Supreme Court blocks Wisconsin from extending absentee voting deadline

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/491466-supreme-court-blocks-wisconsin-from-extending-absentee-voting

By John Kruzel - 04/06/20 07:20 PM EDT

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday night ruled that Wisconsin cannot accept absentee ballots postmarked after its voting day Tuesday.

In a 5-4 vote along ideological lines, the conservative justices sided with Republican state lawmakers by halting a lower court order to extend absentee voting to April 13, a measure that would have expanded options for avoiding in-person voting amid the coronavirus pandemic.

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The decision came just hours after the Wisconsin Supreme Court overturned Gov. Tony Evers’s (D) executive order to postpone Tuesday’s vote, sowing confusion and chaos around a critical election featuring a Democratic presidential primary and a pivotal state Supreme Court seat.

Evers had sought to push back the in-person voting date until June 9 and said that all mail and absentee ballots sent up to that date would be counted.

But the pair of rulings from the top federal court and highest Wisconsin state court on Monday largely returned things to the status quo, with in-person voting and a postmark deadline set for the following day, despite a flurry of last-minute legal and political wrangling and a virus that has infected some 2,500 and killed nearly 80 in the state.

Ballots that are postmarked by Tuesday may be accepted up to April 13, wrote the majority, which comprised Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts.

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