» Primary elections:

Statewide voter turnout for primary elections Tuesday is expected to be light, with only one statewide race on the ballot.

Statewide voter turnout for primary elections Tuesday is expected to be light with only one statewide race for Wisconsin schools chief on the ballot.

A smattering of primaries for municipal and school board races likely will boost local turnout Tuesday as voters select finalists for the April 4 spring election.

City of Milwaukee voters Tuesday will eliminate two of four judicial candidates for Branch 1 of Municipal Court while South Milwaukee voters will cut one candidate from a field of three mayoral hopefuls. Around the region, Sheboygan has a mayoral primary on the ballot and Lannon has a village president race on its primary ballot.

Dover, Waterford Union and Genoa City Joint No. 2 are among school districts in the state that have placed building or spending referendums on the ballot.

A spring primary is Wisconsin's lowest turnout election. In the last two decades, there have been three spring primaries for superintendent of public instruction — in 2001, 2005 and 2009. For those primaries, the average turnout has been 5.9% of the voting-age population, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

Tuesday's primary features a three-way contest for superintendent of public instruction and the top two vote-getters will advance to the April 4 spring election.

Two-term incumbent Tony Evers is facing two challengers — Dodgeville School District administrator John Humphries and retired Beloit Superintendent Lowell Holtz — in spirited campaigns over the expansion of school choice in Wisconsin, a mounting teacher shortage and student achievement.

Evers has the support of the state teachers union and many public school advocates who see the school choice movement as a threat to traditional public schools.

Holtz and Humphries both support the state's parental choice programs, which provide state-funded vouchers for low- and middle-income

students to attend private school.

City of Milwaukee voters on Tuesday also will sort through a crowded field of four candidates for the job of Branch 1 Municipal Court judge.

Municipal Judge Valarie Hill is facing three lawyers — Brian Michel, Kail Decker and William Crowley — attempting to unseat her after more than a decade on the bench.

Hill was an assistant public defender in Milwaukee before she was appointed a court commissioner in 1998. She was first elected to the municipal bench in 2004.

Michel is a staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society and has worked as a volunteer prosecutor for the district attorney's office.

Decker is an assistant city attorney.

Crowley is an advocate at Disability Rights Wisconsin.

In South Milwaukee, Mayor Erik Brooks is seeking re-election to a second, three-year term.

The two challengers attempting to derail his plan are Frank Gratke and Jim Leavens.

Brooks was elected mayor in 2014 after serving three terms on the Common Council. He is a communications manager at MillerCoors.

Leavens, a retired Wauwatosa firefighter and an Air Force veteran, was an unsuccessful candidate in a 2014 mayoral primary.

Gratke is campaigning for two offices in the spring election. He also is registered as a candidate for South Milwaukee School Board. He ran unsuccessful campaigns for the school board in 2015 and for Common Council in 2014.