Important decisions are made during elections. There were many seats that would need filling, both local and statewide in Wisconsin, and those decisions were made by voters on April 7th, 2020. It was a day that has had quite the bit of controversy.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many states have delayed their spring elections, but up until the 6th, no actual effort had been made to delay in-person voting on April 7th. On April 6th, Governor Tony Evers issued Executive Order 74, which would delay the spring election for over a month. This was in contrast to a statement he made earlier in the month, that he would be violating the law if he were to issue an executive order delaying elections.
That was soon challenged by the Wisconsin legislature, who were able to directly appeal to the Wisconsin Supreme Court which ruled that Executive Order 74, as Governor Evers admitted earlier in April, violated the law. Governor Evers claimed that he was able to act in such a manner due to special powers he had been granted due to the current state of emergency.
One of the issues with the delay in voting was that the date of spring elections had been set by law as the first Tuesday in April. Another was that many elected officials’ terms were set to end within the next few weeks, leaving those seats empty until elections decided who would fill them.
Precedent was on the side of the legislature in this case. A United States Supreme Court 2006 case, Purcell v. Gonzalez, set the precedent that changes to the electoral process should be avoided close to an election due to the confusion caused, which might cause voters to stay away from the polls.
One might also consider the precedent set by that level of action by Governor Evers. He bypassed both the legislative and judicial branches in order to make a last minute move that he had plenty of time to do.
Neither Election Day or the consequences of the pandemic were a surprise. He issued a safer-at-home order mid-March and had declared a state of emergency earlier that month. There was time to bring that up to the legislature and if they didn’t want take that action, he could have advocated for the delay that he attempted to order in Executive Order 74.
There was one thing that was brought to court, the issue of absentee ballots. On April 2nd, the US District Court of Western Wisconsin issued an order, extending the time that absentee ballots could be requested and moving the deadline for ballots to arrive to April 13th.
While the subject of a delay was brought up quietly, the focus was on switching to a predominately by-mail election. Although, it was easy to doubt whether the US Postal Service would have been able to handle it, as they had problems getting ballots to people who requested them even before the April 3rd deadline.
Delaying the in-person elections to match up with the new deadline for absentee ballots would not have required the courts to issue an order forbidding all of the municipal clerks, any political organizations, and any news outlets from disclosing any voting results in order to avoid influencing those who had yet to vote.
The US District Court decision made it to the US Court of Appeals, that upheld the lower court’s decision, and in the end was in front of the US Supreme Court. The decision was split, 5 to 4. Eventually the court decided that the lower court’s decisions created unnecessary confusion by allowing voters to cast votes beyond the 7th when in-person voting would occur and noted that the plaintiffs did not request that relief in their preliminary injunction motions.
The court added that “this Court has repeatedly emphasized that lower federal courts should ordinarily not alter the elections rules on the eye of election.
It was the Supreme Court that ordered that all absentee ballots that were mailed would be required to be postmarked no later than April 7th to be counted, relating the requirements that votes needed to reach the county and municipal clerks by 8 pm on April 7th, allowing them to arrive by the 13th and still be counted.
All in all this was a unique situation and hard to explain properly. The Wisconsin Supreme Court decision is a statement reinforcing the balance of powers present in both the Wisconsin state government and the federal government. If the legislative branch refused to act, the judicial brand and executive branch can act together. The same can be said of the executive branch working with the legislative and the legislative working with the judicial branch.
One also could only wonder if the district court had delayed in-person voting until April 13th to match the former deadline for absentee voting, that some of this confusion could have been avoided. It might not have been a delay into June, but it would have helped those who, out of necessity or preference, chose to vote absentee.
This was an exceptionally complicated set of events that all played out on April 6th, the day before the election, and the eventual consequences have yet to be seen along with any precedent created that day.
If this attempted explanation of events does not make much sense, please take a look at my sources. While the online record database charges are waived if the total charges for that quarter were less than $30, I will post any files I referenced from that website.
Sorry about the delay between the last post and this. If there is any time for starting this back up, there is no better time than now.
See this page for sources: https://themill.video.blog/sources-election-day/
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