Why Did the U.S. Supreme Court Endanger the Lives of Wisconsin Voters? | Michael C. Dorf | Verdict | Legal Analysis and Commentary from Justia

Wisconsin voters in the plague year.
What motivated the Justices of the United States Supreme Court to intervene in the Wisconsin state elections?  And the dissenters?Does ideology determine results? Clan-like loyalties that blind?  Simple partisan advantage?  - gwc
Why Did the U.S. Supreme Court Endanger the Lives of Wisconsin Voters? | Michael C. Dorf | Verdict | Legal Analysis and Commentary from Justia:
by Michael C. Dorf [Cornell Law]
On Tuesday, April 7, Wisconsin held a primary election despite the fact that state residents were under an order of the governor to stay home in order to slow the spread of COVID-19. As a likely result, more people will become infected and die than would have if the state had delayed the primary (as other states have) or had done more to facilitate voting by mail.
As with so many other aspects of the catastrophically bungled U.S. response to the coronavirus, many actors contributed to this terrible decision. The Wisconsin legislature—controlled by Republicans thanks to aggressive partisan gerrymandering—bears the brunt of the blame. It refused to delay the primary, partly due to Trump-inspired denial and also in an apparent effort to aid the state supreme court re-election campaign of a Republican loyalist who would likely cast a vote to preserve the GOP gerrymander.
So too, Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers, bears some responsibility for dithering when he should have taken decisive action to postpone the election. Evers did finally act to postpone the election, only to be thwarted by the Republican majority on the state supreme court, which ruled that he lacked the authority to take this step on his own.
Meanwhile, the state received an overwhelming flood of last-minute applications for absentee ballots from Wisconsinites understandably wary of risking their lives to cast a vote in person. As a consequence, many voters did not even receive their blank ballots in time to cast them. Accordingly, a federal district judge ordered the state to extend the time for mailing in completed absentee ballots. Yet that measure was also thwarted—this time by a 5-4 majority of the U.S. Supreme Court, also splitting on partisan lines.
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