When former Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher announced his resignation, leaving on April 24, he did so to punish and weaken his own party. But as it turns out, that bit of sleight-of-hand has caused additional trouble back in his home state. The chaotic timing of his departure has left Wisconsin election officials in a difficult situation and it's been leading to potential confusion among the state's voters. The election officials voted this week to amend the ballots and advance voter information notifications to explain why the same congressional seat will be showing up twice on their ballots. The whole situation is something of a mess and could have been easily avoided if Gallagher hadn't decided to be such a jerk about this. (CBS News)

Wisconsin election officials voted Thursday to provide more details to voters than normal to avoid confusion about a ballot that will have both a special and regular election for a vacant congressional seat.

The rare anomaly for the 8th Congressional District is due to the timing of former U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher's surprise resignation. Under state law, if Gallagher had quit before April 9, a special election before November would have had to be called.

Gallagher quit on April 24, which required Gov. Tony Evers to call the special election on the same dates as the Aug. 13 primary and Nov. 5 general election.

As I mentioned above, this is all coming about because of a conscious decision that Mike Gallagher made. If he had simply stepped down as soon as he decided he was leaving or any time before April 9, the state could have quickly called a special election to fill his seat in a majority-Republican district. But by waiting until April 24, Wisconsin state election laws now require a special election to be held on the date of the state's primary in August, but that term will only run until January 3 of next year. So on election day in November, voters will have to vote again to determine who holds the seat for the next full term.

In one way, this probably won't cause all that much disruption to the process among voters. There isn't likely going to be much splitting of the vote between the two elections unless the winner of the special election seriously screws up during that relatively brief period. But on primary day, most Democrats will go to the polls expecting to only see Democrats vying for ballot slots. Instead, they will be faced with a general election choice as well. That could lead to some confusion, but it could also offer the Democratic candidate a potential advantage because the Democrat voters will probably vote for them almost unanimously. Turnout for the primaries tends to be far lower than for the general election, so it could have an impact.

Mike Gallagher had been ticked off at the House GOP leadership for quite a while. He was angry that various procedural reforms he proposed had been rejected. And while he voted in support of Donald Trump's policies in a large majority of cases, he split with the party on odd issues from time to time. For one thing, he actually defended Alejandro Mayorkas despite his dismal job performance and voted against impeaching him. This drew harsh criticism from some ranking Republicans, further widening the divide between them. By early 2024 he had already decided to take his ball and go home. 

As I already said, Gallagher had a fairly easy choice in front of him. He could have stepped down a couple of weeks sooner and allowed the special election to move forward quickly. Conversely, he could have simply stuck around until the end of the last session this year. He wouldn't even have needed to come to Washington all that much except when votes were scheduled. He could have worked from his local offices back in Wisconsin a majority of the time. Either way, we wouldn't be left without that seat for very long. But he chose to stick a fork in the eyes of his perceived critics in his own party. That left the GOP with an even slimmer majority than they already had. He is moving on to take a position with defense contractor Palantir. I would wish him the best of luck, but I couldn't do so sincerely.