But Judge Bill Foust found in favor of the Elections Board, saying it was investigating coordination — and that the content of the mailing was irrelevant. Foust found that such coordination was illegal under state law unless the source of the funding was disclosed and it fell within applicable limits.

At $135,000, the mailing far exceeded the $10,000 limit for individual Supreme Court contributions.

The state Court of Appeals agreed with Foust. And the state Supreme Court — asked to sit in judgment of one of its own members — was unable to get a quorum to hear the case.

The board eventually reached a settlement with Wilcox’s campaign, which agreed to pay a $60,000 fine. Wilcox, who had denied any knowledge of the effort, donated $10,000 of his own money toward the settlement.

Under Randa’s rationale, the coordination that took place in the Wisconsin Coalition for Voter Participation case would very likely be legal. And that, said Heck, would be bad for democracy.

“If you started down that road, we would logically have only secret money running campaigns and ... no one would know where most of the money is coming from,” he said.

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