.15% in Shorewood. The same is true for Baldwin and Habush Sinykin. The numbers Habush Sinykin garnered from North Shore communities propelled her win. Turnout in these seven municipalities equalled or topped 90%!

The ballot question (Constitutional amendment) won with 70% of the vote statewide, but not in the North Shore. I want to dwell on this fact because the activities Grassroots North Shore was able to undertake focused on defeating that ballot question even though none of the Democratic literature our canvassers were distributing even mentioned the matter. The almost 9,000 phone calls we made to follow up on the postcards we had previously sent delivered strong messaging about the ballot question. Most impactful, several of the canvass staging locations in the North Shore provided volunteers with talking points and a bookmark-style handout for their routes. The result of these efforts is visible in the voting patterns. In the six communities where we delivered the VOTE NO bookmarks, four voted to defeat the ballot question: 53% to 47% in Bayside; 54% to 46% in Fox Point; 69% to 31% in Shorewood; and 55% to 45% in Whitefish Bay.

Glendale (49% NO and 51% YES) and River Hills (41% NO and 59% YES) bucked the trend. But even in these two communities, the percent of NO votes was much higher than the percent of NO votes state wide (30% NO and 70% YES).

We did not win Wisconsin this time. But our dedicated work was decidedly not in vain. Our North Shore communities' vote for Democrats by widening numbers. And the work Grassroots North Shore and the Democratic Party of Ozaukee County are doing in those communities is clearly paying off and building for greater impact in the future.

And let us not underestimate the new distribution of power in the legislature. The gerrymandered maps under which we labored for 14 years have given way to fair maps that reinstate many truly competitive districts, giving both parties opportunities to form a majority. Not only is that a fitting outcome for a state as purple as ours, it means that whichever party temporarily holds the gavel will increasingly have to work with the other party to move Wisconsin forward. BUT fair maps for the future are far from guaranteed!

We will need the legislature to pass and the governor to sign a law that protects the state from future gerrymanders, by either party. And ultimately Wisconsin will need to pass a constitutional amendment to ensure fair maps going forward.

Meanwhile there is more work to be done. And SOON. The technically non-partisan race for a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat is already in full swing. Susan Crawford, a former prosecutor and current Circuit Court judge, is already running hard for the seat. She has been endorsed by the Democratic Party. More importantly, she has been endorsed by all four liberal justices: Ann Walsh Bradley (who is retiring and whose seat Susan Crawford is seeking), Rebecca Dallet, Jill Karofsky, and Janet Protaseiwicz. Electing her is a short-term guarantee of fair maps in 2026 and 2028.

Many of you gave your all in 2024. Take time to take care of yourselves, to support fellow progressives, to enjoy the company of friends and family through the holidays coming up. We may not be able to combat every pernicious policy the Trump administration pursues, but it's clear we can impact the lives of Wisconsinites in the communities where we live. So join us as we gear up to fight the next battle here in Wisconsin. What we can lose: the right to bodily autonomy, fair maps, protection from the devastations of climate change and a host of other critical issues. What we can gain: a fairer and less doctrinaire high court.

I apologize for failing to produce a newsletter last week — I was really busy trying to find and analyze the election data relevant to the work of Grassroots North Shore. And I plan to take Thanksgiving week off too. So expect the next newsletter as we begin December. Let the holidays commence!

I hardly know how to begin this belated newsletter. I apologize for failing to write it yesterday. The outcome of the election nationally was just too painful to confront. Today, though, I am picking myself up and finding the determination to plan for the future we did not want and to which we will not surrender. I am joining a Zoom call tonight, organized by MoveOn.org and 200 other progressive organizations, “to lay out concrete actions people can take this week, and share thoughts on the path forward.” I hope you will join me. The Post-Election Mass Call will begin at 7pm CST.

On that same note but closer to home, North Shore Fair Maps is holding its next meeting at 7 PM CT Monday, November 11, when we will hear from Edgar Lin (Protect Democracy), who will discuss the decline of democracy in the US and abroad, as well as the authoritarian playbook. We will delve into what the journey from Election Day to Inauguration might look like, and give participants actions they can take right now. Register.

Democratic governments all over the world are under stress and have been since at least the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Apparently (I have not verified this), governing parties in developed countries who were facing elections this year all lost vote share. They were not all defeated but even when they were re-elected their share of the vote declined. We are not alone. And Wisconsin nearly escaped the trend. Read on.

