The activist Wisconsin judiciary is at it again.
This time, a judge in Madison has decided that it would be a great idea to create an entirely new method of voting seven months before the November presidential election. Officials from both parties agree that this is too big of a change to implement ahead of the 2024 election.
Wisconsinites should be asking themselves why the late election-rule changes following the ruling in Disability Rights Wisconsin v. WEC, which mandates that officials email ballots to any voter claiming they are disabled.
With the strike of a gavel, a Wisconsin judge made himself a super legislature bypassing real lawmakers, the governor and the people in the process.
Certainly, these bodies know that emailed ballots are a voting option. Current Wisconsin law narrowly authorizes military and overseas voters an email option. But the legislature has never extended this to anyone else. This judge, however, decided that he likes emailed ballots, and therefore it should be written into law.
His new process permits voters — who self-certify that they can’t read or mark a paper ballot without help — to request absentee ballots electronically from a local clerk. The voter must then print and submit the ballot by regular mail.
This judge, of course, was urged to legislate by the Left’s Election Industrial Complex. There is nothing these folks love more than using the judiciary to impose election processes that they deem beneficial to them winning elections. If democracy is inconvenient and elected legislatures will not bend to their will, too bad.
Ballots by email is not something that should be implemented at all — and certainly not without careful planning. The judge here has done no planning, much less careful planning.
Will there be any verification that voters claiming a disability are indeed eligible to be emailed a ballot? How will the state verify that a voter’s ballot is being emailed to and returned by the actual voter? How will the state ensure that disabled voters have equal access to the technology necessary to receive, read, mark and print emailed ballots at home? Who will oversee this process to ensure there is no election fraud? In a legislature, these questions would receive a hearing and would be sorted out with testimony and compromise. But none of these questions are answered by a legislating judge.
A new ballot distribution system is not only complicated to develop, but also complicated to implement. Implementation requires, at a minimum, training the 1,800 clerks in Wisconsin to gain an extensive understanding of this new administrative process. Rushing to create a training program just months before a presidential election risks mistakes and controversy. There is simply not enough time before the election to properly train administrators on this new policy. This is especially important in Wisconsin, where four of the past six presidential elections have been decided by less than a percentage point.
The Republican-controlled Wisconsin legislature sees the folly of the judge’s ruling and has filed a notice of appeal. But even Wisconsin’s Democrat attorney general is apprehensive about this judge’s activism. He rightly told the judge that it is too late to implement such a disruptive plan so close to the election.
While it is vital that all citizens have access to vote, rushing to create this new avenue for voting creates a potential for mistakes and fraud — and invites skepticism about election results. With an extremely important election on the horizon, Americans want and deserve to feel confident in the Wisconsin electoral process.
The Olympics would not change the rules right before the games and Wisconsin Democrats should not be able to either.
Chad Ennis is the Vice President of Honest Elections Project.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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