Why did Wisconsin Republicans contest rulings that would have extended voting in the primary? All I can find in the news are the personal hardship stories of people having to go to a reduced number of very crowded polling places and the risk that puts everyone under. I hear none of the rationale of the Rs for position. Just that they objected to extensions.
What is the MSM not reporting?
A far left lib college buddy asked me about this. He lives in Chicago. Here was my email to him. Maybe this helps.
This election fiasco is a giant clusterfuck, and its because Tony Evers is trying political gamesmanship.
Last fall US Congressman Sean Duffy resigned - they had a daughter born with special needs and he needed to be home. His district is a massive district up in the North Woods, covering something like 26 counties. That area is mostly conservative.
Evers could have put that election for Duffy’s seat as part of tomorrow’s election. But he didn’t want to do that. So he initially scheduled a primary for MONDAY December 30, with the general on MONDAY January 27. Who schedules elections on Mondays? Those dates were thrown out by the courts.
The most major election so far this year is tomorrow. The presidential primary is important, but the big election is the Wisconsin Supreme Court election between Justice Dan Kelly and a liberal judge challenger Jill Karofsky. Evers didn’t want to have a large conservative turnout to vote for Judge Kelly, so he deferred the vote for Duffy’s seat until May, hoping that not a lot of Republicans will show up because the Trump primary has no challengers, so they won’t come out to vote for Kelly.
Milwaukee and Dane Counties (heavy liberal turnout) had early voting a week earlier than any other county. Typically that gives democrats a huge advantage for early/absentee balloting. So as late as last Tuesday, March 31, Evers said the vote should go on on April 7, and he also said that even if he wanted to he couldn’t change the date.
So what changed? Not Covid-19. The situation is no different than last week. The only thing that changed was conservative collar counties outperformed in absentee and early voting - Tarianne and I early voted the week of 3/16. So then Evers calls on the legislature to meet on Saturday - 3 days before the election - to postpone it. They did not agree to make such a radical change 3 days before the election. Then today - 1 day before the election, he made the illegal move to cancel the election and move it to June. The Wisconsin Supreme Court decided today that Evers had no Constitutional authority to make a change in the election. And the US Supreme Court today reversed the Seventh Circuit that last week added a week to the election for absentee ballots, so people could literally vote AFTER Election Day. That was a ridiculous overreach, and SCOTUS agreed.
It’s a mess. I agree with the election being finalized tomorrow.