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Ballot handout pushes spring vote

Judith Davidoff  —  2/19/2008 1:18 pm

A gay advocacy group plans to hand out applications for absentee ballots outside polling stations around the state on Tuesday in order to hike voter participation in this spring's Wisconsin Supreme Court election.

"Hopefully, it will turn what is normally a very dreary turnout for an April election into something more," said Glenn Carlson, interim executive director of Fair Wisconsin, the statewide group that led the fight against the constitutional ban on gay marriage approved by voters last year.

Local election officials are predicting a high turnout for Tuesday's presidential primary at least in part due to the tight race between Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination.

Carlson said the upcoming Supreme Court race between Justice Louis Butler and challenger Michael Gableman is particularly important. The outcome could change the balance on the court between liberals and conservatives, and several cases important to Fair Wisconsin will likely make the docket in the next several years.

For starters, the Wisconsin Supreme Court will likely end up reviewing a technical issue associated with Bill McConkey's challenge of the same-sex marriage ban, Carlson said. A Dane County circuit court judge recently ruled that McConkey had standing to sue because the referendum illegally asked two questions -- whether to ban gay marriage and whether to ban anything "substantially similar" to marriage.

Carlson said the court will also likely hear a case involving six lesbian couples who are suing the state for being denied domestic partner benefits. He said the court will also ultimately decide how broadly to interpret the second sentence of the gay marriage amendment that bans anything "substantially similar" to marriage.

That would affect any number of things, including Fair Wisconsin's efforts to get a statewide domestic partner registry started, Carlson said.

Carlson said similar get-out-the vote efforts with absentee ballots have been successful in other nonpartisan races, both in Dane County and across the nation.

Judith Davidoff  —  2/19/2008 1:18 pm