MADISON, Wis. (CN) — Parties from Wisconsin to Washington argued in Madison federal court Wednesday over proposed changes to deadlines and rules for the November general election, as the fight over how to hold fair elections in the midst of an ongoing pandemic reignited from the safety of a videoconference.
With the Nov. 3 presidential election 90 days out, U.S. District Judge William Conley refereed a Zoom hearing expected to take all day to address calls for a preliminary injunction to postpone certain absentee voting deadlines and loosen other election rules in four consolidated federal actions, some dating back five months.
The litigants range from the Democratic National Committee and Democratic Party of Wisconsin to local advocacy groups like Disability Rights Wisconsin and Black Leaders Organizing for Communities, to average voters claiming they were disenfranchised during Wisconsin’s controversial April primary, when voters braved the polls in masks and gloves to vote in-person as ostensible canaries in the coal mine during the surging pandemic’s early weeks.
Voters went to the polls on April 7 in violation of social distancing guidelines, now considered commonplace for civic life, after a flurry of eleventh-hour court rulings and partisan political gamesmanship, including a U.S. Supreme Court decision barring an extension to absentee voting Conley ordered and the conservative-majority Wisconsin Supreme Court overruling Democratic Governor Tony Evers’ attempt to postpone the primary the night before Election Day.
Advocacy groups and allegedly disenfranchised voters sued in reaction to the messy primary in May, and eventually state and national Democrats renewed their fight in tandem to adjust election protocols to mitigate the dangers presented by Covid-19 after first suing three weeks before the April primary.
The Seventh Circuit also handed down its two cents on Wisconsin election law in late June in an entirely separate raft of lawsuits over the state’s voter ID laws, early voting procedures and other election policies. That mixed decision was largely seen as a win for state conservatives, although liberals did get some concessions they were after.
Although the six members of the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission, or WEC, are nominally defendants in the four lawsuits at hand Wednesday, the intervening GOP-controlled Wisconsin Legislature, Republican National Committee and Republican Party of Wisconsin were the ones arguing against the requested changes Wednesday, making the legal gymnastics over how to carry out safe pandemic elections yet another debate rendered purely partisan in the Badger State and the country at large.
The sprawling and consequential nature of the battle over Wisconsin elections was fresh in Conley’s mind Wednesday morning. He called the April primary “a mixed bag” in his opening statements but warned against hyperbolic generalizations about the success or failure of that election. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a report last Friday stating there was no significant spike in coronavirus cases as a result of the April primary.
Conley also warned parties not to argue in terms of Wisconsin’s critical importance as a swing state this November, which the Barack Obama appointee referred to as “the elephant in the room.”
“It is not something that I intend to discuss and I do not expect the parties to tell me about it,” Conley said, outlining that the consolidated cases are about “whether or not Covid-19 is impacting the ability of election officials to conduct this election and vindicate the rights of the voters.”
John Devaney, counsel for the DNC with the Washington office of international firm Perkins Coie, jousted with Conley during opening arguments over whether the current state of what Devaney called “a lethal, once-in-a-century pandemic” and the theoretical state of the virus three months from now justifies the changes the plaintiffs have asked for.
