Did Wisconsin run out of ballots in Republican-leaning "red areas" on the day of the State Supreme Court election on April 1, 2025? No, that's not true: The shortage affected only the City of Milwaukee, election officials told Lead Stories. In the last three federal elections, the city supported Democratic candidates.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on X on April 2, 2025. It opened:
How does Wisconsin vote for requiring voter ID to vote and elect a Democrat Supreme Court judge at the same time? That doesn't make sense.
The post continued:
And what about the stories of running out of ballots in red areas?
This is what the entry looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Wed Apr 2 18:37:24 2025 UTC)
On April 1, 2025, Judge Susan Crawford, backed by Democrats, won a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat (archived here), defeating Republican candidate Brad Schimel, supported by Elon Musk, among others.
After that, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (archived here) implied in the post reviewed in this article that the ballot deficit affected exclusively Republican-leaning districts in the state, but that is not supported by the known facts.
A spokesperson for the Wisconsin Elections Commission told Lead Stories on April 2, 2025, that the shortage of ballots was only experienced in a single city in Wisconsin:
We have no confirmation of any jurisdiction, outside of the City of Milwaukee, running out of ballots.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (archived here) reported on April 1, 2025, that "officials said no voters would be turned away due to the shortages" and that the issue occurred at seven polling sites in that city. The spokesperson for the Wisconsin Elections Commission confirmed this figure to Lead Stories.
The data breakdown on the Decision Desk HQ website shows that the City of Milwaukee voted blue in the 2022 (archived here) and 2024 elections (archived here):
(Source: Decision Desk HQ screenshot taken on Wed Apr 2 18:51:13 2025 UTC)
(Source: Decision Desk HQ screenshot taken on Wed Apr 2 18:50:24 2025 UTC)
The city's website (archived here), which offers older data, shows that in 2020, Milwaukee largely supported the Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden:
(Source: City.milwaukee.gov screenshot taken on Wed Apr 2 19:02:14 2025 UTC)
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Other Lead Stories fact checks concerning elections in the United States can be found here.
