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18 months after terms expired, GOP appointees to Wisconsin’s technical college board continue to serve and deny Evers’ picks

Quoted: The holdover effect diminishes voters’ power to shape the executive branch when governors don’t have the ability to appoint people who actually serve, said Miriam Seifter, an associate professor of law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-director of the State Democracy Research Initiative. And if it becomes a widespread practice, it could affect the responsiveness and accountability of government officials.

“There’s two different things going on here,” she said. “One is the situation where individuals assert the power to stay in office after the term has expired. The other is the Senate refusing to confirm appointees. If either of those things happen in isolation or rarely, neither one is democracy-altering. If these happen systematically and across the board … you would start to see the constraints of gubernatorial power.”