Crawford wins highly contested Wisconsin Supreme Court race

By Jon Styf
The Center Square

Susan Crawford won the highly contested Wisconsin Supreme Court race Tuesday night as both CNN and The Associated Press called the race.

Crawford held 55.9% of the vote compared to 44.1% for Brad Schimel as of 9:25 p.m. central time on Tuesday on an Election Day where seven locations in Milwaukee ran out of ballots, causing voting delays.

Schimel conceded the race shortly after 9:30 p.m. central time.

Any voter in line by 8 p.m. was allowed to vote in what Milwaukee Election Commission Spokesperson Melissa Howard called a “historic” election in terms of spring turnout on Tuesday.

Milwaukee expanded the use of ExpressVote machines and sent couriers with ballots to the polling locations that ran out of paper ballots.

Ballots running out has “never occurred here in the city” Howard told reporters on Tuesday.

Vote counting was expected to continue into early Wednesday at central count locations in places such as Milwaukee County. Early votes could not begin to be counted until polls closed at 8 p.m.

Early results showed 61.6% of the first 63% of precincts counted approved of adding a voter identification requirement to the Wisconsin constitution. Voter ID is already law and the ballot initiative would also add it to the state constitution.

The race for superintendent of the state’s Department of Public Instruction was also undetermined with incumbent Jill Underly holding 53.4% of the vote and challenger Brittany Kinser holding 46.6% with 65% of precincts reporting as of 9 p.m.

The Supreme Court race gained national intrigue as Elon Musk and President Donald Trump weighed in on the race with support for Schimel over the weeks before the election.