Good morning. 
Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy, with afternoon rain and a high of 41. Sunrise is 7:15 AM and sunset 4:20 PM for 9h 05m 25s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 44.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1906, Theodore Roosevelt is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the mediation of the Russo-Japanese War, becoming the first American to win a Nobel Prize in any field.
On 12.8, Patrick Marley reported that A bipartisan commission allows Wisconsin election grants, once again rejecting challenges brought by Republicans:
Wisconsin elections officials from both parties threw out a challenge Wednesday to private grants that helped cities run their elections during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A day later, on 12.9, two of the three Republicans on the commission crept away from bipartisanship. Marley reports Republicans sided with Democrats in an election challenge. A day later, they changed course:
On Thursday, Republican Commissioners Dean Knudson and Bob Spindell struck a new stance and said they wanted a hearing after all.
“I don’t agree with the decision letters that this was just fine,” Spindell said of the rulings that the grants were acceptable.
He said he had not seen the emails from Jacobs and DeWitt’s attorneys that they had sent him regarding hearings before the decisions were issued. He said he didn’t know why he wasn’t aware of them.
“I pay attention to my emails and I certainly pay attention if anything were to come from Ann,” he said. “I’m going to go back and take a look. It’s possible that I missed them.”
Knudson said he received the email from DeWitt’s attorneys but thought it might be spam because the state’s email system appended a warning to it that said it was sent from someone outside the commission. Jacobs’ follow-up email did not include such a warning.
“Frankly I did not recognize it and treated it as spam at the time,” Knudson said by email Thursday. “I will seek changes in procedure to help avoid a repeat of my mistake in future similar cases.”
Even if these Republicans did ignore emails, they wouldn’t be able to ignore calls from threatening fanatics motivated Republicans reminding them of what might happen if they didn’t change course, pronto.