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Daily Bread, Elections, Harris-Walz, Never Trump, Politics, Presidential Race 2024, US Senate Race 2024, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 10.3.24: Perhaps Accurate for a Moment with Much Ahead

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 76. Sunrise is 6:55, and sunset is 6:31, for 11 hours, 37 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent, with 0.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

There will be a Home Buyer’s Educational Event at the Community Engagement Center, 1260 W Main St. in Whitewater from 6 to 7:30 PM.

On this day in 1952, the United Kingdom successfully tests a nuclear weapon in the Montebello Islands, Western Australia, to become the world’s third nuclear power.

The Marquette Law School Poll, a respected survey of political preferences, issued its latest findings yesterday. Here are some key results of their latest work:

I’ve reported poll results before, in these races and others, and yet one should be clear with oneself: these are no more than possible descriptions of sentiment at those brief moments when respondents answered a pollster’s questions.

With differences between the candidates so stark, and thus stakes so high, the course both practical and moral is simply to carry on, march on, and slog on in support of one’s candidates.

If ever one’s conscience were to be one’s guide, now’s the time.

Java In zero-g! How the space coffee cup works:

Astronauts on the International Space Station have a zero-g cup for their java. Find out about it here.

Daily Bread, Elections, Local Government, Voting Rights, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 10.2.24: Clerk Lawfully Returns Drop Box that Wausau’s Mayor Removed

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 71. Sunrise is 6:53, and sunset is 6:33, for 11 hours, 39 minutes of daytime. The moon is new, with none percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater will hold a Healthy Lakes Summit today at 5 PM.

On this day in 1980, Michael Myers becomes the first member of either chamber of Congress to be expelled since the Civil War.

Readers may recall that last week, Wausau Mayor Doug Diny removed “[a] drop box, located outside of City Hall, on Sunday and distributed a picture of himself doing it while wearing worker’s gloves and a hard hat. Diny is a conservative opponent to drop boxes. He insists he did nothing wrong.” See from FREE WHITEWATER Performative Voting Disruption in Wausau.

The Wausau City Clerk now has lawfully placed another ballot drop box outside her city hall. Scott Bauer follows his earlier reporting with Wisconsin city replaces ballot drop box after mayor carted it away:

An absentee ballot drop box that the mayor of a central Wisconsin city removed a week ago was back in place on Monday.

The Wausau city clerk said the box was available outside of city hall “for residents to submit absentee ballots, payments, and other important city requests as was intended.”

Mayor Doug Diny removed the drop box on Sept. 22 without consulting with the clerk, who has the authority under a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling legalizing drop boxes to make one available. They are not mandatory in the state.

Emphasis added. Wausau’s major is not a king1. He’s not even a duke, marquess, earl, viscount, or baron. The lawful authority over drop boxes was not his; he acted outside legal authority.

The law assigns the roles of public officials, and in a free society of limited government they do not (and should not) have more authority than the law allows.

Watch this octopus ‘punch’ a freeloading fish:

  1. A reminder to what’s left of Old Whitewater: this city did not have a mayor during your time, and if not a mayor then neither did Whitewater have a worthy and legitimate ‘unofficial mayor.’ When a few once declared someone an ‘unofficial mayor,’ the term was either a false & arrogant boast or an implicit insult against illegitimate overreaching. Those who thought the term praiseworthy confused praise with condemnation. ↩︎

Conspiracy Theories, Daily Bread, Elections, Voting Rights, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 9.27.24: Performative Voting Disruption in Wausau

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 74. Sunrise is 6:48, and sunset is 6:42, for 11 hours, 54 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent, with 23.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1066, William the Conqueror and his army set sail from the mouth of the Somme river, beginning the Norman conquest of England.

Believe in election conspiracies long enough (like the notion that ballot drop boxes lead to fraud), run for office on that theory, and soon you’ll be mugging for the camera while carting away a ballot drop box.

Scott Bauer reports Wisconsin district attorney pursuing investigation into mayor’s removal of absentee ballot drop box:

In this photo provided by Wausau Mayor Doug Diny, Diny uses a dolly to remove the city’s lone drop box from in front of City Hall in Wausau, Wis., on Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024. (Doug Diny via AP)

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin district attorney said Thursday that her office is pursuing an investigation into the removal of an absentee ballot drop box by the mayor of Wausau.

