The GOP and Supreme Court are chipping away at voting rights. stop acting like you're not partisan.
This has yet to be established by the facts. A point the majority made was that the problem wasn’t the pandemic but people waiting too late to request an absentee ballot, the latter situation being no different than people waiting to the last minute to request an absentee ballot and suffering the same consequence without a pandemic. The majority says there’s been no evidence the pandemic is a cause for the possibility of the ballots not being counted as opposed to the cause being waiting too late to ask for an absentee ballot. In other words, maybe, maybe not, need evidence and at this time, it isn’t present.
Given the lack of evidence, the majority view is right, at least right now. From the decision:
“Third, the dissent refers to voters who have not yet received their absentee ballots. But even in an ordinary election, voters who request an ab- sentee ballot at the deadline for requesting ballots (which was this past Friday in this case) will usually receive their ballots on the day before or day of the election, which in this case would be today or tomorrow. The plaintiffs put for- ward no probative evidence in the District Court that these voters here would be in a substantially different position from late-requesting voters in other Wisconsin elections with respect to the timing of their receipt of absentee bal- lots. In that regard, it bears mention that absentee voting has been underway for many weeks, and 1.2 million Wis- consin voters have requested and have been sent their ab- sentee ballots, which is about five times the number of ab- sentee ballots requested in the 2016 spring election.”
Translation, you can’t blame the “pandemic” for dragging one’s feet and playing with fire by requesting absentee ballots so close to the deadline. The consequence of waiting to ask for an absentee ballot so close to the deadline is the same in both circumstances, waiting until the 11th hour jeopardizes being able to lawfully cast the ballot.
That point is made all the more poignant by the fact “absentee voting has been underway for many weeks,” and “1.2 million Wis- consin voters have requested and have been sent their ab- sentee ballots, which is about five times the number of ab- sentee ballots requested in the 2016 spring election.”
In other words, one has only themselves to blame for not promptly requesting and promptly mailing an absentee ballot.
An option, that millions of Wisconsin voters did, is to request an absentee ballot early, and promptly mail it, as 1.2 million did so, as opposed to waiting close to the deadline to request it and then blame a pandemic for requesting an absentee ballot so close to the deadline.
Rather difficult to assert voting rights are jeopardized by these circumstances, circumstances beyond the control of the voter, when 1.2 million successfully requested, received, and casted those ballots already! The lack of promptly requesting an absentee ballot, and requesting one so close to the deadline, is the issue, and that IS within the voters’ control. The majority got it right for the time being.
Some of the footnotes by the dissent may make this point for the majority.
Footnote 4: “mail delivery “can take up to a week” or longer...”transaction time from the time the clerk puts [an absentee ballot] in the mail to the voter receiving it could take up to a week...” The dissent also noted “the postal service recommends budgeting a week—even without accounting for pandemic- induced mail delays.”
So, if the “backlog” are requests at or near the deadline, then the majority view is those ballots not lawfully cast are the result of requesting an absentee ballot near the midnight.
Important to note, the majority leaves open the possibility this isn’t true, but astutely observes there was no evidence presented to the district court to the contrary. On the basis of a lack of evidence, the Court reached the right outcome for now.
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