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You are here: Home / Politics / Activist Judges! / Wisconsin Needs Our Help

Wisconsin Needs Our Help

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Wisconsin Needs Our Help

(Iron Brigade Forward – 2nd Wisconsin Infantry Led By General John Reynolds – Battle Of Gettysburg painting by Mark Maritato)

Earlier today the US Supreme Court, which has cancelled oral arguments for the first time since the 1918 FT Riley flu pandemic and can’t figure out how to use Zoom, Google hangouts, or the secure system that the Intel Community is using to telework, ruled 5-4 that Wisconsin would not be allowed to extend the deadline for absentee/vote by mail votes to be returned. The 5 Republican appointed justices overruled two lower Federal court rulings. In conjunction with the partisan 4-2 ruling from the Wisconsin Supreme Court that Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers does not have the power to unilaterally move tomorrow’s presidential primary, as well as state judicial, other state and local elections, this means that Wisconsin’s elections will go on as schedule tomorrow. No matter how deadly that may be. And no matter how many voters might be disenfranchised because they are either too scared to go out and risk infection to vote or because election officials have had to close the vast majority of Wisconsin’s polling places.

Wiscon needs our help. Ben Wikler, the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party has been doing yeoman’s work for months to prevent the created by an egregious partisan gerrymander Republican majority state legislature and state Supreme Court from screwing around with the elections for Republican partisan purposes. Both the presidential primary and state and local elections tomorrow and the general election in November. Wikler has put out an appeal for help. And you don’t have to live in Wisconsin to heed his call.

So if you have some time tomorrow and are willing to make some calls or texts, go to the links below and help out. The earlier the better would probably be most helpful.

This shouldn’t be partisan, but the Wisconsin Republican majority state legislature, the Republican state supreme court justices, and the Republican appointees on the US Supreme Court have decided that they, to quote President Lincoln from his Cooper Union speech, are only interest in ruling or ruining.

Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events.

To make phone calls, use this link.

To send texts, use this link.

What Wikler wants everyone to do who can make calls and/or texts is to tell Wisconsin voters:

If you have an absentee ballot in Wisconsin, you have to either put it in the mail so that it’s postmarked tomorrow, Tuesday 4/7, or drop it off in person by 8pm at your clerk’s office. It must arrive by Monday, 4/13.

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

81Comments

  2. 2.

    Adam L Silverman

    @rikyrah:

    We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

  4. 4.

    smintheus

    The governor should order the state police to close polling stations because they are non-essential. If SCOTUS is going to rule that people who applied for but did not yet receive their absentee ballots because of the pandemic can just lose their right to vote, then everybody else in the state can also lose their right to vote because of the pandemic. There’s plenty of time to reschedule the election … and everybody will have received their absentee ballots by then.

  5. 5.

    NotMax

    @smintheus

    order the state police to close polling stations because they are non-essential

    We really, really, really, really, really don’t want to go there as a precedent.

  6. 6.

    HumboldtBlue

    Joe Hooker wasted them but I sure as fuck wore No. 19 when first given the chance to choose a football jersey number (full disclosure, Lance Alworth played a role in that choice as well)

    I could have gone with a Pennsylvania regimental number (including my great-grandfather’s cavalry regiment) but Bruce Catton and Shelby Foote told me of the Iron Brigade.

    I killed a lot of fucking rebels with a broomstick-rifled-musket in the backyard of a Yankee home.

  8. 8.

    JCJ

    Tomorrow the city of Milwaukee will not have the usual 180 polling places open.  There will be five.  They did have drive-thru voting for a while where many people cast ballots.  I voted at the city hall in my suburb on Friday.

  9. 9.

    Fair Economist

    @NotMax:

    order the state police to close polling stations because they are non-essential

    We really, really, really, really, really don’t want to go there as a precedent.

    Too late. DeWine already did, in defiance of a court order.

  11. 11.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    Serious question: what possible justification could they have to rule this way? I think Evers should tell the Jackass Five on the SCOTUS and the Fuckhead Four on the Wisconsin Supreme Court to go pound sound and close polling stations anyway

    They’ve made their ruling, now let them enforce it! How many divisions does the Supreme Court have?

  12. 12.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Fair Economist: Evers has that authority under the public health emergency. Basically he’d be cancelling the election de facto, not de jure. But at that point the GOP majority legislature would most likely sue in the state courts, with immediate appeal to the Wisconsin state supreme court, that the absentee ballots should still be counted and as a result the results of those absentee ballots constitute the election. The expectation is that the majority of the absentee ballots will be Republican votes.

  13. 13.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): From election law expert Rick Hasen:

    https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110447

    Breaking: Supreme Court on 5-4 Vote Reverses District Court on Late-Arriving Absentee Ballots in Wisconsin Race. This is a Bad Sign for November in a Number of Ways.

    Posted on by Rick Hasen

    You can read the opinion and dissent here.