Mayor Doug Diny removed the drop box, located outside of City Hall, on Sunday and distributed a picture of himself doing it while wearing worker’s gloves and a hard hat. Diny is a conservative opponent to drop boxes. He insists he did nothing wrong.

The drop box was locked and no ballots were in it. The city clerk notified Marathon County District Attorney Theresa Wetzsteon and she said in an email on Thursday that she is requesting an official investigation with the assistance of the Wisconsin Department of Justice.

Wetzsteon said she was waiting to hear back from DOJ on her request.

A spokesperson for DOJ did not immediately return a message Thursday.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers weighed in on Thursday, calling the removal of the drop box “wrong.” Evers said it should be restored “immediately”:

“Drop box voting is safe, secure, and legal,” Evers posted on the social media platform X. “As elected officials, we should be working to make it easier—not harder—for every eligible Wisconsinite to cast their ballot. That’s democracy.”

Diny wears a hard hat in his posed publicity photo. It’s a smart move — you never know when an incontinent pigeon might be flying overhead. Honest to goodness — he looks ridiculous to the sensible, and sensible only to the ridiculous.

International Space Station flies directly over massive Hurricane Helene in time-lapse:

The International Space Station flew directly over Hurricane Helene on Sept. 26, 2024. Full Story: https://www.space.com/hurricane-helen… Major impacts from inland flooding is expected along the path of Helene well after landfall, according to statement from NOAA. Credit: Space.com | footage courtesy: NASA | edited by Steve Spaleta (https://x.com/stevespaleta)

Conservative Populism, Conspiracy Theories, Daily Bread, Elections, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 9.15.24: Continuing Threats Against Wisconsin Election Officials

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 85. Sunrise is 6:36, and sunset is 7:02, for 12h 26m 43s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 90.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1832, the Ho-Chunk and the United States sign a treaty stipulating that the Ho-Chunk cede lands lying to the south and east of the Wisconsin River and around the Fox River of Green Bay. (More than one nation was involved in these treaty councils with the United States in 1832: “with the Ho-Chunk (Sept. 15) and the Sauk and Fox (Sept. 21). The Ho-Chunk ceded all their remaining territory south of the Wisconsin River; the Sauk & Fox ceded the Iowa shore of the Mississippi.”)

On this day in 1835,  HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin aboard, reaches the Galápagos Islands. The ship lands at Chatham or San Cristobal, the easternmost of the archipelago.

How threats are escalating for Wisconsin’s public officials:

From local clerks to state Supreme Court justices, elected officials in Wisconsin are being threatened and harassed — in person and online — fueled by tense political rhetoric and conspiracy theories.

Jurors help detain a man fleeing a courthouse in handcuffs:

A man convicted of assaulting a 14-month-old child was seen on surveillance fleeing a #courthouse in #Maine. He later appears to trip and fall in a yard where two jurors and a detective apprehend him.

Conspiracy Theories, Courts, Daily Bread, Elections, Law, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 9.13.24: Wisconsin Supreme Court Takes Case on Future of Elections Commission Chairwoman

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 82. Sunrise is 6:34, and sunset is 7:06, for 12h 32m 27s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 73.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1956, the IBM 305 RAMAC is introduced, the first commercial computer to use disk storage.

By Norsk Teknisk Museum – https://digitaltmuseum.org/011015239966/22-0-ibm-modell-305-ramac/media?slide=0, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=124744659

Scott Bauer reports The Wisconsin Supreme Court will hear a case on the future of the state’s elections leader:

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Wednesday said it would hear a lawsuit that could determine whether the state’s top elections official could remain in her post after Republicans who controlled the state Senate sought to fire her last year.

….

Meagan Wolfe serves as the nonpartisan administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, an agency run by a bipartisan board that oversees elections in the key presidential battleground state. Republicans unhappy with her, especially after the 2020 election won by President Joe Biden, have attempted to oust her from her job.

Wolfe has been the subject of conspiracy theories and targeted by threats from election skeptics who falsely claim she was part of a plot to rig the 2020 vote in favor of Biden. Biden defeated Donald Trump in 2020 by nearly 21,000 votes in Wisconsin, and his win has withstood two partial recounts, a nonpartisan audit, a conservative law firm’s review, and multiple state and federal lawsuits.

….

Senate Republicans voted in September 2023 to fire Wolfe, despite objections from Democrats and the Legislature’s nonpartisan attorneys, who said the Senate didn’t have the authority to vote at that time because Wolfe was a holdover in her position and had not been reappointed.

Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul sued to challenge that vote, and in court filings, Republican legislative leaders changed course and claimed their vote to fire Wolfe was merely “symbolic” and had no legal effect. They also asked the judge to order the elections commission to appoint an administrator for the Senate to vote on.

Dane County Circuit Court Judge Ann Peacock, in a January ruling, said Wolfe is legally serving as administrator of the elections commission as a holdover given that the commission deadlocked on whether to reappoint her. The Senate’s vote to remove her had no legal effect and the commission has no duty to appoint a new leader while Wolfe is serving as a holdover, Peacock ruled.

Republican leaders of the Legislature appealed and asked the state Supreme Court to take the case directly, skipping a state appeals court, which it agreed to do on Wednesday.

It’s astonishing how many repercussions and lawsuits Wisconsin has endured from election conspiracists.

Hikers caught in torrential downpour in the Grand Canyon:

Hikers touring the Grand Canyon in Arizona had to stop for shelter while heavy rainwater fell. The downpour caused flash floods in the area.

Daily Bread, Elections, Presidential Race 2024, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 9.3.24: Wisconsin One of Seven Key Campaign States

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 75. Sunrise is 6:23, and sunset is 7:24, for 13h 00m 54s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 0.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1783, the American Revolutionary War ends with the signing of the Treaty of Paris by the United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain (ratification being later completed in 1784).

Steve Peoples, Thomas Beaumont, and Amelia Thomson-Deveaux report in Presidential Campaigns Brace for an Intense Sprint to Election Day that Wisconsin is one of seven critical states for both major campaigns:

After a summer of historic tumult, the path to the presidency for both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump this fall is becoming much clearer.

The Democratic vice president and the Republican former president will devote almost all of their remaining time and resources to just seven states [story highlights Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada]. They will spend hundreds of millions of dollars targeting voters who, in many cases, have just begun to pay attention to the election. And their campaigns will try to focus their messages on three familiar issues — the economy, immigration and abortion — even in the midst of heated debates over character, culture and democracy.

The candidates will debate in one week in what will be their first meeting ever. The nation’s premier swing state, Pennsylvania, begins in-person absentee voting the week after. By the end of the month, early voting will be underway in at least four states with a dozen more to follow by mid-October.

Wisconsin is again, as she’s has been for over a dozen years, among the most intense of political battlegrounds.

What’s in the Sky for September 2024:

Courts, Daily Bread, Elections, Fellow Traveler, Fifth Columnist, Harris-Walz, Law, Never Trump, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 8.28.24: Live by Siphoning, Perish by Siphoning

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 83. Sunrise is 6:16, and sunset is 7:34, for 13h 17m 38s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 27.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Lakes Advisory Committee meets at 4:30 PM, and the Finance Committee meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1830, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad‘s new Tom Thumb steam locomotive races a horse-drawn car, presaging steam’s role in U.S. railroads.

Screenshot: RFK Jr. explains that whole dead bear cub incident
Screenshot: Stein impersonates a homegrown candidate in campaign video

Yesterday’s post looked at the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s dismissal of a complaint designed to keep the Green Party off the Wisconsin 2024 presidential ballot. See Green Party Worries Needlessly about Risks to Its Vote-Siphoning Operation in Wisconsin.

And look, and look: in an alternative history of our time, there might have been a legitimate Green Party candidate fighting for environmental issues, etc. That’s not Jill Stein. She is Putin’s catspaw: easily a fellow traveler, if not a fifth columnist. Her presence on the ballot serves only to siphon votes from the Democratic candidate. In this way, the right judicial decision (to keep her on the ballot) turns out to be the wrong political decision (Stein’s candidacy serves only those at home and abroad who would weaken American liberal democracy).

If, however, the adversaries of the American liberal democratic tradition won a small victory by keeping Stein on the ballot to pull left-learning voters, they suffered an equal defeat yesterday when the Wisconsin Elections Commission ruled to keep Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the Wisconsin ballot. MAGA-supporting RFK Jr. wanted to be off the Wisconsin ballot precisely because he knows (with what’s left of his brain) that he draws from MAGA-leaning voters.

Live by siphoning, perish by siphoning. These scheming candidates and their foreign backers are as risible as they are wrong.

Through all this, the right choice is stark and the imperative clear: Harris-Walz. Never Trump means never Trump.

