LinkedIn icon The word "in". Email icon An envelope. It indicates the ability to send an email.

Voters masked against coronavirus line up at Riverside High School for Wisconsin's primary election, April 7, 2020, in Milwaukee. Associated Press

Liberal challenger Judge Jill Karofsky pulled out an upset victory over conservative Wisconsin state Supreme Court Judge Dan Kelly in a major win for Democrats.

Former VP Joe Biden also won the Democratic presidential primary in Wisconsin.

The state of Wisconsin controversially held in-person voting on April 7 during a pandemic, as over a dozen other states postponed their primary elections due to the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Wisconsin reported results from its spring elections after the state's deadline to accept absentee ballots passed at 4 pm. Central Time on April 13.

Media not supported by AMP.

Tap for full mobile experience.

Media not supported by AMP.

Tap for full mobile experience.

What's at stake?

Bernie Sanders officially dropped out of the presidential primary on April 8, making former VP Joe Biden the presumptive Democratic nominee. While Sanders will continue to stay on the ballot in upcoming primaries and earn delegates from those contests, he formally endorsed Biden on April 13.

In the Democratic presidential primary, Wisconsin allocates 84 pledged delegates to the Democracy convention, with 55 allocated between Wisconsin's eight congressional districts and 29 at-large and PLEO (party leader and elected official) delegates allocated based on the statewide results.

The other major statewide election on the ballot this year in Wisconsin was a key State Supreme Court race. Democratic-backed Judge Jill Karofsky, a Dane County Circuit Court judge, beat Republican-backed Judge Daniel Kelly, who was appointed by former Republican Gov. Scott Walker in 2016.

While state Supreme Court candidates in Wisconsin are technically nonpartisan, they are almost always aligned with or supported by political parties and serve ten-year terms on the court.

Karofsky's victory over Kelly now shifts the balance of the court from a 5-2 to a 4-3 conservative majority and will be an encouraging sign for Democrats hoping to recapture Wisconsin in the electoral college this November.

Hudson, Wisconsin, city clerk Becky Eggen displays some of the health-alert and social-distancing signs to be used in Tuesday's election, April 6, 2020. Associated Press

Weeks of dysfunction and disagreement between top officials led to a chaotic election day

As dozens of states have postponed their presidential primaries to May or June, Wisconsin's Tuesday election proceeded as scheduled, despite the Governor telling Wisconsinites to stay at home after officials in the state legislature refused to act to postpone the election and rejected the Governor's request to send every voter an absentee ballot.

For weeks leading up to the election, both Gov. Tony Evers and Republican leaders planned to hold the election as scheduled. But as COVID-19 cases rose and the state told citizens to stay at home, Evers made multiple 11th-hour attempts to move to an all-mail election or postpone it all together, which Republicans in the state legislature blocked.

After a federal judge ruled against several plaintiffs attempting to delay the election on April 2 but extended the deadline to mail in absentee ballots to April 13, Gov. Tony Evers made in a last-minute attempt to postpone the vote to June with an executive order on April 6.

Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and the Republican Majority Leader of the state Senate immediately challenged the order in Wisconsin's majority-conservative State Supreme Court, which sided against Evers and blocked his attempt to delay the election in a 4-2 decision, with Kelly recusing himself.

And in a separate court case, the US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to overturn the decision from a federal appeals court judge that extended absentee voting to April 13, ruling that voters had to have their ballots postmarked by election day.

The Supreme Court's decision effectively left voters who had not yet received their absentee ballot or couldn't get it postmarked with a difficult choice: either risk their health to wait in long lines to vote in person, or not vote at all.

As of the morning of election day, the Wisconsin Elections Commission reported that over 400,000 absentee ballots sent out to voters had not been returned, with an additional 9,400 voters who requested ballots but did not receive them in time.

While some areas were able to hold curbside or drive-through voting, it wasn't an option in big cities like Milwaukee and Waukesha, many of which had to close down polling locations due to understaffing as many poll workers stayed home.

Milwaukee, a city of over 500,000 people, which usually has 180 open polling locations on election days, operated with just five on Tuesday, creating hours-long lines to vote in many neighborhoods.

Now, as multiple groups start filing lawsuits accusing Wisconsin officials of engaging in voter suppression, the state's Elections Commission is dealing with the fallout, including determining today to count hundreds of absentee ballots that had illegible or no postmarks.

In her victory statement, Juge Karfosky decried the way the election played out.

"Although we were successful in this race, the circumstances under which this election was conducted were simply unacceptable and raised serious concerns for the future of our democracy," she wrote. "Nobody in this state or country should have been forced to choose between their safety and participating in an election."