    In some ways, it is unsurprising that the Court divided 5-4 (conservative/Republican Justices against liberal/Democratic Justices) on a question whether the emergency created by COVID-19 and the dangers of in-person voting justified a district court order to extend the receipt of absentee ballots from April 7 to April 13 (only ballots postmarked by April 7 will be counted).

    On the one hand, conservatives are wary of federal courts rewriting election rules at the last minute (the Purcell principle idea, which gets heavy play here). On the other hand, the liberals point out that because of the backlog of absentee ballot requests, there are something like 10,000 voters who will not get an absentee ballot by April 7 in time to send it back. They see this as disenfranchisement because it is too dangerous for voters to go to the polls under the conditions of the pandemic. As Justice Ginsburg wrote in her dissent of these voters: “Either they will have to brave the polls, endangering their own and others’ safety. Or they will lose their right to vote, through no fault of their own.”

    So this looks like a typical divide between conservatives who favor strict rules even when they risk disenfranchisement of voters versus liberals who are willing to modify election rules to protect voting rights. We’ve seen this play out many times in Supreme Court voting rights cases as in the past.

    On the other hand, it is a very bad sign for November that the Court could not come together and find some form of compromise here in the midst of a global pandemic unlike anything we have seen in our lifetimes. Like the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court divided along partisan and ideological lines. Already in 2018, before COVID, the amount of election-related litigation had hit a record (data in my book, Election Meltdown). The year 2020 was likely to set a new record. But with election changes proliferating and a fight over expanded absentee balloting necessary to combat the COVID crisis, the amount of litigation is going to skyrocket. And it does not look like the courts are going to be able to do any better than the politicians in finding common ground on election principles.

    This means that there is a lot of work to do now to try to avoid election meltdown. More on that in coming weeks. But the message from today is: don’t expect the courts to protect voting rights in 2020.

  14. 14.

    West of the Rockies

    With Republicans, it is just one horrible, zero-integrity move after another.  I am trying to recall a serious Democratic misfire that revealed such levels of disdain for public safety, or was (like so many Republican laws and policies) obviously on the wrong side of science and basic honor.

  15. 15.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Adam L Silverman:

    It’s self-serving bullshit and the Wisconsin Governor should ignore the Supreme Court’s illegitimate ruling and reschedule the election. What’s the SCOTUS going to do? Write another opinion?

  16. 16.

    Jackie

    Are there any republicans on the ballot? If so, aren’t republicans at just as much risk voting in person?  If not, then won’t the Democratic votes still prevail? I’m truly scratching my head over why it’s so important to vote in person tomorrow.

  18. 18.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jackie: There is a state supreme court election tomorrow. The incumbent was appointed by Scott Walker. He is being challenged by a Democratic lower state court judge. The term is ten years. If the Democratic challenger wins, then she’ll join the two other Democratic judges on the state supreme court and cut the Republican majority from 5-2 to 4-3.

  19. 19.

    Jackie

    @Jackie:  Meaning, the mail-in ballots will be counted, regardless. It’s more a Biden vs Sanders vote than anything else?

  21. 21.

    Jackie

    @Adam L Silverman: So that means republicans also have to expose themselves to potential coronavirus exposure by voting in person. That’s what befuddles me.🤷🏼‍♀️

  25. 25.

    cain

    Every person out there and being active and getting this stuff out there is saying “fuck you to the conservative supreme court”

  26. 26.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jackie: Here’s the explainer on the absentee ballot situation:

  27. 27.

    James E Powell

    What happened to the white people in Wisconsin that they elect not just Republicans but these Dystopian Republicans?

  28. 28.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jackie: Yes, but…

    Right now the highest concentrations of returned absentee ballots are from the Republican dominated counties. Waukesha and one other Republican dominated county. So the worry is that even if Republicans don’t show up and vote tomorrow in person, they’ve already banked enough absentee ballot votes to win. Moreover, Milwaukee will only have a dozen or so polling places open tomorrow, when they normally have a couple of hundred. You do the voter suppression math.

  33. 33.

    Adam L Silverman

    Folks, you all know what to do if you have the time and the ability.

    I’m going to rack out. Catch everyone on the flip.

  34. 34.

    Jackie

    @Adam L Silverman: OMG!🤦🏼‍♀️
    How is this even legal AFTER absentee ballots were received via the “normal aka legal” laws?

    I’ll jump in and make phone calls and do whatever I can do to help. I’m very grateful to live in a blue state – even though I live in a very red county of WA.

  35. 35.

    Mnemosyne

    Fuckers. I’ll try to do some texting tomorrow, but I just sent the WI Dems $50 since it sounds like they’ll need it.

    Thanks again to the 31,000 Wisconsin assholes who decided to vote for Stein in 2016 instead of Hillary. Too bad you didn’t think the makeup of the Supreme Court was something that would ever affect your life.

  36. 36.