Courts, Daily Bread, Elections, Fellow Traveler, Law, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 8.27.24: Green Party Worries Needlessly about Risks to Its Vote-Siphoning Operation in Wisconsin

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 94. Sunrise is 6:15, and sunset is 7:36, for 13h 23m 08s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 37.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1832, Black Hawk, leader of the Sauk tribe of Native Americans, surrenders to U.S. authorities, ending the Black Hawk War.

On this day in 1878,  Christopher Latham Sholes patents the typewriter:

The idea for this invention began at Kleinsteuber’s Machine Shop in Milwaukee in the late 1860s. A mechanical engineer by training, Sholes, along with associates Carlos Glidden and Samuel Soulé, spent hours tinkering with the idea. They mounted the key of an old telegraph instrument on a base and tapped down on it to hit carbon & paper against a glass plate. This idea was simple, but in 1868 the mere idea that type striking against paper might produce an image was a novelty. Sholes proceeded to construct a machine to reproduce the entire alphabet. The prototype was sent to Washington as the required Patent Model. This original model still exists at the Smithsonian. Investor James Densmore provided the marketing impetus that eventually brought the machine to the Remington Arms Company. Although Remington mass-marketed his typewriter beginning in 1874, it was not an instant success. A few years later, improvements made by Remington engineers gave the machine its market appeal and sales skyrocketed. [Source: Wisconsin Lore and Legends, p.41]

Last week, advocates for the Green Party expressed alarm that the Wisconsin Supreme Court asked that political party to file briefs in a lawsuit from the Wisconsin Democrats aimed at keeping the Greens off the November ballot. Wisconsin’s high court gave the Greens a tight deadline, leading the party to contend it was being treated unfairly.

Yesterday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court dismissed the suit aimed at keeping the Greens off the ballot. The Greens misunderstood the purpose of the tight deadline to file briefs. Henry Redman reports that

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a lawsuit from the Democratic National Committee challenging Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein’s placement on the ballot in November. 

With just one day before the Wisconsin Elections Commission decides which candidates will be allowed on the ballot this fall, the Court moved quickly in the case, asking parties late last week to file briefs in response to the Democrats’ petition to the Court before the Green Party of Wisconsin even had a lawyer. 

The Democrats had previously filed a complaint with the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) against the Green Party’s candidate for president, Jill Stein, alleging she should not be placed on the state’s presidential ballot because the Green Party of Wisconsin does not have official state officers who can serve as presidential electors.

The WEC denied the Democrats’ complaint on a technicality, prompting the party to bring the lawsuit to the Supreme Court. 

Earlier this year, the WEC voted to allow the Green Party onto the ballot because it got at least 1% of the vote in a statewide election in 2022. 

(Emphasis added.)

The Wisconsin Supreme Court set an accelerated briefing deadline not to burden the Greens but to dispose of the complaint against them before the Elections Commission meeting.

Admittedly, there’s something laughable about an established political party (Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein has been running for president, while simping for Putin, for years) whose Wisconsin Party officials whine that

According to Michael J. White, co-chair of the Wisconsin Green Party, his party had no legal representation in Wisconsin when he was notified of the court order.

“That just strikes me as a little bit unreasonable,” he told WPR on Thursday afternoon.

Pete Karas, the state Green Party’s elections chair, said they found a lawyer “around midnight” after “a zillion phone calls.” That lawyer is Milwaukee-area attorney Michael Dean.

The next morning, the party sent out a mass email to its followers asking for donations.

“Lawyers are expensive, and we need your help today to ensure we can pay for these much-needed legal fees,” the mailer said.

Funny that the Green Party didn’t have a Wisconsin lawyer beforehand. One would have expected a better level of preparation from a 2024 vote-siphoning operation.

Daily Bread, Elections, Politics, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 8.22.24: More (and Less) Important Political Trends

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 76. Sunrise is 6:10, and sunset is 7:44, for 13h 34m 01s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 88.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The Board of Zoning Appeals meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1902, Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first President of the United States to make a public appearance in an automobile.

On this day in 1920, native Milwaukee runner Arlie Schardt won a gold medal in the 3,000-meter team race at the Olympic Games in Antwerp, Belgium. Schardt was part of a three-man team that included Hal Brown and Ivan Dresser.

