Judge Brad Schimel, the conservative candidate in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election, is coming under fire from Democrats after rallying supporters to vote early in the high-stakes contest in an effort to prevent voting fraud.
Schimel urged voters to “get our votes banked, make this too big to rig so we don’t have to worry that at 11:30 in Milwaukee, they’ll find bags of ballots that they forgot to put in the machines like they did in 2018 or 2024 when Eric Hovde was ahead all night and then all of a sudden Milwaukee County changed that.”
“I don’t think what happened, if there was fraud there, there’s no way for me to know that,” he said on WISN-AM Radio this week. “All I know is this: We need to turn our votes out. That’s the best insulation we have against any potential fraud, just get out people to the polls.”
In the Hovde case, both parties had warned in the run-up to the November election that Milwaukee absentee ballots would be reported late and cause a spike in Democratic votes because the city, the largest in the state, is heavily Democratic.
In 2020, Milwaukee’s absentee ballots swung the presidential election in Joe Biden’s favor, setting off conspiracy theories that the election had been stolen from President Donald Trump. Those seeds of distrust were planted in 2018 when 47,000 absentee ballots put now-Gov. Tony Evers (D-WI) ahead of then-Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who claimed the late reporting from Milwaukee had blindsided him.
Hovde also said he was “shocked” when Milwaukee’s votes came in, handing him a defeat to incumbent Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin.
The Democracy Defense Project’s Wisconsin board, which includes former Attorney General JB Van Hollen, former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, former U.S. Rep. Scott King, and former Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chairman Mike Tate, strongly pushed back against Schimel’s comments.
“Just two weeks before the April 1st election, we don’t discourage people from voting early, but phrases like ‘too big to rig’ cast doubt on our election process in Wisconsin, when just the opposite is true,” the board said in a statement. “We saw in November a resounding endorsement of the security of our election system as, for the 3rd election in a row, Wisconsinites elected both a Republican and a Democrat statewide.”
The statement went on to claim Wisconsin has some of the most “robust protections” against voter fraud in the country, singling out provisions such as “ID requirements that are promoted by some of those folks casting doubt on our process.”
“As it pertains to the timing with which ballots are counted in Milwaukee County, there is no evidence of fraud in Milwaukee, but the failure of the state to allow early counting on absentee ballots before the close of polls feeds into conspiracy theories. We again urge the governor and legislature to fix this flaw,” the board added. “Election integrity and ensuring voters know our elections are safe is a bipartisan issue and we encourage everyone in Wisconsin to use their right to vote in the next two weeks.”
Wisconsin is only one of a few states that do not allow early counting.
The April 1 Wisconsin Supreme Court race is the most expensive state court election in U.S. history, with nearly $60 million already spent on it and less than a week and a half to go.
The race has been framed as the most important of the 2025 election cycle and could give conservatives a one-vote majority in determining the fate of abortion rights, election law, and partisan political maps.
The election pits Schimel, a former Wisconsin attorney general, against liberal opponent Dane County Judge Susan Crawford.
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The race is technically nonpartisan but has become a de facto partisan contest, with millions of dollars flooding in from billionaire donors and outside special interest groups. Both candidate camps have blasted the other for trying to “buy” the election, though both have benefited. The last Wisconsin Supreme Court election, in 2023, brought in more than $50 million.
“Get used to the insanity,” Howard Schweber, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told the Washington Examiner.