I have not yet looked at the election data for the North Shore and Ozaukee Counties. But Ben Wikler has. And there are some bright spots for Wisconsin. On an X post, he writes, "The red wave hit this year: a ~6% national swing to Trump, from 2020 margins. In Wisconsin, thousands of heroes pulled the swing down to 1.5%. More D votes statewide & in 46 counties. Tammy Baldwin won. Huge wins in the state legislature." Later in the thread, he notes that "Kamala Harris won more votes than any other presidential candidate in Wisconsin history, with two exceptions: Barack Obama in 2008 (who won 9,221 more votes while winning a 14-point landslide), and Donald Trump in 2024." The margin of victory in the presidential race in Wisconsin was a tiny 0.87%. Wikler says it was the closest of any state in the nation and I believe him.

Fair(er) maps, and the hard work so many volunteers did, brought us a reformed legislature. The Democratic Party targeted four state senate seats and won them all, including of course our own Senate District 8 candidate, Jodi Habush Sinykin! We also flipped 10 Assembly districts from Red to Blue. In short, the down ballot races won, indicating to me that there must have been significant ticket-splitting. We can look forward to a legislature that more closely resembles the voters of Wisconsin. While Democrats did not win majorities in either house, the stranglehold Republicans have enjoyed for 14 years has been broken. Perhaps we can look forward to some bipartisanship on issues that we care about: Medicaid expansion, money for rural hospitals, PFA mitigation efforts, funding for public schools. I can dream!

In more grim news, Milwaukee Alderman Jonathan Brostoff took his own life on Monday. It seems he walked into a gun shop in West Allis, purchased one, and then shot himself in a Milwaukee park. A funeral service for him will take place at the Zelazo Center tomorrow from 9 to 11 AM. If only we had red flag laws, waiting periods for gun purchases, better mental health support. Maybe he would still be among us, making Milwaukee a better place to work, to play, and to live.

Finally, I want to provide a link to Vice President Harris's concession speech, in case you did not watch it. It's all of 15 minutes long, including energetic applause as she began. Although she concedes the race, she does not concede the fight for freedom. "The light of America's promise will always burn bright as long as we never give up and as long as we keep fighting."

As Kamala Harris entreats us, "Do not despair. This not a time to throw up our hands. This is the time to roll up our sleeves." Keep the faith, friends. Keep the faith.

other important links

Become a Member of Grassroots North Shore	Milwaukee County Democratic Party
Support Grassroots North Shore	Ozaukee County Democratic Party

A mere six days to go. If you have not yet seen Vice President Harris give her speech on the Elipse last night, you really should take half an hour out of your day to watch it. The speech manages to go hard after TFG while at the same time providing a warm and welcoming face with an insistance in every move that Kamala Harris is in this race, not for herself, but for us. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has the video.

The last Marquette Law School Poll of this election is out today. It streamed live at 12:15pm and will be up on its website sometime this afternoon. You MAY be able to watch Charles Franklin's presentation for yourself, even though the live stream is over. (If it's not available, watch the latest Randy Rainbow song MAGADU instead.)

The poll's sample is 5% more Republican than it had been earlier in the year. (Ugh!) Franklin defends the ratio by saying that's he's just reporting what the polled sample of random registered voters is telling us. The margin of error is 4.4%. Harris has a small 1% lead in the head-to-head match-up and 2% when 3rd party candidates are included. Franklin says that the winner of the state is anyone's guess. The senate race is also quite tight.

Other reputable polls show a wider win for Harris: the Cooperative Election Study shows Harris with a 50% - 46% lead over Trump (sample size 1542 in Wisconsin); the CNN/SRSS poll shows Harris with 51% to 45% for Trump. In both of these polls, our wonder woman is over 50%! Which is why it's better to be us than them. Franklin cautions that polls don't predict and don't vote. As always, we are within the margin of effort.

So DO AT LEAST ONE THING in the remaining six days. Please get in touch with family and friends TODAY to make sure they have a plan to vote, early if possible. Early voting continues in most places until close-of-business on Friday, November 1. In Milwaukee, early voting continues on Saturday, November 2. You can find precise information for North Shore suburbs and many communities in Ozaukee County on our website. Information about early voting locations in Milwaukee is here.

Predicting electoral outcomes is a tricky business, apparently. (As if we didn't already know that.) Allan Lichtman, who does not poll but who uses a schema of 13 "keys" to analyze elections and who has correctly predicted every election save one since 1982, calls it for Harris. Dana Taylor, on The Excerpt podcast, asks Professor Lichtman "Who do you think will win in November?" Lichtman answers: "It's not who I think. It's who my system, the 13 keys to the White House, predicts, and according to the keys to the White House, we are going to have a new and pathbreaking American president. Kamala Harris will become the first woman President of the United States, at least cracking, if not shattering the glass ceiling, and she'll become the first American president of mixed African and East Asian descent, foreshadowing where our country is going. We are rapidly becoming a majority-minority country. Old white guys like me are on the decline."