There’s more than one political trend at play in Wisconsin: Craig Gilbert writes As DNC gathers, Democrats grapple with its fall among Wisconsin’s rural voters and Bruce Thompson writes WOW Counties Turning Less Republican (‘Ozaukee and Waukesha now less red while Washington County resists the trend’).

These stories aren’t equally useful, and it’s easy to see why. Gilbert wants to highlight continued decline of Democrats in rural counties, but the story head doesn’t match the story itself:

The Democratic Party’s geographic foothold has shrunk in Wisconsin, amid a plunge in support among rural voters in the central, western and northern counties.

The new election map has a lot less “blue” than the old one.

That hasn’t stopped Democrats from winning big elections, which it has done with regularity in the Trump era. Winning statewide races is not about winning the most counties or the greatest acreage, but the most votes.

(Emphasis added.)

Those areas where one finds the most votes are also where most people live, and where legislative districts are situated by population. The headline says trouble (Democrats have to ‘grapple’) but results in statewide race after statewide race say otherwise.

The decline among Democrats in low-population areas is offset by gains among Democrats in areas of high population. Bruce Thompson writes:

The Milwaukee area is following the national trend in which close-in suburbs become increasingly Democratic, while more rural areas become more Republican. Though there are many theories on what is driving this trend, it still remains something of a mystery. But clearly the trend is changing two of the three WOW counties.

The increasingly blue Milwaukee area has a greater population than the rural counties that Gilbert over-emphasizes.

Two analyses, Gilbert’s and Thompson’s, but only the latter presents the key trends perceptively all the way through from head to tail.

Tiger almost bites woman’s hand at New Jersey zoo (Alternative Title: Do Not Pet Zoo Tigers):

New Jersey authorities shared footage of a woman putting a hand through the fence in a tiger enclosure at the Cohanzick Zoo.

Daily Bread, Elections, Politics, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 8.18.24: Prof. Anthony Chergosky on Wisconsin’s 2024 Partisan Primary Vote

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 78. Sunrise is 6:06, and sunset is 7:50, for 13h 44m 40s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 98 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1937, a lightning strike starts the Blackwater Fire of 1937 in Shoshone National Forest, killing 15 firefighters within three days and prompting the United States Forest Service to develop their smokejumper program.

Anthony Chergosky on Wisconsin’s 2024 partisan primary vote:

UW-La Crosse political science professor Anthony Chergosky considers the rejection of two proposed state constitutional amendments and outcomes of two congressional races in the 2024 partisan primary.

Ferris wheel catches fire at German music festival:

A Ferris wheel caught fire and injured a number of people at the Highfield music festival near Leipzig in eastern Germany.

Conspiracy Theories, Crackpots, Daily Bread, Elections, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 8.15.24: Wisconsin Conspiracy Theorists Take Losses

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 76. Sunrise is 6:02, and sunset is 7:55, for 13h 52m 30s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 78.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1944,  Operation Dragoon begins as Allied forces land in southern France.

Sarah Lehr reports Two of Wisconsin’s most vocal election deniers lost their bids for the state Legislature Tuesday, coming up short in Republican primaries:

In suburban Milwaukee, state Rep. Janel Brandtjen, R-Menomonee Falls, lost to state Sen. Dan Knodl, R-Germantown, in a race for the recently redrawn 24th Assembly District.

And in eastern Wisconsin’s new 20th Senate District, former state Rep. Timothy Ramthun of Campbellsport was defeated by state Sen. Dan Feyen of Fond du Lac.

….

Brandtjen lost despite being endorsed by former President Donald Trump ahead of the primary. Brandtjen has promoted false conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and has echoed calls for the results to be overturned in Trump’s favor.

These two defeats are not enough, but they are something. Some days one settles for something.

A Scottish origin for Stonehenge’s mysterious Altar Stone:

Stonehenge, the Neolithic stone circle on Salisbury Plain in southern England, has captivated archaeologists, antiquarians and sightseers for centuries. For decades researchers have tried to find the origins of the stones, with some being sourced to the surrounding landscape and some from the Preseli Hills in Wales. But new geochemical analysis of the Altar Stone, a partially buried slab of sandstone at the center of the stone circle, suggests that this stone originally came from the Orcadian Basin in Scotland, over 700 kilometers away.

City, Daily Bread, Elections, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 8.14.24: Proposed Wisconsin Constitutional Amendments Fail

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 82. Sunrise is 6:01, and sunset is 7:56, for 13h 55m 05s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 68.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill sign the Atlantic Charter stating postwar aims.

