On November 3rd, Wisconsin ballots will include three more proposed amendments to our state constitution, following the proposed amendments that appeared on our ballots in 2023, 2024 and 2025. The majority of the Wisconsin legislature has placed these constitutional amendments on our ballots instead of passing bills through the regular legislative process?

Our constitution is the fundamental document that outlines Wisconsin’s framework for governance, including the powers, structure and limits on the state government and individual and civil rights.

Yet, from 2023 through 2025, constitutional amendments on the ballot (referred to as State of Wisconsin referendums, not to be confused with local referendums) have promoted the legislative majority’s policy choices to bypass the regular democratic legislative process, enabling the majority to insulate their policies from judicial scrutiny, from the Governor’s veto authority, and from future attempts to change the law.

The result is that we now have their policies enshrined in our Wisconsin Constitution for generations to come. These amendments include the following legislative policies that Governor Evers vetoed from 2023 through 2025:

• Prohibiting state and local governments from accepting private donations, grants, or equipment to administer elections, even though inadequate state funding already strains election clerks.
• Restricting election tasks and administration to specifically designated municipal and state election officials rather than outside individuals, thereby denying elections clerks needed assistance.
• Restricting voter eligibility to U.S. citizens for all elections, even where local law allows non-citizen votes that directly affect their local concerns, like the mayor or the school board.
• Requiring photographic identification to vote in any Wisconsin election where a statute already required such identification.
• Broadening the factors judges can consider when setting pretrial release conditions by changing “serious bodily harm” to a lower, undefined standard of “serious harm,” denying pretrial release to defendants with lesser charges than death or disfigurement.
• Expanding the factors judges can consider when setting cash bail for a person who has been charged but not yet been convicted, thereby exacerbating inequities that already exist in the state’s cash bail system, and raising significant concerns under the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment.