This post originally appeared at https://www.bootsandsabers.com/2024/08/14/wisconsin-referenda-fail/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wisconsin-referenda-fail

This is very frustrating, but easy to explain.

(The Center Square) – Democratic lawmakers and left-leaning organizations are celebrating voters’ rejection of two ballot proposals that would have empowered the legislature to have a say in certain spending decision.

But others are warning a Republican governor could change Democrats’ minds in the future.

[…]

The two referendums would have required the governor to include the state’s legislature in spending decisions regarding certain federal funding, which supporters argued would enhance fiscal responsibility. Opponents claimed the amendments were simply a Republican power grab.

This is frustrating because this is such a clear cut decision about good government. No single person should ever be able to spend billions of tax dollars at their sole discretion. It has been this way in Wisconsin forever, but it wasn’t a lot of money until Covid dumped tens of billions of dollars into the state’s lap. If you voted “no” for these amendments, then you don’t really believe in things like checks and balances or separation of powers.

Also, the referenda were necessarily written in a confusing, legalistic manner. This left people a bit confused if they didn’t read up ahead of time.

The liberals poured an inordinate amount of money into this election to encourage people to vote “no.” Why? Always. Follow. The. Money. Remember that the problem with the status quo is that the governor can spend that money wherever he or she wants. Evers has been pouring that money into favored groups in favored areas. The people receiving that money have a vested interest in keeping the gravy train flowing. Therefore, people and groups came out of the woodwork to get people to vote to keep Evers’ hand on the money spigot.

Finally, in a low turnout election, Dane County came through again. Statewide, turnout was about 26%. In Dane County, turnout was 44% for these questions. And Dane County voted 82% “no.” That’s 137,000ish “no” votes for referenda that lost statewide by 182,000 votes.

Milwaukee is heading on the same trend. Milwaukee County turnout was 32% (remember statewide was 26%) and voted 7 to 3 against the referenda. That’s another 105,000 “no” votes.

Meanwhile, Waukesha County didn’t do bad with turnout of 37% with a high-profile DA race on the ballot. But Waukesha is not nearly as Conservative as Dane and Milwaukee are Liberal. The referenda only received 53% “yes” votes in Waukesha County.

The demographics are such that Dane and Milwaukee Counties are uber-blue and are turning out disproportionately compared to the rest of the state. The WOW Counties are increasingly purple. This means that the liberals have an embedded electoral advantage being able to focus almost all of their effort into two counties while conservatives have to drive turnout in the other seventy.

One thing is certain… when we have a Republican governor again, I will encourage that governor to spend 100% of any federal money in Republican communities and with conservative causes. Fair is fair. If we are not going to have good government, at least we can attempt to make it equal in terms of distribution.