A judge in Wisconsin has ordered the state to remove 209k names from its voter rolls or pay a daily fine until they do…
FOX NEWS – A Wisconsin judge on Monday found the state’s Elections Commission and three of its members in contempt of court and ordered the commission to remove up to 209,000 names from the state’s voter rolls, in a case that could have major implications later this year in a key battleground state.
Saying in his ruling that “time is of the essence,” Judge Paul Malloy said that there is no time to wait for the case to make its way to the Wisconsin Supreme Court and ordered that the state pay $50 a day until it starts removing people from the voter rolls.
Malloy also ordered that the three Democrats on the commission – Ann Jacobs, Julie Glancy and Mark Thomsen – pay $250 a day each. The state Justice Department asked Malloy to stay his order of contempt pending an appeal of his ruling, but the judge denied the request.
“I can’t be any clearer than this,” Malloy said, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “They need to follow my order.”
The reason the judge issued daily contempt fines is because his last order to remove the 209k names was ignored:
Those bringing the lawsuit argue that the state elections commission, which includes an equal number of Republicans and Democrats, broke the law when it did not remove voters from the rolls who did not respond within 30 days to a mailing in October indicating they may have moved.
The commission wanted to wait until after the November 2020 presidential election before it removed anyone because of inaccuracies with a previous round of data identifying voters who had potentially moved. Even if a voter has their registration deactivated, they can register again later or on Election Day when they show up at the polls, assuming they have the required documentation.
Malloy last month sided with conservatives who filed the lawsuit and ordered that the voters have their registrations deactivated. The elections commission has deadlocked on when to do that, however. That led to the filing of a motion to find the commission in contempt and face $12,000 a day in fines if it doesn’t move to purge the voters.
Thus far the appeal process isn’t working out for the state…
Meanwhile, the state Department of Justice asked both a state appeals court and the state Supreme Court to put the earlier ruling on hold. The appeals court said it wouldn’t take action because of the pending request before the state Supreme Court that it takes the case. The high court has not said what it will do.
The state’s supreme court could intervene, but it sounds like from the reporting here that the state will have to dump these 209k voting records to ensure the integrity of the voting process. And this is huge too because Wisconsin is a big battleground state after Trump won it in 2016.