Today the Wisconsin Supreme Court threw out Trump’s election lawsuit challenging 221k ballots:
FOX NEWS – The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Monday rejected President Donald Trump’s lawsuit attempting to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the battleground state, ending Trump’s legal challenges in state court about an hour before the Electoral College was to meet to cast the state’s 10 votes for Biden.
The court held arguments in the case Saturday, the same day a federal judge dismissed another Trump lawsuit seeking to overturn his loss in Wisconsin. Trump appealed that ruling.
The president sought to have more than 221,000 ballots disqualified in Dane and Milwaukee counties, the state’s two most heavily Democratic counties. In a 4-3 ruling, Justice Brian Hagedorn, a conservative writing for the majority, said the Trump campaign was “not entitled to the relief it seeks.”
“Our laws allow the challenge flag to be thrown regarding various aspects of election administration,” Hagedorn wrote. “The challenges raised by the Campaign in this case, however, come long after the last play or even the last game; the Campaign is challenging the rulebook adopted before the season began.”
Trump wanted to disqualify absentee ballots cast early and in-person, saying there wasn’t a proper written request made for the ballots; absentee ballots cast by people who claimed “indefinitely confined” status; absentee ballots collected by poll workers at Madison parks; and absentee ballots where clerks filled in missing information on ballot envelopes.
The court ruled that Trump’s challenge to voters who were indefinitely confined was without merit and that the other claims came too late.
This is really a familiar refrain these days with the Trump campaign lawsuits.
However, a separate lawsuit was upheld by the Wisconsin Supreme Court today declaring that state election officials were wrong to say people could uses COVID as an excuse to say they are indefinitely confined:
The opinion, which was released this morning, says local elections officials were wrong to suggest that voters could claim the status of “indefinitely confined” based on COVID-19. The majority decision also held that if voters falsely claimed they were indefinitely confined “their ballots would not count.”
But the court noted that a determination must be [made] in every case before tossing a ballot…
Under Wisconsin law, a voter may receive a ballot by mail and bypass Wisconsin’s voter ID law, if the voter, by his own determination, concludes he “confined” based on age, physical illness, or infirmity. This fall, roughly 215,000 voters in Wisconsin said they were indefinitely confined, nearly a four-fold increase from the 2016 election.
The court said the government’s interpretation of Wisconsin’s indefinitely confined was erroneous. “A county clerk may not “declare” that any elector is indefinitely confined due to a pandemic,” the court said. The court further stated that, “…the presence of a communicable disease such as COVID-19, in and of itself, does not entitle all electors [voters] in Wisconsin to obtain an absentee ballot…”
Moreover, the court stated that lockdown orders do not meet the requirements under Wisconsin law to allow a voter to claim the status of “indefinitely confined” either.
In its final decision, the justices concluded that it’s up to each voter — not the county clerks or anyone else — to decide if and when they qualify as indefinitely confined.
While this is an important case for the future of elections in Wisconsin, it seems moot as far as the November election is concerned given that Trump’s lawsuit to throw out these ballots was dismissed.