WISCONSIN LEAGUE LEADER UPDATE

WISCONSIN LEAGUE LEADER UPDATE - May 30, 2008

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Annual Meeting Workbook Available Online
In the News
- Governor Signs Great Lakes Compact
- Supreme Court Reprimands Ziegler
- got health care? Campaign Draws Attention to Need for Reform
- Government Accountability Board gets $2 million grant to improve elections
- On Wisconsin Eye: Town Hall Meeting on Improving Wisconsin’s Election System

Annual Meeting Workbook Available Online

League Members – whether or not you will be attending the Annual Meeting in Madison next week, you may wish to look at the meeting workbook. People registered for the meeting will receive a paper copy when they check in, so there’s no need to print a hard copy unless you want to.

In the News

Governor Doyle signed the Great Lakes Compact on Tuesday. The League lobbied for its passage, along with a coalition of environmental organizations. Many editorials in state papers have lauded its passage. For a sampling, read about it in the Appleton Post Crescent and Oshkosh Northwestern.

The state Supreme Court this week reprimanded Justice Annette Ziegler for having presided, when she was a Washington County circuit judge, over 11 cases involving a bank for which her husband served as a paid director. The court wrote that "public confidence in the integrity of the judicial system was adversely affected" and described her actions as a "serious failing." The formal reprimand is seen by many as a "slap on the wrist." For example here are comments from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.

LWV Greater Green Bay member Pat Finder-Stone attended the Green Bay kick-off for Citizen Action’s got health care? campaign to raise awareness of the need for healthcare reform.

The Government Accountability Board was awarded $2 million from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) Wednesday to improve the State’s ability to collect election data at the local level. Wisconsin was one of five states which were awarded the competitive grants designed to eliminate barriers to collecting and reporting election data from wards or precincts. Read more here.

Last week LWVWI co-sponsored a forum on “Improving Wisconsin’s Election System” with League of Women Voters of Milwaukee County, made possible by a grant from the Joyce Foundation. At the forum election law experts Daniel Tokaji and Steven Huefner, from The Ohio State University Moritz School of Law, discussed their research report, From Registration to Recounts: The Election Ecosystems of Five Midwestern States. Following their report was a response panel of Wisconsin election officials and voting rights advocates, including Kevin Kennedy, Government Accountability Board; Neil Albrecht, Milwaukee Election Commission; and Andrea Kaminski, LWVWI. The forum covered the current status and future direction of election administration and voting rights in Wisconsin. We were pleased to hear from both the researchers and election officials that it would improve election efficiency and save the state money if Wisconsin passed a bill to restore voting rights to felons who are not incarcerated. Besides, it’s the right thing to do!

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