Wisconsin election results: Constitutional amendment referendums

Some of these constitutional amendments, Jason, another huge story for Wisconsin coming out of this election. Yeah, three of these constitutional amendments. If we can pull up the first one, this regards veto power of the governor, whether or not they can use their partial veto authority to add or create New taxes or new fees. This was really inspired by, you know, there's been a history in Wisconsin of governors using their partial veto in very creative ways. There's like a Frankenstein partial veto. There's a Vanna White partial veto. Governor Tony Evers used it in a budget in previous years where he scratched out certain numbers to create a per pupil increase in school funding. For not one school year, but he scratched out a number, got rid of a hyphen, and made it a 400-year possible tax increase or per-pupil increase. So here you can see that is the constitutional amendment that Republicans put forward on the ballot. You have the final say as a voter in Wisconsin. You get the final say on whether to amend the Wisconsin Constitution, and here you see it. Yes, voters decided to ban governors from in the future from using that partial veto pen to What I think is kind of interesting here, Jason, as I pull up the second one that was voted on yesterday, was that this wasn't just yes all across the board for all three of these, because this one, getting no, prohibiting the closure of places of worship. Yes, so this one was a no, and this was intended to ban local governments and the state government from coming in during a public health emergency or a state of emergency and declaring that. There should be limits on places of worship. This was inspired by the COVID-19 lockdowns where you saw some municipalities and others use restrictions, putting restrictions in place about the total number of people that can gather in a public space, etc. So this was intended to amend the Constitution to explicitly say that the government could not close down places of worship. But the voters of Wisconsin said no by a large number there. Look at that, 52% saying no, 48% saying yes. Yeah. Again, three of these were on the ballot yesterday. Walk me through the last one as well, Jason. So the last one deals with... It says governmental discrimination, a term that people often may remember from civics classes and the like is affirmative action. This would ban the government from either discriminating or giving preferential treatment to anyone based on race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin. So this applies only to state government, local governments. Public universities, public technical colleges in Wisconsin, this would only apply to them. And the voters said yes. They say that pretty much approving this constitutional amendment that will ban the government. From, in the words of the Constitutional Amendment, discriminating or giving preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin. So that applies to government or, again, those public universities and public schools using preferential treatment in matters of employment, who they hire, who they fire, in contracts. For the government, so let's say a government wants to contract for fixing a road or building a new building, they wouldn't be able to factor in giving preferential treatment to a contractor because they have a minority status. Also it would apply to education, so think about admissions and scholarships and the like. And again, just these are some of many referendums. Those are three statewide. We know there were also almost, what, 70 referendums from school districts. There's so much to unpack, and we have all of those results on fox6now.com.