Two proposed Wisconsin constitutional amendments on the ballot yesterday failed decisively:

Statewide, Question 1 (Prohibit Legislature from Delegating Appropriations) lost 57.4% to 42.6% and Question 2 (Require Legislative Approval for Federal Funds) lost 57.5 to 42.5%.

In Whitewater, the questions had a similar fate (combining totals from Jefferson and Walworth counties):

Question 1 (Prohibit Legislature from Delegating Appropriations) lost 68.8% to 31.2% and Question 2 (Require Legislative Approval for Federal Funds) lost 68.6 to 31.4%.

See also No on Amendment Questions 1 and 2 (“Questions written nebulously, and presented to voters on a month of traditionally lower turnout, deserve rejection. Government, and the questions it presents, are meant to be more than semantic trickery”).

Watch video from space of the moon setting into auroras:

Matthew Dominick, a flight engineer on the International Space Station, shared on Monday (August 12) a captivating timelapse showcasing the moon setting among vibrant red and green auroras.

Daily Bread, Elections, Law, Voting Rights, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 7.30.24: Another Meritless Challenge to Wisconsin Absentee Voting Dismissed

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 87. Sunrise is 5:45, and sunset is 8:16, for 14h 30m 58s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 24 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1981, as many as 50,000 demonstrators, mostly women and children, took to the streets in Lodz to protest food ration shortages in Communist Poland.

It’s become a common tactic in Wisconsin (and other states) for a resident to challenge voting rights on narrow procedural grounds. The consequence of this approach is to burden a lawful means of voting until residents are dissuaded from voting by those means. One lawsuit of this kind was dismissed Monday in Circuit Court. Todd Richmond reports Judge dismisses lawsuit challenging absentee voting procedure in battleground Wisconsin:

A Wisconsin judge dismissed a lawsuit Monday that challenged absentee voting procedures, preventing administrative headaches for local election clerks and hundreds of thousands of voters in the politically volatile swing state ahead of fall elections. 

The ruling stems from a lawsuit Thomas Oldenberg, a voter from Amberg, Wisconsin, filed in February. Oldenberg argued that the state Elections Commission hasn’t been following a state law that requires voters who electronically request absentee ballots to place a physical copy of the request in the ballot return envelope. Absentee ballots without the request copy shouldn’t count, he maintained. 

Commission attorneys countered in May that language on the envelope that voters sign indicating they requested the ballot serves as a copy of the request. Making changes now would disrupt long-standing absentee voting procedures on the eve of multiple elections and new envelopes can’t be designed and reprinted in time for the Aug. 13 primary and Nov. 5 general election, the commission maintained.

The case is Oldenburg v. WEC 2024CV43.

Trash-sucking vacuum cleaner robot dog hits Italian beach:

Daily Bread, Elections, Legislature, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 7.18.24: Interactive Maps on Wisconsin’s Legislative Primary Races

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 75. Sunrise is 5:33 and sunset 8:28 for 14h 54m 29s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 90.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1968,  Intel is founded in Mountain View, California.

The Wisconsin Examiner has published two interactive maps for Wisconsin’s legislative primary races:

These interactive maps show every candidate listed on primary ballots in August this year as certified by the Wisconsin Elections Commission. They also include additional information about some of the Democratic and Republican primary races as well as information about the most competitive districts identified by a Marquette Law School analysis done by John Johnson, a research fellow in the Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education. In his analysis, Johnson used the results of the 2022 state legislative elections to predict which districts will have close races under the 2024 maps.

….

2024 Wisconsin State Assembly Primary Races (‘Map reflects candidates who will be on the August primary ballots’) [link opens in another window]

2024 Wisconsin State Senate Primary Races (‘Map reflects candidates who will be on the August primary ballots. Odd numbered Senate districts (grey) are not up for election this year’ [link opens in another window]

Wisconsin’s August Partisan Primary is 8.13.24, Wis. Stat. 5.02(12s).

Butterfly Chases Hummingbird at Panama Fruit Feeders:

Watch this quick clip of a butterfly chasing a White-vented Plumeleteer above the platform feeder in Panama. Stay until the end to see a slow-motion replay of the events. It’s unclear exactly what led to this interaction. Butterflies and hummingbirds often compete for the same food sources, and there’s research to suggest both hummingbirds and various insect species will display interspecific territorial behavior near food sources.