NYT:

When the state released its final vote tallies on Monday, it was clear that the decision — arrived at remotely, so the justices would not have to brave the Covid-19 conditions — had resulted in the disenfranchisement of thousands of voters, forced several thousand more to endanger their lives at polls and burdened already strained state health officials with a grim new task: tracking the extent to which in-person voting contributed to the virus’s spread in the state, a federal disaster area.

While exact numbers were still unclear, Ben Wikler, the chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, said “every legal option is on the table” to contend what he called “a near certainty that thousands of people were disenfranchised.”

Before Judge Conley’s decision, state officials had estimated that at least 27,500 absentee ballots would come in too late to be counted — nearly five times the vote margin that decided the statewide judicial elections last year. As of Monday morning, more than 11,000 voters who requested ballots were never even sent one, according to data from the Wisconsin Elections Commission, though figures were continuing to update.

The number of disenfranchised voters was potentially higher. As of Monday, 185,000 absentee ballots remained outstanding, and election officials were trying to determine what percentage of those might have been returned had Judge Conley’s deadline of April 13 held. In Milwaukee, official tallies showed that the percentage of unreturned ballots was double its usual rate.

There was also the indeterminate number of voters who were too afraid to appear at polling stations on Election Day, by which point it would have been too late to request absentee ballots.