But many people, my husband included, experience high levels of anxiety about what comes after a close election that Harris and Walz win. As a result, the procedures for counting and certifying the votes become very important. They came close to failing us in 2020. So I want to use most of the rest of this newsletter to provide a detailed account of the Electoral Count Reform Act (ECRA) of 2022. According to Cass Sunstein in the Wall Street Journal (unfortunately behind a paywall), "The Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022, which amended the Electoral Count Act of 1887, greatly reduces the risk of uncertainty and chaos after Americans vote." You can read an excerpt of Sunstein's article on the Election Law Blog.

Here's the detailed account that should lower anxiety about what those who would overthrow legitimate election results will face this time around. In 2020, we know that the Trump camp engaged in several attempts to subvert the election of President Biden and Vice President Harris. The efforts included law suits (still available to aggrieved parties in 2024); failed attempts not to certify election results at both local and state levels; failed attempts to persuade legislatures to certify a "corrected set of facts;" sending the votes of fraudulent electors to Congress; enlisting representatives and senators to object to the certified election results of several states; and of course an insurrection when the other efforts all failed. Many of those avenues have been closed by the ECRA. Here are some of its key provisions:

Of course, the ECRA cannot foreclose another attack at the US Capitol. But Trump is no longer president and lacks the power to summon a mob to DC without those who are in charge of security for January 6, 2025, as well as the period between that day and the inauguration, taking the proper precautions. President Biden will be in charge and we can count of him and his team to make sure that Congress is secure.

We are in the final days of this election. So I have added a special section on signing up to canvass in various area. The walk lists now contain the people we need to turn out to vote. The reports about conversations at the doors since the WisDems started the GOTV period have been pleasant and then some. Participating in the ground game is now the most important action you can take. And if you can't canvass yourself, recruit a friend who can and drive them through their list. Every one of us must dig deep and do the utmost that we can. I'm closing with an uplifting video from Amplify to spur you on.

Key to Winning: Get Out the Vote

Canvassing

North Shore
    • Brown Deer
    • Fox Point
    • Glendale
    • Shorewood
    • Whitefish Bay
Ozaukee County
    • Grafton & Cedarburg
    • Mequon
    • Port Washington
Washington & Waukesha Counties
    • Germantown
    • Menomonee Falls

Canvassing on weekdays
    • Glendale, 2:00pm and 4:00pm
    • Whitefish Bay, 4:30pm

Phonebanking
    • Fox Point, Thursday October 31, 7:00 - 8:30pm.
    • Wauwatosa, Thursday October 31, 4:30 - 7:00pm.

Hurry up, please. It's time. We are within the penumbra of Election Day — really the final day of the election since all over the country millions of people have already cast their ballots. Including me. Early in person voting began yesterday in Wisconsin. If you need to know the schedule for your North Shore community, visit our early voting information page. For the city of Milwaukee, go here. So here's what you need to be doing to close strong.

First, VOTE EARLY. There was a report yesterday on Daily Kos that "so many people have shown up that the state system [in Wisconsin] has crashed." This is NOT A BAD THING! It just means that clerks' offices were unable to access the state system to record who had voted. But the votes themselves are securely in the hands of the clerks. "The system will record you as having voted early/absentee once the election workers can get in the system to update it."

Second, MULTIPLY YOUR VOTE by making sure family members and friends have made a specific plan to vote. Urge them to vote early too. Early voting has several advantages: 1) it removes the voter's name from the phone and canvass contact lists so that the Democrats can focus on less reliable voters; 2) it's more convenient for many people; 3) usually lines are shorter and therefore wait times are shorter; and 4) you never know what will happen on Election Day. A sudden illness, a family emergency, an accident: don't let those kinds of things derail you. VOTE EARLY.

Third, CANVASS. I know, I know: it's outside your comfort zone. Or you can no longer do that much walking or climbing steps to front doors. The solutions are to find someone to go with and either share the walk or drive someone through their list. Sure you're likely to talk to relatively few people. But remember, a winning number comes from an extra 3 or 4 votes in each ward. So be one of the people who can make that difference. To help you sign up, here is a list of events.

