MADISON, Wis. (CN) – Officials from a liberal-leaning Wisconsin county accused state Republicans of playing politics Monday in response to a petition filed in the state’s highest court challenging the county clerk’s decision to waive photo ID requirements for absentee ballots in next week’s primary in light of Covid-19 disruptions.
Mark Jefferson, executive director of the Wisconsin Republican Party, asked the state supreme court on Friday to review Dane County Clerk Scott McDonnell’s decision to allow certain voters to request and cast absentee ballots without presenting a photo ID, which was made on the basis that these voters are “indefinitely confined” due to the coronavirus outbreak and the various lockdown measures enacted to slow its spread.
Republicans contend that clerks have no legal authority to waive the photo ID requirement and argued in their petition that “without this court’s intervention, the upcoming election will take place under two sets of different rules—one for voters in Dane County, and one for voters in the rest of the state.”
The state GOP’s petition makes a grand total of five separate lawsuits brought in the last two weeks over how to proceed with Wisconsin’s April 7 primary election as the Covid-19 pandemic snarls governments and volatile markets and upends civic life across the globe.
As of Monday afternoon, Wisconsin reported nearly 1,200 confirmed cases of Covid-19, including 18 deaths.
Dane County’s response Monday to the GOP’s petition, filed by assistant county corporation counsel David Gault, accused Republicans of leapfrogging administrative remedies in order to “invoke an extraordinary remedy for a concocted issue that doesn’t exist.”
The county says the Republican Party did not first go to the six-member bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission to resolve confusion over the election rules as they should have, instead “swinging for the fence and seeking to invoke this court’s jurisdiction” to resolve the matter in its favor.
McDonnell, the Dane County clerk, posted a comment on Facebook last week encouraging infirm, ill or elderly voters who feel they cannot leave their home due to Covid-19 and cannot provide photo ID to indicate that they are indefinitely confined by the coronavirus, allowing them to bypass the requirement.
Even though that post and the alleged rule-breaking it encourages was the basis for Republicans’ petition, Monday’s response brief points out that the elections commission has already further clarified its position on the matter and that election laws were not broken in the first place.
“The petitioners disagree with the clerk’s guidance because they are trying to win an election,” the county’s filing states. “This case is about politics and not the law.”
The elections commission deadlocked 3-3 along party lines on Sunday night over investigating clerks in Dane and Milwaukee counties for bending the photo ID rule for certain absentee voters.
According to Monday’s filing, the elections commission has said waiving the photo ID requirement “is an individual decision based on the circumstances” and Dane County claims “it is entirely reasonable for a voter to conclude they are currently confined to home due to Covid-19," pointing to Governor Tony Evers’ safer-at-home order issued last week.
Evers’ lockdown order shuttered nonessential business and requires residents to stay in their homes and limit interactions with others as much as possible through April 24.
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