Wisconsin Supreme Court Race Could Determine Who Decides 2026 Election Disputes

Wisconsin's supreme court election on Tuesday isn't getting the attention it deserves. That's a mistake.

The race between liberal Chris Taylor and conservative Maria Lazar will determine whether Wisconsin's highest court maintains its pro-democracy majority heading into the 2026 midterms -- when this swing state will almost certainly face legal challenges to election results from Trump and his allies.

A Taylor win would give liberals a 5-2 majority on the bench, further insulating the court from conservative efforts to restrict voting access and overturn election outcomes. Taylor, a state appeals court judge and former Democratic lawmaker, has made protecting voting rights central to her campaign. Lazar, also an appeals court judge and former deputy state attorney general, has defended gerrymandered legislative maps that were later struck down and aligns with Republican efforts to restrict ballot access.

The stakes are clear to anyone who watched Wisconsin in 2020, when Trump's legal team tried to throw out hundreds of thousands of votes in Milwaukee and Dane County. The state supreme court will be the final arbiter of similar challenges in 2026.

"Wisconsin has been in the crosshairs of extensive litigation in terms of the way the state runs its elections," Victoria Bassetti of States United Democracy Center told Bolts. "While this supreme court race may seem like a sleeper contest, from the democracy perspective, it's anything but low-stakes."

The Outgoing Justice's Anti-Voting Record

Taylor is running to replace Justice Rebecca Bradley, a conservative who has spent her tenure making it harder for Wisconsinites to vote. Bradley authored the court's 2022 decision banning ballot dropboxes -- a ruling based on false election fraud claims about mail voting. Once liberals gained control of the court in 2023, they overturned Bradley's dropbox ban.

That 2023 flip came after the most expensive judicial election in U.S. history, according to the Brennan Center. Liberal Janet Protasiewicz won decisively, giving progressives their first majority in 15 years. The 2025 race topped $100 million after Elon Musk dumped millions into the contest, but liberal Susan Crawford still won.

This year's race is quieter and cheaper -- but no less consequential. Taylor has significantly outraised Lazar, though a March Marquette Law School poll found more than half of voters still undecided less than a month before election day.

A Test Run for November

The race offers an early gauge of Democratic strength heading into the midterms, though turnout for a spring judicial election won't match November's numbers. Still, recent Democratic upset victories in Republican strongholds nationwide suggest momentum heading into the fall, when voters typically punish the president's party in midterm elections.

In the campaign's final days, Lazar has tried to paint Taylor as too partisan for the bench. Speaking at a county Republican party office, Lazar claimed "the court is not for sale" and said voters want "someone who is extremely law nerdy and boring, and doesn't care about politics at all."

That's rich coming from a candidate who defended unconstitutional gerrymanders designed to lock in Republican legislative majorities regardless of how Wisconsinites actually vote.

Taylor, meanwhile, has emphasized the court's role as a check on federal overreach. "We have an opportunity with this election to strengthen a pro-democracy majority on our court that's going to protect our rights and freedoms, that's going to protect our democracy and our elections, and that is going to hold and resist the efforts of the federal government to come into our state," she told supporters at a county Democratic headquarters.

Why This Matters Beyond Wisconsin

Judicial elections have become flashpoints in the fight over voting rights and election integrity. In states like Wisconsin where justices are directly elected, these races determine who interprets election law when results are challenged. In 2020, that meant deciding whether Trump could throw out votes in Democratic strongholds. In 2026, it could mean the same thing.

The composition of state supreme courts matters more than ever as Republicans continue pushing laws that restrict ballot access and make it easier to challenge election results. Wisconsin's court has already struck down gerrymandered maps and restored ballot dropboxes. A 5-2 liberal majority would make it harder for Republicans to use the courts to overturn future elections.

Taylor is favored to win, but she's not taking anything for granted. "The composition of this court can change very quickly because we have so many elections coming up," she told Politico. "So nobody should feel that this current majority is set in stone. It's not."

She's right. Wisconsin will hold another supreme court election in 2027, and conservatives will pour money into flipping the seat. That's why Tuesday's vote matters -- it's not just about 2026, but about building a firewall against election subversion for years to come.

Wisconsin voters have a chance to protect their democracy on Tuesday. They should take it.