Get Out The Vote, generally 9am, 12pm, 3pm, 6pm

North Shore
    • Brown Deer
    • Fox Point
    • Glendale
    • Shorewood
    • Whitefish Bay
Ozaukee County
    • Grafton & Cedarburg
    • Mequon
    • Port Washington
Washington & Waukesha Counties
    • Germantown
    • Menomonee Falls

New this week: opportunities to canvass on weekdays. 
    • Glendale, 2:00pm and 4:00pm
    • Whitefish Bay, 4:30pm

Phonebanking
    • Fox Point, Thursday October 24, and Thursday October 31, 7:00 - 8:30pm.
    • Wauwatosa, Thursday, October 24, 6:30 - 9:00pm, and Thursday October 31, 4:30 - 7:00pm.

YARD SIGNS: We have some Harris/Walz signs you can pick up from Cheryl Maranto (Glendale), Norma Gilson (Shorewood), Nancy Kaplan (Glendale), Andy Berger (Fox Point and Bayside), and Shirley Horowitz (Whitefish Bay). Please email them to make arrangements and get their addresses.

Now for some newsier news. Former Dolt 45's longest serving chief of staff, John Kelly calls Trumpelthinskin a fascist (New York Times, October 22, 2024, gift link). In three interviews with Michael Schmidt, "Mr. Kelly expanded on his previously expressed concerns and stressed that voters, in his view, should consider fitness and character when selecting a president, even more than a candidate’s stances on the issues." Robert Paxton, a leading historian of mid-20th century Europe, thought the label was overused. But now, apparently, he's rethought his views. Is It Fascism? A Leading Historian Changes His Mind (New York Times, October 23, 2024, gift link). It's not clear that any of this will matter. But at least Bret Stephens, opinion writer for the NY Times, admitted on Monday that he's going to vote for Harris. Small victories.

I am often asked how I'm feeling about the Wisconsin election outcome or the national election outcome. Like Simon Rosenberg, in his substack Hopium Chronicles always says, I'd rather be us than them. (Yesterday's Hopium headline "VP Harris Leads By 3 and 4 In New Polls.") But I don't have a crystal ball and no one I know does either. We are always within the margin of effort. Still, having said all those cautionary things, I have a view: we are winning and will win if we do the work in front of us.

EVENTS

Wednesday, October 23

Thursday, October 24

Friday, October 25

Saturday and Sunday, October 26 and 27; Saturday and Sunday, November 2 and 3; Monday, November 4; Tuesday, November 5

Get Out The Vote, 9am, 12pm, 3pm, 6pm

SAVE THE DATE

Monday, November 11

other important links

The end of election season — what we call Election Day — is a mere three weeks away. To make your effort to be an informed voter a bit easier, Grassroots North Shore has much of the information you need on our Elections 2024 pages:

• Presidential Election: side by side comparison of issue postions;
• Ballot Question (Constitutional Amendment);
• Project 2025;
• Early in-person voting for the North Shore and Ozaukee County;
• Drop box locations and early in-person voting for the City of Milwaukee.

As part of our ongoing efforts to find our voters and turn them out, we are beginning our outreach to students on campuses in the area. Volunteers are needed at UWM and MIAD (and maybe MSOE) to encourage students to vote during early in-person voting (Oct. 22-Nov. 1). Volunteers will be on the campuses these days with handouts that focus on the freedom messaging, a comparison and contrast between Harris and Trump, registration information and information about voting NO on the constitutional amendment. Shifts are 11-1 or 1-3. at UWM and 11-1 at MIAD, but you are welcome to go at other times that are more convenient for you. We identify high traffic locations around the perimeter of the campus and on Spaights Plaza to catch students as they dash by. Volunteers will definitely get lots of their steps in while trying to catch the students for a minute of conversation! Contact Norma Gilson if you are able to volunteer.

On the legal fronts — and there are many, there's big news out of Georgia where a rogue State Election Board has been fomenting chaos by changing voting rules and trying to make certification of elections at the county level less certain and more time-consuming. Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney ruled that "election superintendents in Georgia have a mandatory fixed obligation to certify election results" by the statutory deadline: November 12.

The same judge blocked an election rule "that would require a hand count of ballots on election night," writing that the State Election Board rule will not take effect before November’s contest. The hand-count rule would have gone into effect on October 22. In his opinion delivered on October 15, Judge McBurney said that "his decision was not final and would be further detailed at a later date, but not until after the election" (The Hill, October 15, 2024).

Both decisions thwarted MAGA cultists from carrying out their plans to delay and to cause sufficient upheaval to allow the campaign of Benedict DonOld to challenge the election results.

