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Please join the League of Women Voters Wisconsin and the League of Women Voters Dane County for a discussion of the proposed amendments and why the League opposes them! This forum is free and open to the public but registration is required to participate via Zoom.

Four amendments to the Wisconsin Constitution were passed by the Legislature in the last session. If passed again in the next legislative session, which begins January 3, 2023, those amendments will go on the ballot at a time determined by the Legislature. If a majority of voters approve the amendments, they will immediately become part of the Constitution. The proposed amendments, which are opposed by the state League, address the following topics:

Bail

This proposed amendment would change two concepts relating to granting bail:

• Under the Wisconsin Constitution, the court may impose reasonable conditions designed to protect the community from serious bodily harm. Under the proposed amendment, the court may impose reasonable conditions designed to protect the community from serious harm as defined by the legislature by law. 

• Under the Wisconsin Constitution, the court may impose bail for pretrial release only as necessary to assure a defendant’s appearance in court. The proposed amendment would authorize the court to impose bail for pretrial release for various other reasons when the defendant is accused of a violent offense as defined by the legislature by law. 

Voting eligibility

Under the current Constitution and statutes, every U.S. citizen aged 18 or older is entitled to vote in national, state, and local elections. A proposed amendment to the Wisconsin Constitution states that only a U.S. citizen aged 18 or older may vote in an election for national, state, or local office or in a statewide or local referendum.

Election administration

A proposed amendment would prohibit state and local governments from using privately sourced moneys or equipment in connection with the conduct of elections and would specify who may perform tasks related to the conduct of elections.

Governor’s authority

This proposed amendment states that the Legislature may not delegate its sole power to determine how federal moneys may be appropriated and that the governor may not allocate federal moneys without legislative approval by joint resolution or as provided by legislative rule.

OUR SPEAKERS

 DUSTIN BROWN

Senior Staff Attorney, State Democracy Research Initiative at University of Wisconsin Law School

Dustin Brown is a Senior Staff Attorney with the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Dustin joined the Initiative following four years on the law school's Legal Research and Writing faculty and nearly a decade in private practice, most recently with Godfrey & Kahn in Madison. He has litigated in state and federal courts on matters ranging from electoral redistricting, public records access, and defamation to insurance coverage, product liability, and deceptive trade practices. 

Dustin clerked for the Hon. John M. Walker, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York, and the Hon. Thelton E. Henderson of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco. He began his legal career at Bingham McCutchen in San Francisco. 

Dustin earned his Bachelor’s degree in English from Yale University and his law degree from New York University School of Law, both magna cum laude. As a law student, he was a member of NYU Law’s Immigrant Rights Clinic, and he interned with New York Lawyers for the Public Interest and Make the Road New York. He also served as an executive editor of the NYU Law Review.

JEROME DILLARD

Executive Director, Co-Founder of EXPO

Jerome Dillard, Executive Director and one of the Founders of EXPO Wisconsin (EX-incarcerated People Organizing), has a long history of working with and for system-impacted people. Based on his own experiences with incarceration, he sees prison as a form of genocide that drains people of hope for their future. Through EXPO, he seeks to restore that hope by advocating for change in the system that structurally discriminates against so many people and their families. His purpose is to ensure that system-impacted people are treated with dignity and respect and that they receive the resources and support they need to thrive in their communities upon release.

Jerome’s work involves direct mentoring of system-impacted individuals as well as policy reform with legislators, judicial officials, and corrections staff. In each of these roles, Jerome creates space for and elevates the voices, stories, and needs of system-impacted individuals. Further, his talent for developing relationships built on mutual trust and accountability has allowed him to work with organizations as diverse as Dane County, the Department of Corrections, and Nehemiah Center for Urban Leadership Development. As a result of his experiences and expertise, Jerome is unique in being recognized by both system-impacted individuals and those on the outside as a leader in re-entry and reform.

JEFF MANDELL

Founder, President, Lead Counsel at Law Forward

One of Wisconsin’s leading election law litigators, attorney Jeffrey A. Mandell represented Governor Tony Evers in the bevy of challenges to the validity of Wisconsin’s November 2020 election and represents the City of Green Bay in relation to the Wisconsin Assembly’s broad investigation of Wisconsin elections. He previously prosecuted the complaints that kept Kanye West and Howie Hawkins off Wisconsin’s 2020 presidential ballot. He has represented Disability Rights Wisconsin in defending the statutory provision that guarantees “indefinitely confined” voters access to absentee ballots, and he helped the Service Employees International Union block efforts to purge hundreds of thousands of registered voters from Wisconsin’s rolls. Earlier, Jeff led the state constitutional challenge against the Wisconsin Legislature’s December 2018 lame-duck extraordinary session. 

 Jeff founded and serves as both President and Lead Counsel of Law Forward, a nonprofit, nonpartisan law firm that protects and advances democracy in Wisconsin. He serves on several other nonprofit Boards, including the Wisconsin Equal Justice Fund, the American Constitution Society Madison Lawyer Chapter, the Aldo Leopold Nature Center, and Beth Israel Center.

Jeff has been named a Best Lawyer (since 2021) in his appellate practice and commercial litigation, and that organization named him Lawyer of the Year for 2023 in his appellate practice.

SUE JENNIK Moderator

Ms. Jennik is the LWVDC Program Director and a Board member. She is also chair of the LWVWI Legislative Committee.