Question about Wisconsin election system

[Nikia]

Being an Ohio native with realtives involved with local politics, I haven't really adjusted to the political system that we have here. In Ohio, if they haven't changed since I grew up, there was one primary in May (earlier in presidential years) and one general election in November. Local, state, and national candidates were all on the same ballot. In the primary, you requested a ballot from your party and all the candidates from that party were listed whether or not there was a challenger. Sometimes, there were special elections like for a school levy but usually these were the only elections.
Here, I am a bit confused because there are separate elections from some local officials which happen early in the year. There is no elction if there aren't any challengers? The primary os held a short time before the general election not giving candidates much time to campaign against the actual other candidate.
Who thought of all of this? How can I even think about getting involved in local politics when I don't even know when the elections are?

[ewagner]

1. There is a lot of information available

some background though...

County Board and most City positions (alderman, Mayor, town board, ect) are by statute "Non-partisan" positions except in only the biggest (Class I ) cities. Those elections are held in the Spring and are kept separate from the Partisan elections which take place in the fall.

The State elections board has a lot of info posted on their site and there is a lot of information available from the City Clerks office or the County Clerk. I came to Wisconsin in 1975 and it took me some time to get accustomed to the system but now I can't think of it as any thing other than a natura, logical system.

on edit: here's the state election board link:

http://elections.state.wi.us/

[theshadow]

2. In Wisconsin, you don't have to declare your....

... party affiliation. The primary ballot has candidates from both parties (for the partisan contests), and you can cross party lines to vote. However, you can not split your vote; that is, you must vote for only Republican or only Democratic candidates, but not both (as in a Republican for attorney general and a Democrat for governor).

[MadAsHell]

3. Fightin' Bob and the progressives were behind ...

a lot of how the election systems work here in Wisconsin.

To throw a few more curves, in Presidential years there are two partisan primaries, the one in the spring for president and another in the fall for all the other races. As Theshadow mentioned the partisan primary is open to any and all who wish to vote but one thing not indicated was that for the purpose of the ballot you have to declare the party you are voting for. In other words, if you mark the ballot that you are voting Green, only the votes for individual candidates in the Green party primary are counted. By the way, there sometimes are separate ballots for each party.

In non-partisan races, there can be a primary as well. A primary is held if twice as many stand for election than there are seats. For example, if a school board race has two openings and four people file papers then a primary is held. The primary is the third Tuesday in February.

A couple of suggested resources, the Wisconsin Blue Book is one. You can get a copy for most of your state elected officials or look at it at the local library. It has all the formulas for when and how the elections are held, what races are or are not partisan, terms in office and all that stuff. The second resource is the local county party. You can find the contact info for the Democratic Party folks ( and I know I am making an assumption here) at http://www.wisdems.org and then pick County Parties on the left. I am sure if you let them know you have an interest they will pile so many jobs on you, your head will spin.