The argument on incompetency records
From the Wisconsin State Journal:
The lawsuit tests the line between protecting personal privacy rights and ensuring that ineligible people can’t vote. It is the latest attempt by those who questioned the outcome of the 2020 presidential race to cast doubt on the integrity of elections in the presidential swing state. ....
Former travel agent Ron Heuer and a group he leads, the Wisconsin Voters Alliance, allege that the number of ineligible voters doesn’t match the count on Wisconsin’s voter registration list. They want the state Supreme Court to rule that counties must release records filed when a judge determines that someone isn’t competent to vote so that those names can be compared to the voter registration list. ...
From the Wisconsin Examiner:
This case has been closely watched as a symbol of the increasing partisanship in Wisconsin’s lower courts because the District 2 Court of Appeals, which covers most of the suburban counties outside of Milwaukee and is controlled by a conservative majority, ignored a previous decision by the liberal majority on the Madison-area District 4 Court of Appeals in a similar case over the exact same records.
The Wisconsin Voter Alliance has asked for the names and addresses of people who have been declared incompetent in guardianship cases so the group can compare that list with the voter rolls in the statewide voter registration database and find any people who have been voting despite having the right to do so taken away. County officials across the state have been denying these requests because state law requires that any court records in these cases “pertinent” to the declaration of incompetency be kept secret.
In the District 4 case, Juneau County denied access to the records and the Court of Appeals agreed with that denial but in the subsequent District 2 case, Walworth County denied access to the records and the Court of Appeals reversed that decision, despite a 1997 precedent that state courts of appeal in Wisconsin can’t overrule each other.
From the Associated Press:
“What it sounds to me like what you are trying to do is to introduce the fear that there is some sort of illegitimacy going on in the election in the state of Wisconsin, and that concerns me deeply,” said liberal Justice Jill Karofsky during oral arguments Tuesday. ...
But the liberal justices questioned whether the law allows for the records to be made public. Conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley asked if there was a way to perform an audit and ensure that government officials are removing people from the voting rolls when a court has determined they lost that right.
The mobile van case
From the Associated Press:
The Wisconsin Supreme Court wrestled Tuesday with whether a Republican had standing to bring a lawsuit that challenges the use of a mobile voting van in 2022 and seeks to ban their use in any future election in the presidential battleground state.
Such vans — a single van, actually — were used just once, in Racine in a primary election in 2022. It allowed voters to cast absentee ballots in the two weeks leading up to the election. Racine, the Democratic National Committee and others say nothing in state law prohibits the use of voting vans.
Whatever the court decides will not affect the November election, as a ruling isn’t expected until later and no towns or cities asked to use alternative voting locations for this election before the deadline to do so passed. But the ruling will determine whether mobile voting sites can be used in future elections.
Much of the oral argument Tuesday focused on whether the Racine County voter who brought the lawsuit was “aggrieved” under state law and allowed to sue. If the court rules that he didn’t have standing, it could make it more difficult to bring future lawsuits challenging election laws.
From WPR:
In the lawsuit, (Racine County Republican Party Chairman Ken) Brown argued the mobile voting site violated the law, in part, because it could give an advantage to one political party over another based on where it’s parked. But overshadowing Brown’s arguments on the merits of his case Tuesday were questions from justices about whether he had legal standing to sue in the first place.
Wisconsin Elections Commission Attorney Gabe Johnson-Karp said the court should dismiss the case because Brown didn’t suffer “an injury in fact” by simply witnessing the voting van in action.
Liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz asked if Brown doesn’t have standing to challenge the van, “who does?”
“Your Honor, I think it would likely be somebody who is unable to access absentee voting because of the use of the mobile voting unit,” Johnson-Karp said.
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