Meanwhile, in the Insurrection Case in D.C., Judge Chutkan ruled on October 10 that the appendix to Special Counsel Jack Smith's brief can be released in redacted form but stayed the ruling for seven days to give The Big Lie-bowski and his team time to consider how to respond. Time's up tomorrow!

The brief itself has already been released (you can read it here). In it, Jack Smith outlines why the actions Cheeto Benito took to overturn the election — the false electors plot, the attempted corruption of state officials, the effort to persuade Mike Pence in his capacity as President of the Senate to count the "alternate electors" or to send the "disputed" outcomes back to the states, and finally the creation of a mob to overrun the Capitol in hopes of disrupting the count of Electoral College votes — were the actions of a candidate (office seeker) and not those of a president (office holder) acting in his official capacity.

Boss Tweet and his lawyers continue to argue that Chutkan's recent judicial rulings amount to election interference. Judge Chutkan is not buying it, again. Assuming the defendant pursues an appeal to the Circuit Court, his lawyers can request a longer stay so that the matter can be heard. If the panel of the Circuit Court agrees, the parts of the four exhibits in Jack Smith's appendix to his filing will not be released until after then election. This case, often short-handed as the Jan. 6 case, grinds on, albeit slowly.

In the case of the purloined classified documents that Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed, Special Counsel Jack Smith filed an appeal in late August to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Dolt 45's team had 30 days to reply to the special counsel's brief. So far, crickets.

Now to the election at hand: DO NOT WATCH THE POLLS! They cannot tell you anything about the outcome of the election. You might as well be reading palms or tea leaves. The election is going to be close, in this state and in all the battleground states. If you're eaten up with anxiety, try watching some of Randy Rainbow's hilarious takes on the election. Two in particular have tickled my funny bone: The Lawyer or the Conman and Blank Space (Donald's Version). And if, after chuckling, you can't give up biting your nails, try reading Josh Marshal's TPM post, Some Deep Thoughts On Why Dems Are So Prone to Recurrent Freak Outs. Marshall may be able to talk you off the ledge.

The name of the game: the Ground Game is here in full force. There are lots of questions about the MAGA campaign apparatus and their Get Out the Vote effort. For a sense of where they are, have a look at the PBS News piece from September 23: Republican activists say little sign of door-knocking for Trump in swing states. On the other hand, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin has been in the field for months and months, building its capacity to knock on doors. Now it is holding a big Weekend of Action on Saturday, October 19, and Sunday, October 20. I've listed a lot of the canvassing opportunities in the events list but it's so important, I'm going to include them here also. Some of us can no longer canvass, but most of us can drive, right? So if that describes you, sign up for a canvass and then take a canvasser in your car to make the work of knocking doors consume less time and energy. Here's a list:

So, as Rabbi Hillel the Elder is said to written, "If not now, when?"

PS: about yard signs: We have some you can pick up from Cheryl Maranto (Glendale), Norma Gilson (Shorewood), Nancy Kaplan (Glendale), Andy Berger (Fox Point and Bayside), and Shirley Horowitz (Whitefish Bay). Please email them to make arrangements and get their addresses.

Last week Special Counsel Jack Smith filed a brief in Judge Chutkin's court, laying out in greater detail the case against Benedict Donald and his plots to overturn the 2020 presidential election, using four distinct approaches: 1) the fraudulent electors scheme, 2) the pressure on state legislators, 3) the pressure on VP Pence, and 4) the insurrection. There was substantial media coverage of the 165+ pages, mostly teasing out nuggets of new information. For example, the New York Times introduced its post of the full brief with the headline Read the Special Counsel’s Newly Unsealed Evidence Against Trump. In their analysis, Alan Feuer and Charlie Savage focus on the new evidence even while acknowledging that the purpose of the filing is to argue that Dolt 45 is not immune from prosecution for these acts. The Washington Post also focused on the new evidence in the brief:

More interesting, to me at least, is an analysis by Stanford criminal law expert David Sklansky:

Sklansky gets right to the core of the matter. The new evidence in the filing "would be shocking and explosive," except that we already knew so much similar evidence that the new pieces don't really illuminate additional legal angles. The filing is significant, he says, because of what it reveals about the special counsel's approach. Sklansky argues that the case Smith is bringing is all about fraud. "It doesn’t charge Trump with insurrection, or with instigating the assault on the Capitol. Trump is charged with trying to take advantage of the January 6 riot, but not with provoking it. But the prosecutors’ filing makes clear that they intend to prove at trial that Trump did intentionally egg on the rioters."

