17 Republican state legislators have signed a joint letter asking Governor Evers to hurry up and pick a date for a special election to fill the 7th Congressional seat left open with the resignation of Sean Duffy.
All of the Republican's state legislative districts touch or are in the vacant U.S. Congressional district.
The letter chides Evers for hastily picking a date that later was found not to comply with federal law, then, they say, now not scheduling another date.
One of the signers was Representative Rob Swearingen of Rhinelander who says the inital dates of late December and late January were scheduled on Mondays, outside of traditional voting days...
"...He has to rescind that executive order with those two previous dates. So now, we're frustrated, we still don't have any representation. It's been another two weeks, and apparently the Governor doesn't feel the need to rush that he he did initially..."
Swearingen says another factor is putting extra burdens on local governments during an already busy election cycle...
"What is even more frustrating is as we get moving forward here, the window of normal elections that these municipalities already have in their budget is closing, so we have high hopes that he picks a regular election date that won't cost these municipalities more money, and to date, he hasn't done that...."
Aides to Evers told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel last week that Evers plans to issue an executive order soon that would rescind the election schedule he set last week and establish a new one. The Journal-Sentinel reported Evers has not yet finalized the new schedule, but his aides are in talks with the U.S. Department of Justice and the Wisconsin Department of Justice.
