Jill Karofsky wins Wisconsin Supreme Court seat, beating conservative incumbent

Voters line up in Wisconsin.
(Image credit: Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP via Getty Images)

Jill Karofsky defeated incumbent Justice Daniel Kelly to win a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in last week's election, state election officials said Monday night.

Kelly, who once led the Milwaukee chapter of the conservative Federalist Society, was appointed to the court in 2016 and had the endorsement of President Trump. Karofsky, a judge in Dane County, is a liberal, and now the state Supreme Court's conservative majority has narrowed from 5-2 to 4-3. This was technically a nonpartisan race, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel notes, but both Karofsky and Kelly received help from political parties. This is only the second time in more than 50 years that a Supreme Court challenger has defeated an incumbent.

The election was held last Tuesday despite attempts by Gov. Tony Evers (D) to postpone in-person voting amid the coronavirus pandemic. The results weren't reported until Monday because a court ruled that as long as ballots were postmarked by Election Day, clerks could count them through Monday. There was a "record surge" in absentee voting, the Journal Sentinel reports, in addition to voters waiting in line to cast their ballots in person, despite social distancing guidelines.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.