(DailyDig.com) – Judge Everett Mitchell, a circuit judge from Dane County, Wisconsin, temporarily issued an injunction on June 25 to allow voters who are disabled to electronically obtain their ballots for the November election at home.
The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, Disability Rights Wisconsin, and four disabled voters initiated the lawsuit, which led to the judge’s ruling. They filed the lawsuit against the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) in April 2024. The lawsuit claims that Wisconsin’s statutes prohibit disabled voters from electronically receiving their ballots, marking them with their choices, and returning them to their polling location from home electronically.
The ballots will be delivered to the voters through their email service, according to a news website. The disabled voters can then mail their filled-in ballots prior to election day, with enough time to ensure their timely delivery. They may also bring them to their polling place where they will be given assistance.
The original plan was to have this feature in place prior to the primary election in August and the general election in November. Instead, they changed the temporary injunction motion to only apply to the general election. This change was made because Wisconsin Elections Commission administrator Meagan Wolfe stated that the plan could only be implemented in time for the November election.
Wolfe said in a filing to the court that any change, no matter how small, usually necessitates nearly three months to make changes. If the change is involved and complicated, it will take nearly one year to complete. When an absentee ballot request is approved, the clerks typically dispatch the ballots 47 days prior to the election date. The clerks will first mail the ballots to the voters for the November election in the middle of September.
The lawsuit is seeking the ballots to be returned electronically, but due to the time required to implement these changes, the temporary injunction only permits the disabled voters to receive the ballots in that manner.
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