Oral arguments are being heard today at the U.S. Supreme Court in the Gill v. Whitford case. I hear you asking yourself "why do I care?".

Gerrymandering is the practice of drawing political boundaries with the intention of influencing the outcome of elections. This happens all the time, and has eventually over the years become accepted legally. However, as with many things in Wisconsin, the last few years have seen this practice being carried to an extreme. The Supreme Court has in the past indicated that they might be willing to hear an argument against gerrymandering of districts if there was a way to attach a practical measure of how the method of drawing the districts causes an influence on the outcome of elections.

Today -- 6:05 PM -- register here

https://video.teleforumonline.com/video/streaming.php?client=16458/v2

On Friday Homeland Security notified the Wisconsin Elections Commission that a Russian entity attempted to hack the Wisconsin voter registration system during the 2016 election. Although DHS announced in July that 21 states had been subject to attempted attacks, it was assumed that Wisconsin was not one of those states, since the Elections Commission had not been notified specifically. It turns out that DHS has been very quiet about details. At this point we don't really know anything except  that there was some scanning activity of the SVRS system by some Russian actor.

As you are probably aware, Fighting Bob Fest was on the road this year, with events in Madison, Milwaukee, and La Crosse. I attended the La Crosse event, partly representing Uppity Wisconsin, Wis.Community, and the Citizen Action Western Wisconsin Organizing Co-op. 

As always, the speeches were great, and with a little more local flavor in a lot of cases this time around. Jim Hightower was, unfortunately, not able to make it due to a family crisis. 

There will be more pictures and news over the next few days as I look through the pictures. In the meantime I will leave you with a brief video of Nina Turner, head of Our Revolution, who gave a rousing and personal speech at Fighting Bob Fest.