Wisconsin Electors Cast State’s Votes for President-elect Trump

Wisconsin Electors Send Ballot for Trump

The presidential election in Wisconsin is now, officially, over.

Ten Republicans on Tuesday cast the state’s 10 electoral college votes for President-elect Donald Trump, and Vice President-elect JD Vance.

“This is a historic moment. Wisconsin has only voted Republican for president three times since 1980, so this was a historic moment for Wisconsin,” Wisconsin Republican Party Chairman Brian Schimming told reporters after the vote. “Wisconsin is one of the seven battleground states, many say the most competitive of all those states. But we put a maximum, maximum effort into winning the state for Donald Trump and JD Vance.”

Trump won Wisconsin by about 30,000 votes in November. He lost the state in 2020 by about 22,000 votes.

Former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson said that has become a hallmark of Wisconsin: razor thing election margins.

“It’s amazing to me how close Wisconsin is each and every election. The last elections, all the elections have been around 30,000 votes,” Thompson said. “That's utterly amazing that the state is so split right down the middle. But hopefully with a good administration I am confident that Donald Trump and JD Vance are going to change a lot of things for the better. And I think in four years it's going to be much easier to win Wisconsin as a Republican, based upon the successes they have.”

Republicans voted on Tuesday after going to court to push back the electoral vote because of a difference between state and federal laws.

“State law required that [the vote] was on Monday…and federal law said [the vote must be] today,” Schimming explained. “The legislature had a bill that got through the Senate, but got stuck in Committee in the assembly, to codify federal law essentially into state law. And so that’s the reason we went to court…to make sure that Wisconsin's electoral votes counted.”

Wisconsin’s vote on Tuesday took less than 10 minutes. It took another 10 for the electors to sign-off on the official paperwork.

The vote this year was different from the last presidential electoral vote in Wisconsin.

In 2020, Republicans voted for an alternate slate of electors as part of a “just in case” strategy to re-elect President Trump. That vote is now at the center of a long-running criminal investigation from Attorney General Josh Kaul.