193 absentee ballots from three city of Madison wards were left uncounted in the November election, despite being returned properly to election officials.

A scathing report from the state elections commission places the blame squarely on former city clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl. But discussion of the election snafu is far from over.

Image courtesy: Chali Pittman / WORT News.

Dean Robbins, "Wisconsin Idols: 100 Heroes Who Changed the State, the World, and Me" by WORT 89.9FM Madison

July 25th is the anniversary of the 1972 expose of the forty-year Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. A government whistleblower leaked documents proving two hundred poor African American men in Alabama with syphilis were not told they had the illness and were denied treatment so doctors could study syphilis’s effects. The study continued even after the cure, penicillin was developed in the 1940s.

Image: Group of men who were test subjects in the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments.  Image Courtesy: Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Public Health Service. Health Services and Mental Health Administration. Center for Disease Control. Venereal Disease Branch (1970 - 1973). via Wikipedia.

Forecast from Monday, 7-21-25 by WORT 89.9FM Madison

Hejira world music radio show host interview of Winnie Cheung

“No tragedy is too great to shrug away now,” amidst our “every growing tolerance for calamity and violence,” writes Omar El Akkad in his new New York Times bestseller, One Day, Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This. On today’s show, El Akkad joins host Douglas Haynes to talk about his new memoir, which weaves the personal essay with cultural critique.

Featured image: cover of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.

We’ll bring you up to date on the World Lumberjack Championship just completed in Hayward, Wisconsin. Event manager Samantha LaSalle brings us up to speed.

A new hiphop collective run by teenagers seeks to showcase Madison’s Latino hiphop scene. We’ll talk with ToTheEnd Entertainment performers Andrew Arias, also known as “teenache” and Damian Guzman, also known as “Big Dame.”

A new Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling tells the Legislature to butt out of state administrative rules. State Democracy Research Initiative attorney Derek Clinger tells us why that matters.

70% of Wisconsin’s dairy workforce is undocumented immigrants. The immigrant workforce has been on some farms for decades, sometimes multi-generationally. Pete and Bert talk about how this multifaceted issue affects all aspects of the food industry and how history is repeating itself.