    Mnemosyne

    @Jackie:

    The Republican-dominated Wisconsin Supreme Court will decide it’s legal because it benefited them, and they don’t give a shit about anything other than retaining power.

  38. 38.

    NotMax

    @Mnemosyne

    Shaky extrapolation as there is no way to determine how those votes may have split had Stein not been on the ballot, or even what number of those votes would not have been cast at all in such a case. Assuming all or most would have gone to Clinton is unsupported by evidence.

  39. 39.

    Raven Onthill

    @James E Powell: There aren’t any other Republicans left. It is a fascist party now.

    “After the uprising of the 17th June
    The Secretary of the Writers Union
    Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
    Stating that the people
    Had forfeited the confidence of the government
    And could win it back only
    By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
    In that case for the government
    To dissolve the people
    And elect another?” – Bertolt Brecht, “The Solution”

    “Give me liberty. Or give me death. Or, heck, just come to Wisconsin. Where on election day you can have both.” – @NeinQuarterly

  42. 42.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    A. Wardless @awardless
    Replying to @benwikler So Greendale WI pop. 14,159 has as many polling locations, five, as Milwaukee pop. 595,351

  45. 45.

    NotMax

    @BillinGlendaleCA

    He was a strange and nasty piece of work. A couple more:

    “You know, it’s a funny thing. Every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob? What is the matter with them? I suppose it is because most of them are psychiatrists.”

    “Solutions are not the answer.”

  53. 53.

    Mnemosyne

    @🐾BillinGlendaleCA:

    It also has a sign warning you that they have security cameras in case you want to express your feelings in an, er, inappropriate way.

    I think I just went with a simple middle finger.

  57. 57.

    NotMax

    @BillinGlendaleCA

    “Reagan is not one that wears well. On a personal basis, Rockefeller is a pretty nice guy, Reagan on a personal basis, is terrible. He just isn’t pleasant to be around. He’s just an uncomfortable man to be around…strange.”
    – Richard Nixon

  61. 61.

    mrmoshpotato

    @🐾BillinGlendaleCA:

    In LA we’ve been told not only to stay home, but Stay Inside for the next week.

    And that’s how Bill’s star-sickers-on-appliances photo series started. :)

    ETA – do the rattlesnakes piss on Ronnie’s grave?

  65. 65.

    mrmoshpotato

    How has Obama failed me today, rolling tags?

    Well, I just got a craving for garlic bread out of nowhere, and I don’t have any. :(

  68. 68.

    mrmoshpotato

    Wisconsin will hold its electionDespite overwhelming objection.The GOP sadlyWants power so badlyIt’s partnering with the infection.— Limericking (@Limericking) April 7, 2020

  69. 69.

    Mike S

    Sounds just like the Bush v Gore decision. ‘Very narrow. Doesn’t apply to anything that may help democrats.’

    The Court’s decision on the narrow question before the Court should not be viewed as expressing an opinion on the broader question of whether to hold the election, or whether other reforms or modifications in election procedures inlight of COVID–19 are appropriate. That point cannot be stressed enough.

  71. 71.

    mrmoshpotato

    @NotMax: Chef John from FoooooooodWishes.com with…  That’s right!

    I’ll have to turn that into culinary satisfaction in the near future.

  72. 72.

    Sab

    @Fair Economist: “DeWine did”. I call BS on that. I know a bunch of Ohioans who could not vote because of the pandemic.Some were quarantined because they had caught it. Others were trapped out of state because not safe to fly home. DeWine did the right thing.

  73. 73.

    Amir Khalid

    @mrmoshpotato:

    Do you have garlic, butter, and any kind of bread? If you do, you have the makings. Crush garlic and mix into room-temperature butter. Put garlic butter on bread. Toast bread. There ya go.

  76. 76.

    NotMax

    @mrmoshpotato
    Imparting a closely held secret if using a crusty French or Italian loaf. Before slicing, cut a couple of garlic cloves in half lengthwise and rub the cut sides all over the crust.

  78. 78.

    Mousebumples

    I mailed in my ballot weeks ago , but I’ve shared a bunch of links above on my Facebook. My dad is working the polls today, and while he’s pretty healthy overall , he’s just over 60,so I’m nervous.

    We’re going to see a spike of cases (and deaths 😥) in a few weeks. Here’s hoping everyone stays safe, though I know that won’t be possible.

  79. 79.

    Omnes Omnibus

    I made a couple of “It’s not that bad comments” yesterday.  I was wrong.

  80. 80.

    PenAndKey

    @Omnes Omnibus: it’s raining, people are going to risk death and many will die trying to vote even if it takes a few weeks to happen, and there’s a good chance that the GOP is going to further cement their gerrymandered stranglehold against the majority of voters who don’t vote GOP.

    I’m seriously not looking forward to the next few weeks, and the only bright spot is that I’ll be focusing on my wife and daughter after she’s born next Monday.

Comments are closed.