Legal eagles will note that a fraud case depends heavily on the prosecutor's case that the fraudster knew what he was claiming — that he won the 2020 election — was false. Hence the avalanche of evidence in the brief. Sklansky considers "the evidence of Trump’s fraudulent intent — the evidence that he knew he was lying — is vastly stronger than in most [other fraud] cases. Fraud cases usually proceed, and often are successful, with significantly less evidence of fraudulent intent than Smith and his team have outlined in this case."

The Cowardly Lyin’ and his lawyers have until November 7 to respond to this brief and to try to claim that the acts Don the Con undertook and the evidence that he knew he was lying are all protected with the ersatz immunity the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) gifted to him. It will undoubtedly be a very long time before this case makes it into a courtroom, since whatever Judge Chutkin rules on the immunity question will be appealed, perhaps more than once, to SCOTUS. Also, of course, if Adolf Twitler is elected again, the case goes away forever.

Turning now to the election here, there is some confusion about the availability of drop boxes for those of us who vote by absentee ballot. While the Wisconsin Supreme Court reinstated municipalities' ability to use them for elections, the court left it to the clerks (some 1800 of them in Wisconsin) to decide whether they would be available. Some clerks have in fact chosen not to use one. So it's best if you call your municipal clerk to ask. Note: Absentee voters in the City of Milwaukee — Drop boxes will be operational by 10:30am on Monday, October 14, 2024 through Election Day, Tuesday November 5, 2024 until 6:00pm. You'll find a list of drop box locations and early voting places and schedules on our site.

Your Do Something List

Jodi Habush Sinykin: More Postcard Bags available for pickup!!!!!!
We have 60 more postcards bags for pickup... first come first served! The bags will live on my front doorstep in cardboard box... please stop by whenever suits you from now (Tuesday, Oct 8th), through this weekend (Sunday, October 13th). Address is 400 E Daphne Road, Fox Point WI, 53217. Limit of 2 bags per person. Please text or call 414-795-1433 with any questions. If you take a bag of postcards, PLEASE CONSIDER SIGNING UP FOR A CANVASSING SHIFT AS WELL!

Supermarket Legends
Help register students at UWM during a two-hour shift. We will have a table in the library on Tuesday, October 15, and Wednesday, October 16. Indicate whether you are available in the morning or afternoon. Contact Sue Schneidler to volunteer.

WisDems
WisDems have opened an office on the corner of E. North and Vel Phillips Ave. where they are preparing for a big push in the final weeks leading up to Election Day. This will be the staging area for canvassing and other activities. I am among volunteers supporting their work, and we are looking for help. Can you help support the cause? Here is what we need.
    • Bottled water for canvassers
    • Grab-and-go snacks for volunteers, including healthy options
    • Ready-to-eat meals for staff members, either purchased (e.g., sandwiches) or homemade (e.g., crock-pot chili or soup)
    • Coffee and tea supplies
We are looking to fill specific slots of time. We're still verifying the schedule, but we know for sure we'd need items on these days:
    • Sat. Oct. 19, Sun. Oct. 20, Sat. Oct. 26, Sun. Oct. 27
    • Sat. Nov. 2, Sun. Nov. 3, Mon. Nov. 4, Tues. Nov. 5
We will ask that items be both dropped off and, if needed, picked up (such as a crock pot or chafing dish). To volunteer to help, email Diane Bacha.

WisDems Voter Protection

1. Be a WisDems Poll Observer this November!
   Want to be an incredible in-person resource for Wisconsin voters on Election Day? Join our team as a poll observer! Poll observers are the eyes and ears of our team on Election Day and are stationed at polling locations across the state, ready to help voters with any issues they might face when casting their ballot. Without observers, we simply cannot protect the ballot on Election Day. You can sign up to be an observer with our team this November 5th by filling out this form: wisdems.org/novemberpollobserver. Additionally, feel free to share that link with friends or family that you think would be interested in joining our program! Sign up to be a poll observer now!
   
   
2. UPCOMING: Help recruit Poll Observers to defend democracy!
   Our team has phonebanks four times a week through mid October to recruit volunteer poll observers for the upcoming election. These calls are fun, easy, and incredibly rewarding – as you know, every poll observer we recruit is an additional resource to voters across the state. Poll observers are our biggest asset to protect the vote! Join a Recruitment Phonebank!
   
   
3. UPCOMING: Distributed Ballot Cure Trainings!
   Join the Cure team to directly help voters get their votes counted! In ballot cure calls, we call voters whose absentee ballots are in danger of rejection, and walk them through the steps to remedy it. It’s the most tangible way to defend democracy from the comfort of your own home. Once you’re trained, you can make calls on your own time. Sign up below! Sign up for a Distributed Cure Training!

One last thing before you hit the events list with its extensive opportunities to help the campaigns. Our founding father, Keith Schmitz, has posted an article — Happy Days Are Here Again — It’s Just That the GOP Is Refusing to Tell You That — on the Grassroots North Shore site. In it, he lays out solid evidence that, unlike Orange Julius, President Biden "strategically allocated funds to improve infrastructure, nurture a burgeoning green energy sector that promotes genuine energy independence, bring manufacturing back to the U.S., and fund research into technologies that will drive future innovation, along with job training to ensure the workforce can come along for the ride with these advancements." It's worth a read to shore up your own ability to explain why Bidenomics is, in fact, working.

So there was a debate between the candidates for Vice President. Who "won"? Does it matter? These are the questions foremost on the minds of political nerds. CNN ran an instant poll. The upshot: "No clear winner in VP debate between Tim Walz and JD Vance." Here's Politico's snap poll of likely voters: Dead even: POLITICO snap poll shows stark division on debate. "There was no decisive winner in the first-and-only vice presidential debate of the 2024 election."

There was a little bit of "fact-checking" by the moderators but the structure of many questions was already predicated on facts. Both the Washington Post and NPR have undertaken more comprehensive truth-telling investigations.The Washington Post checked 21 statements, 2/3rds of which were Vance's assertions, judged to be false or disingenuous or wrong or "a whitewash of Trump’s actions." Only three of the Walz statements were ruled "false." Two were said to be exaggerated. One was judged "true."

I counted 11 fact-checked statements in the NPR analysis. Ten were statements from JD Vance. Only one, the Tiananmen Square "issue" from 1989, was about Walz. That's a reach into the distant past: Vance was a young child then! Walz of course said he misspoke about being in China in June 1989. (He was there, but not until August that year.) And he was self-deprecating about it: "I've not been perfect, and I'm a knucklehead at times ... I got there that summer and misspoke on this." Surely that's enough said on what is after all a pretty trivial example of resumé fluffing.

In breaking news, the special counsel's last filing in the January 6 case is a "bombshell," according to abcNEWS.com. The New York Times article is a bit more restrained but the headline announces a key fact: "Judge Unseals New Evidence in Federal Election Case Against Trump." The filing was originally sealed. Judge Chutkin herself made its contents public. In response to the US Supreme Court ruling that presidents enjoy absolute immunity for "official acts," the special counsel argues that the acts included in the superseding indictment were "examples of Mr. Trump pursuing electioneering activity in his private role as a candidate for office, not as protected acts taken in his official capacity as president."

To poll junkies, I want to say "just don't!" But since they're going to seek out polls every day regardless, everyone ought to know that the Marquette Law School poll, overseen by Charles Franklin, was published today. The headline tells the top-line story: Presidential choices in Wisconsin hold steady in new Marquette Law School Poll results, with Harris at 52% and Trump at 48%. The 4-point margin is the same whether the responses are from registered voters or likely voters and also whether the test is head-to-head or includes third-party candidates. The margin of error is 4.4% for both registered and likely voters. So the news for Harris is pretty good in this state, but we're always within the "margin of effort.""

The poll also looked at the race for the Senate and found Baldwin besting Hovde 53% to 46% both among registered voters and among likely voters. Notably, "enthusiasm among Democrats is slightly higher than among Republicans in this poll, with 71% of Democrats saying they are very enthusiastic and 67% of Republicans also very enthusiastic." But the spread is wider if we consider the sum of those who are very and somewhat enthusiastic about the November election: 91% for Democrats and 84% for Republicans.

The final nuggets from the Marquette poll: of the 10 presidential candidates who will be listed on the Wisconsin ballot, only Tim Walz is viewed favorably! Harris is -3, Trump -11, Vance -13. Of the also-rans, Jill Stein comes in at -17 with RFK Jr a close -15. The preponderance of Wisconsin voters — 34% — consider themselves "moderate." Of those voters, 61% intend to vote for Harris! Voters for Trump include 94% of Republicans, 39% Independents, and 1% of Democrats (really?). But 99% of registered voters who consider themselves Democrats and 61% of those who consider themselves Independent say they are voting for Harris. As Simon Rosenberg (Hopium Chronicles) says, "I'd rather be us than them."

