OrganisationUS

University of Wisconsin Law School

Public law school at UW-Madison; houses State Democracy Research Initiative tracking voter-data litigation.

Last refreshed: 28 April 2026

Key Question

How is the UW Law tracker keeping score on the DOJ voter-data lawsuits?

Common Questions

What is the University of Wisconsin Law voter-data tracker?: The tracker is run by the State Democracy Research Initiative (SDRI), housed at the University of Wisconsin Law School. It monitors all DOJ voter-data lawsuits filed against states and records filings, rulings, and dismissals in near-real time. As of late April 2026 it recorded five dismissals across 30 states sued.Source:
How many states did the DOJ sue over voter data according to the UW Law tracker?: The University of Wisconsin Law State Democracy Research Initiative tracker recorded 30 states and the District of Columbia sued by the DOJ for voter data as of April 2026, with five lawsuits dismissed by late April.Source:
Where is the State Democracy Research Initiative based?: The State Democracy Research Initiative is housed at the University of Wisconsin Law School in Madison, Wisconsin. It is the empirical research Arm tracking elections, voting rights, and democratic governance.Source:
Is the University of Wisconsin Law School the same as the SDRI?: No. The State Democracy Research Initiative is a research centre housed within the University of Wisconsin Law School, which is its parent institution. References to the 'UW Law tracker' in Lowdown briefings denote SDRI output specifically.

Background

The University of Wisconsin Law School is the public law school of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, one of the leading research universities in the United States. In the 2026 midterm cycle the school came to national attention as the institutional home of the State Democracy Research Initiative (SDRI), which operates the definitive public tracker of the DOJ voter-data lawsuits filed against 30 states and the District of Columbia. As courts across California, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oregon, and Rhode Island dismissed those suits in April 2026, the SDRI tracker became the authoritative reference for journalists, campaigns, and advocacy groups monitoring the litigation wave.

Founded in 1868, the law school enrolls approximately 700 JD and graduate students and has a faculty of around 70. It is a member of the Association of American Law Schools and is consistently ranked among the top 30 public law schools in the United States. The SDRI, housed within the law school, produces non-partisan empirical research on elections, voting rights, and democratic governance; its voter-data lawsuit tracker aggregates court filings, rulings, and dismissal reasoning across all active state cases and is updated in near-real time.

The relationship between the law school and the SDRI matters for Lowdown readers: references in briefing body text to the "University of Wisconsin Law tracker" or "UW Law tracker" denote SDRI output, not law school administrative positions. The SDRI is the entity directly cited in event analysis; the law school is its parent institution. Entity 3872 in the Lowdown corpus is the SDRI specifically.

Source Material

University of Wisconsin Law School - Wikipedia State Democracy Research Initiative University of Wisconsin Law School

How the World Sees Them

Election law community

The SDRI tracker is regarded as the gold standard non-partisan resource for the DOJ voter-data litigation wave, cited by journalists, campaign lawyers, and advocacy groups across the political spectrum. Its credibility rests on the law school's institutional independence from the state political parties and the federal administration.

State election officials

The 24 states and DC still in active litigation use the SDRI tracker as a shared reference point for monitoring how dismissal reasoning might apply to their own cases. The Massachusetts portable-doctrine ruling documented by the tracker accelerated the pace of subsequent dismissals.

Republican administration

The administration and its allies have not publicly challenged the SDRI data, but have emphasised their own framing of the litigation as a legitimate federal oversight exercise rather than the executive overreach characterised by the dismissing courts. The tracker's record of successive dismissals has become a complicating data point for that narrative.