NEWS FLASH

New Republican State Senate Leader Wants To Politicize Wisconsin’s Elections | Though Wisconsin’s non-partisan Government Accountability Board has been called “a model for nonpartisan election administration,” a key Wisconsin Republican legislator wants to scrap it and allow partisan political appointees to oversee the state’s elections. Sen. Scott Fitzgerald (R), who will soon regain his former position as majority leader of the Wisconsin Senate (as his party recaptured the majority in the November elections), said Monday he wants to replace the board’s retired judges with political appointees to “strike more of a balance.” The Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal-Sentinel reports that Fitzgerald thinks the neutral board’s decisions have favored Democrats and that the board is “not working the way it’s supposed to.” A spokesman for Governor Scott Walker (R) declined to say whether he would support such an effort.