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Welcome November Blogger

Post author:Edward A. Fallone
Post published:November 13, 2016
Post category:Public

Our Alumni Blogger for the month of November is Mathew O’Neill. Matt is a shareholder at Fox, O’Neill & Shannon, S.C. His practice focuses on commercial litigation, appeals, arbitration, shareholder disputes, and election and campaign finance law. Matt graduated from Marquette Law School in 1991, in the old building. Since 2004, Matt has trained lawyers to observe at the polls on behalf of the Democratic Party, vigorously trying to ensure that every eligible voter gets to cast a vote that is counted. In 2005 Matt testified before Congress about voting rights issues, including voter suppression efforts, the real problems with heavy turnout elections, and the absence of voter fraud. He has litigated numerous election issues in the past, including HAVA cross-check challenges, attempted City of Milwaukee registration roll purges, and ballot access cases. Welcome aboard, Matt!

An Election Day Primer for Wisconsin Voters*

Post author:Lisa A. Mazzie
Post published:November 7, 2016
Post category:Civil Rights Election Law Milwaukee Public

Tomorrow is Election Day. It’s important to vote, so make sure you know where and when you can cast your ballot. New for Wisconsin voters this year is a photo identification requirement. I break down the voting process below to demystify and clarify it.

The main thing, though, is to vote. Even if you don’t like your choices for president, there are down-ballot races, including a state-wide U.S. Senate race between Russ Feingold and Ron Johnson and any number of races for federal or state representatives and other local officials, for which your vote matters.

Remember Us?

Post author:Mike Gousha
Post published:November 3, 2016
Post category:Marquette Law School Poll Political Processes & Rhetoric Public

It was a long time coming, but Wisconsin seems to have finally regained its “key battleground state” status in this year’s presidential election. At least for the moment, anyway. For much of this election cycle, we’ve been missing out on the action, a second tier state that Democrats believed would be theirs on Election Day, never seriously in jeopardy.

If it takes two to tango, Wisconsin has been missing a dance partner. While Republican nominee Donald Trump has been to Wisconsin five times, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton hasn’t been here once. It might be argued that given Clinton’s struggles in Wisconsin—a crushing primary loss in 2008 to then-Sen. Barack Obama and a 2016 April primary defeat which saw her lose 71 of 72 counties to Sen. Bernie Sanders—surrogates like Sanders and Chelsea Clinton might be more effective campaigners than the nominee herself. Whatever the reason, Clinton has focused her personal attention on other states. Her campaign only recently began running ads in Wisconsin, a true indicator of a state’s relative importance in the election.

But if you believe recent public opinion surveys in the first tier battleground states of North Carolina, Florida, and Ohio, the race has tightened considerably. Wednesday, Real Clear Politics released its latest Electoral College “No Toss Ups” Map. Using the latest state-by-state polling, Clinton would squeeze out the narrowest of victories in the Electoral College, 273 votes for her, 265 for Trump.