The November 2024 election was an extensive effort. In Wisconsin, it included races for president, U.S. Senate, Congress and most of the state Legislature. There was even a state constitutional amendment on the ballot.

With so many races on that ballot – and the massive political machinery that goes into such campaigns – voters might wonder why the state would turn around and have another election less than six months later.

So, why does Wisconsin have spring elections?

The short – and easy – answer is that spring elections are required by the Wisconsin Constitution and are written into state law.

Laura Felone Day, an analyst with the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau, explained these requirements.

“Under current statutes, the ‘spring election’ is defined as the election held the ‘first Tuesday in April to elect judicial, educational and municipal officers, nonpartisan county officers and sewerage commissioners,'” she said.

Felone Day also explained that there is mandated separation by time for some elections. Specifically, the state constitution requires “there shall be no election for a justice or judge at the partisan general election for state or county officers, nor within 30 days either before or after such election,” meaning judicial elections should not be held during the politically messy fall elections. That word ‘partisan’ was added in 1977 as an amendment to the state constitution.

With those laws in place, that’s ultimately why Wisconsin holds its state supreme court justice and state schools superintendent races in the spring – like those on April 1, 2025.

Historical roots of nonpartisan spring elections

What’s the history behind breaking out judicial, educational and other supposedly nonpartisan local races from the explicitly partisan fall elections?

Jonathan Kasparek, a political historian and UW-Milwaukee professor, said the intent of this move was clear.

“Spring elections are nonpartisan because there are some elected officials who should be above politics – judicial and education,” he said, noting that judges often rule on partisan matters like campaign lawsuits and therefore are thought to need to stay above the political fray.

“It’s obvious why judicial elections should be nonpartisan, but candidates — including state Supreme Court justices — ran with political affiliation through the 1880s,” Kasparek continued, adding that lower courts were later folded into the change.

“The first supreme court candidate who ran as a non-partisan was in 1878, but not until 1913 did the [state] Legislature make all judicial races officially nonpartisan as part of the Progressive-era reforms to make state government cleaner,” he said.

That political separation makes sense for local offices and elected officials too, said Barry Burden, a UW-Madison political science professor.

“Spring elections were designed to insulate local government positions and a few statewide positions — that are not part of the policymaking branches of government — from partisan influence that would affect them on the November ballot,” he said.

Both Burden and Kasparek also note that laws requiring local office elections be held in spring was a response by Democratic and Republican lawmakers who wanted to lessen the strength of support for Socialist-Democratic Party of Wisconsin around the turn of the 19th century.

“I have also seen an argument that the nonpartisan elections, at least at the local level, were a bipartisan response to the growing success of socialist candidates in Milwaukee,” said Burden. “So it might have been a combination of alarm about the rise of socialists in urban centers and general angst about corruption within political parties.”

Kasparek shared more details.

“Local officials were partisan affairs until 1912. The impetus for this change seems to have been the socialist party of Milwaukee, which elected Emil Seidel mayor in 1910,” he said. “The idea of masses of working men voting a straight socialist ticket must have alarmed Republicans and Democrats alike. And again, it was a key way to eliminate machine politics from local elections.”

Looking at all of it well over a century later, however, it’s easy to see that any efforts to keep spring elections nonpartisan have all but been abandoned.

“Mayors and county executives are nonpartisan, but it is common knowledge where they stand,” said Kasparek. “Even now, judges will label themselves ‘conservative’ as a sneaky way to assert some political identity and recent [state] Supreme Court races have become partisan in all but name.”

But why was April chosen for spring elections? Kasparek said it was likely a weather-influenced decision.

“I think it has to do with travel logistics and agriculture,” he explained. “A winter election in Wisconsin could be dicey for farmers and one in August or September would interfere with farm work. November and April are kind of sweet spots for weather.”

Contemporary questions about partisan races in spring

So, given the partisan slide of elections that lawmakers tried to shield from partisan politics, how much sense does it still make to hold elections in the spring?

Burden said consolidating elections into the fall is a route some places have taken.

“Some states have chosen to consolidate elections, hoping that it would cost less to administer fewer elections each year, and that it would boost turnout in the down ballot races. The evidence seems clear that cost and turnout are both better when elections are combined,” he explained. “Statewide nonpartisan offices such as supreme court justice and school superintendent might easily fit with fall general elections given how partisan they have become. But consolidation would also mean moving hundreds or thousands of local offices as well.”

Burden offered another potential pitfall of moving spring elections to fall.

“A downside of consolidation is that local nonpartisan contests such as races for city council and school district tax measures would get swept up in the partisan action at the top of the ballot,” he said

Kasparek said it still makes sense to keep the two sets of elections separate because, if combined, voters could feel overloaded.

“Fall elections are already pretty crowded and noisy, especially in a presidential year,” he said. “Adding a [state] Supreme Court race seven times in 10 years and superintendent every four years would make it harder on voters to really understand the issues and evaluate the candidates. This would be even worse if we added municipal and county elections into the mix – those would be easily overshadowed by state contests that can afford more advertising.”

It’s up to voters to learn about the candidates and issues of each election, no matter when it is, said Kasparek.

“I’d like to think that voters should be engaged enough to really think about the candidates’ qualifications and positions,” he added. “With all races in the fall, that would be tough, and clearly voters have a limited attention span.”