Democrats won a vital Wisconsin judgeship. But voting rights aren’t safe

‘Protasiewicz flipped what had been a 4-3 conservative majority.’ Photograph: Mike De Sisti/AP

It’s been a long time since Wisconsin could feel anything close to hope.

More than a dozen years ago – when the first Harry Potter movie still played in theaters, and Katy Perry’s Firework and Bruno Mars’s Grenade topped the pop charts – Republican operatives and lawmakers locked themselves in a Madison, Wisconsin, law office and then locked themselves into power.