Election officials in Wisconsin voted Thursday to provide more details to voters than usual to avoid confusion about a ballot that will have both a special and regular election for a vacant congressional seat.
The rare anomaly for the 8th Congressional District is due to the timing of the first The surprise resignation of U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher. If Gallagher had resigned before April 9, state law would have required a special election to be called before November.
Gallagher resigned on April 24, leaving Governor Tony Evers to call the special election on the same dates as the August 13 primary and the November 5 general election.
That means voters in Wisconsin’s northeastern congressional district will vote to elect someone in a special election to fill out the remainder of the current term, which runs until Jan. 3, and then vote separately for someone to serve the regular two-term term years will fulfill. from January.
“There is a source of confusion here and it will be very difficult to avoid voter confusion,” Brandon Hunzicker, attorney for the Wisconsin Election Commission, said at a meeting Thursday.
To help avoid confusion, the commission has chosen to have the ballot reflect the length of both the special election and the regular term. Voters in the congressional district will also be given an explanation as to why the same congressional seat is on the ballot twice.
The exact wording of both the ballot and information sheet will be discussed by the committee next month.
“If we don’t make that clear to the voter, we’ve done a disservice to the voters,” Commissioner Ann Jacobs said.
Candidates for office will also have to distribute separate nomination papers for both the special and regular elections. Those nomination papers are due June 3.
State Sen. André Jacque of De Pere, former state Sen. Roger Roth of Appleton, and former gas station and convenience store owner Tony Wied are all running for the seat as Republicans. Wied has been endorsed by former President Donald Trump.
Dr. Kristin Lyerly is the only announced Democrat in the race.
Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional District is solidly Republican, but Democrats have promised to make it competitive.
Trump won the district by 16 percentage points in 2020, even though he lost the state to President Joe Biden by less than a point. Gallagher won re-election three times by as much as 25 points. The district includes the cities of Appleton and Green Bay, Door County and covers primarily rural areas north of Marinette.
