Could Ohio and Wisconsin chart a path to a better death penalty?

One of many interest sentencing stories within the election results concerns the future of the death penalty, especially in states outside the deep south.  Specifically, new days may be dawning for the death penalty in two Midwestern states, Ohio and Wisconsin.

As detailed in this article, the new day in Wisconsin results from voters' approval of a non-binding referendum supporting the idea of capital punishment in Wisconsin.  The article explains why this referendum is unlikely to result in a new death penalty law in the near future.  But the referendum does ensure continued discussion of a "modern" death penalty statute in a state with a long anti-death-penalty history.

The story in Ohio is less visible, but no less interesting.  Over the last three years, Ohio has been second only to Texas in the number of executions.  This has partly resulted from Republican state officials pushing hard on post-conviction litigation against the backdrop of a large death row population.  But now, for the first time since Ohio resumed executions in 1999, a Democrat will be Ohio's governor and Ohio's attorney general.  Though I doubt Ohio's new democratic executive branch will seek to undue the death penalty in Ohio, the pace of execution could be greatly influenced by the change in personnel.  Also, there might be new opportunities for death penalty abolitionists in Ohio to join forces with some pro-life Republicans in the state legislature who have previously expressed concerns about state killing (details here).

UPDATE:  Karl Keys has some death-penalty-focused assessments of the election results here at Capital Defense Weekly.  And ODPI here has some very notable quotes concerning the Ohio's death penalty from Ohio's new Attorney General Marc Dann made during an April 2006 debate.