The Republican Party is willing to get people killed to immunize itself from the threat of democratic accountability. EricLevitz writes
Photo: Morry Gash/AP/Shutterstock The Republican Party is willing to get people killed to immunize itself from the threat of democratic accountability.
By Monday, it was clear that Wisconsin had no means of holding a free and fair election this week. A majority of the state’s poll workers had announced that they were not willing to jeopardize their lives by greeting continuous streams of voters for hours on end . In Milwaukee, election officials revealed that they only had enough staffing to open five of the city’s 180 polling locations.
In light of these facts, a federal judge in Wisconsin ordered the state to give voters until April 13 to submit their absentee ballots. The Republican National Committee appealed that decision. And on Monday evening, the five Republican-appointed justices on the U.S. Supreme Court overturned it, overriding the objections of their four Democrat-appointed colleagues.
The true stakes of Tuesday’s election lie in the race between the state’s incumbent conservative Supreme Court justice Daniel Kelly and his challenger, liberal Judge Jill Karofsky. If Kelly wins reelection, then Wisconsin Republicans will fortify their 5-2 majority on the court — and thus, their unshakable grip on control of the state’s legislature.
In the next year or two, Wisconsin will redraw all its electoral maps to comport with the new Census. And Evers will have the power to veto any gerrymander the legislature enacts. But Republicans could reject that veto, and bring a lawsuit claiming that the legislature has sole authority over redistricting.
For months now, Wisconsin Republicans have been fighting to purge 240,000 voters from the state’s voting rolls before this November’s presidential election. Periodically updating voter rolls to remove those who no longer live in-state is a legitimate practice.
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