Voting everywhere, it seems, is more complicated than it needs to be. And Wisconsin seems to rate high on the list of places where it is often confusing. We do our best to bring you accurate and timely information about aspects of Wisconsin voting rules. Absentee voting is underway. You can request an absentee ballot at MyVote.WI.gov until October 16. In some places you can use a drop box to return the voted ballot. But in other places, like Glendale, you either have to put the certification envelope with your ballot inside into the US Mails or you have to return it in person to the clerk's office in your municipality. The same site can confirm your registration status, help you re-register if necessary, tell you how to contact your municipal clerk, and give you the location of your polling place.

Early in-person voting begins on Tuesday, October 22, and in most places ends on Friday, November 1. Visit our early voting page for specific information for your municipality. The City of Milwaukee has different locations, days and times for early voting. You'll find that information here.

The rest of the Elections 2024 pages provide some fabulous ads and other video content for the Kamala Harris and Tim Walz campaign. We also have a Side-by-Side Comparison of Key Campaign Issues. There's a little information about Project 2025 for you to read. (I plan to augment the page in the next week.) Perhaps the most important information for this election, though, is the Constitutional amendment on the November 5 ballot. Here's our page explaining what it is, why it's wrong for Wisconsin, and why you need to vote no. Once you've looked at it, please spread the word to family, friends and colleagues.

Here are some of the THINGS TO DO.

• North Shore Fair Maps, Monday October 4, 7:00pm (CT): "We'll Be Ready!"
  This virtual meeting will feature Alice Herman (The Guardian), Scott Thompson (Law Forward) and Alex Dubinsky (WisDems Voter Protection). The best way to prepare for the 2024 election season is to understand it. At our final pre-election meeting we go behind the curtain to see the Trump/MAGA and Democrat ground game (what Alice Herman sees and hears from voters); learn what lawyers are doing to be ready for controversy (Law Forward is gearing up); hear how voter protection experts will insure a free and fair election (the WisDems VoPro team is hard at work); and find out what WE can to do to help. We will also get a Fair Maps update from our own Carlene Bechen. SPECIAL NOTES: THIS MEETING IS CLOSED TO THE PRESS: NO RECORDING OF THIS MEETING WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE. Register.
• Souls to the Polls.
  Souls To The Polls (STP) is planning to drop flyers at homes in the neighborhoods surrounding several early vote sites. We really need volunteers to help in this important effort. The Early vote begins Tuesday October 22 and ends Sunday November 3rd. We have set two dates for door hanging the Souls to the Polls flyers. We plan to meet at the parking lot in front of the Police Station at 2333 N 49th St Milwaukee, WI 53210 on Saturday Oct. 19th at 10 am and Sunday Oct. 20th at 1 pm. We will get the flyers and maps to the volunteers and go over the details to get people started with the distribution in that neighborhood. The flyers include a phone number to call Souls to the Polls if someone needs a ride to go vote and information about early voting. This will be putting lit in doors. No door knocking. If you can volunteer, please e-mail Leanne Wied or call her at 262-366-5356.
• Republicans for Harris/Walz Weekly Phone Banks, Every Wednesday at 6:00pm Online.
  This election is about ensuring a better future for our country. We all know what's at stake, and your voice can help elect Kamala Harris and defeat Donald Trump in November. By connecting with Republican and Independent voters, we can build bridges and bring more people into this movement for change. Whether you've volunteered before or are new to phone banking, we welcome everyone. Your participation is crucial in reaching out to voters, having meaningful conversations, and getting them ready to cast their ballots for Kamala Harris. Sign up.

The events listed below are full of canvassing opportunities. If you can canvass, please sign up for at least one shift. We're in the penumbra of the election. Some of us have already voted! And there's no time to lose. If you can't canvass, please sign up with me (Nancy Kaplan) to phone likely Democratic women who recently received a post card encouraging them to vote for Democratic candidates. These follow-up phone calls focus on the Constitutional amendment almost no one seems to know about. They also encourage people to vote early if at all possible. It's important that we beat the MAGA Republicans. But it is also important that we defeat the proposed amendment.

We are also preparing handouts for students on the UWM and MIAD campuses. We could use more volunteers to help talk to students about voting. On UWM's campas, the Zelazo Center will be open for early in-person voting. And the Lubar Entrepreneurship Center will be a polling place for people in wards 123 and 126 in Milwaukee. If you'd like to sign up to hand out flyers, contact Norma Gilson.

YARD SIGNS! While they last, of course. You can pick one up at Cheryl Maranto's: email or text (414-429-1583 ) her to make arrangements. Mark Gennis has some as well. Again, contact him by email .