within the last few months of the sitting senator's four-year term. In most cases the senators resigning had chosen not to run for re-election and new candidates for those seats had already launched their campaigns. In some cases, the vacancies stretched on for several months, but calling a special election would not have sped up the process or would have disrupted ongoing races.

And in 32 of those 45 vacancies not filled by special elections, an Assembly or Senate seat was vacant for 100 or more days before the next regularly scheduled election to fill it. But of those, only a handful went on anywhere near as long as the vacancy Walker would allow in 2018.

Long vacancies in Wisconsin's Legislature

Of the 150 legislative seat vacancies analyzed going back to1971— both those filled by special elections and those that were not — only seven ran for 200 or more days, and only one seems to approach a year-long gap. However, this piece of the historical record isn't entirely clear.

The Wisconsin Legislature's journals shows that Rep. John Merkt, R-Mequon, resigned the Assembly District 58 seat in December 1987, and the Wisconsin Blue Book shows the next election for that district was the general election in November 1988. However, when WisContext attempted to verify the length of this vacancy with the Legislative Reference Bureau, an analyst said Merkt announced his resignation in 1987 but didn't actually step down from his seat until some point in 1988. And indeed, digging further into the legislative journals — the same ones that