A federal judge Thursday kept next week’s presidential primary on track but allowed more time to count absentee ballots after excoriating Wisconsin officials for not doing more to protect voters during the coronavirus pandemic.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge William Conley will allow absentee ballots to be counted if they arrive by April 13 — six days after election day. He also gave people until Friday to request absentee ballots and loosened another voting rule as people turn to absentee voting in record numbers.
But Conley did not go as far as Democrats and voter mobilization groups wanted and declined to postpone Tuesday’s election. On the ballot is the presidential primary and elections for state Supreme Court and local offices around the state.
In these three, consolidated cases, all filed in the last two weeks under the cloud of the emerging COVID-19 health crisis, plaintiffs challenge a number of election-related statutory requirements for the rapidly approaching April 7, 2020, election. Contrary to the view of at least a dozen other states, as well as the consensus of medical experts across the country as to the gathering of large groups of people, the State of Wisconsin appears determined to proceed with an in-person election on April 7, 2020. In the weeks leading up to the election, the extent of the risk of holding that election has become increasingly clear, and Wisconsin voters have begun to flock to the absentee ballot option in record numbers. As a result, state election officials are confronting a huge backlog in requests for absentee ballots made online, by mail or in person, including an unprecedented number of questions regarding how to satisfy certain registration requirements, properly request an absentee ballot, and return a properly completed absentee ballot in time to be considered for the April 7 election. On top of the burdens this influx has created for the Wisconsin Election Commission, its Administrator, staff and local municipalities in the days leading up to the election, that same group has been improvising in real time a method to proceed safely and effectively with in-person voting in the face of increasing COVID-19 risks, loss of poll workers due to age, fears or sickness, the resulting consolidation of polling locations, and inadequate resources.
Despite these truly heroic efforts, the three most likely consequences of proceeding with the election on this basis are (1) a dramatic shortfall in the number of voters on election day as compared to recent primaries, even after accounting for the impressive increase in absentee voters, (2) a dramatic increase in the risk of cross-contamination of the coronavirus among in-person voters, poll workers and, ultimately, the general
population in the State, or (3) a failure to achieve sufficient in-person voting to have a meaningful election and an increase in the spread of COVID-19. Nevertheless, the Wisconsin State Legislature and Governor apparently are hoping for a fourth possibility: that the efforts of the WEC Administrator, her staff, the municipalities and poll workers, as well as voters willing to ignore the obvious risk to themselves and others of proceeding with in-person voting, will thread the needle to produce a reasonable voter turnout and no increase in the dissemination of COVID-19.However unlikely this outcome may be, or ill-advised in terms of the public health risks and the likelihood of a successful election, the only role of a federal district court is to take steps that help avoid the impingement on citizens’ rights to exercise their voting franchise as protected by the United States Constitution and federal statutes. That is what the court attempts to do in this opinion and the order below, understanding that a consequence of these measures may be to further the public health crisis in this State. Unfortunately, that is beyond the power of this court to control.
And the opinion includes this provocative footnote, cryptically suggesting the possibility of post-election relief for the plaintiffs:
3 The court will reserve on the question as to whether the actual voter turnout, ability to vote on election day or overall conduct of the election and counting votes timely has undermined citizens’ right to vote.