State Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly announced Wednesday he would lift his recusal in a case that could purge up to 200,000 names from Wisconsin’s voter list.
Kelly, who lost his bid for a 10-year term on the court to Judge Jill Karofsky, had stayed out of the case while he was a candidate, saying it could have influenced his own election. With that race now behind him, he indicated in a brief order Wednesday that circumstances had changed.
“I, like every other justice on this court, have an affirmative duty to hear every case in which there is no ethical bar to my participation,” Kelly wrote. “I have concluded that, in light of the fact that this case cannot now affect any election in which I would be a candidate while the case is being decided, there is no ethical bar to my participation.”