Dem
47
GOP
53
Susan Crawford was just elected to the Wisconsin Supreme Court and already it matters. Wisconsin law grants the governor the power to partially veto bills. Not only may the governor veto sections of a bill, but he can even cross out words and numbers. And mathematical symbols. No other state grants as fine-grained veto power to the governor as Wisconsin. And Gov. Tony Evers (D-WI) knows this and can wield a fine-point Sharpie as a real weapon.
In particular, in 2023, the Republican-controlled state legislature passed a bill increasing the funding of K-12 schools by $325 per student, but only until the "2024-25 school year." Here's where the Sharpie came in. Evers crossed out the "20" and the hyphen, so the text read until the "2425 school year," which is 400 years in the future. The legislature wasn't impressed and sued. Now the state Supreme Court has ruled 4-3 along party lines that what Evers did falls within his partial veto power.
Evers isn't the first governor to go down this road. Previous governors have crossed out letters to form new words and crossed out large numbers of words to create new sentences. Those practices have been banned, but there hasn't been a law or constitutional amendment banning deleting numbers and hyphens, so Evers gave it a whirl, and due to Crawford's election, it worked. (V)