THE FUTURE OF THE NATION’S chief experiment in private-school vouchers is about to be decided in a sleepy spring election where the great mass of voters will simply tune out and stay home. Welcome to the saga of school choice in Milwaukee — and the funkier side of federalism in the ’90s.

Wisconsin goes to the polls April 1 to fill a seat on its highest court and pick its chief education bureaucrat. These are not contests that top the 10 o’clock news. But they’ve become urgent matters to partisans in the choice wars.