Spotlight on Wisconsin

It’s been called a quirk in state law and even “an outrageous loophole.” In fact, it was a deliberate change with unintended consequences.

By now, the people of Wisconsin are well aware what happens when elections loom: saturation television ads and robocalls at a frequency that constitutes actual harassment. The groundwork for these onslaughts is being laid now, in fundraising letters to potential donors, typically conveying a sense of extreme urgency and danger.

In sizing up the just-concluded 2011-12 legislative session, the Associated Press included hunters among its list of “winners,” noting the passage of bills to end the state’s earn-a-buck deer program and allow wolf hunting.

When we spoke on March 21, Mike McCabe issued an apparent weather bulletin, as for a brief but violent thunderstorm:

“It will be sudden, and it won’t last very long,” predicted McCabe, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a nonpartisan electoral spending watchdog. “But it will be saturation advertising once it gets going.”