Federal Appeals Court Upholds State Republican's Voting Restrictions
Tuesday, July 7th, 2020 -- 11:12 AM
(AP) -A federal appeals court panel upheld a host of Republican-authored voting restrictions in Wisconsin on Monday, handing conservatives a significant win in a pair of lawsuits just months before residents in the battleground state cast their ballots for president.The three-judge panel, all Republican appointees, found that the state can restrict early voting hours and restored a requirement that people must live in a district for 28 days, not 10, before they can vote. The panel also said emailing and faxing absentee ballots is unconstitutional. The state’s photo ID requirement for voters wasn’t in question, although the panel did find that expired student IDs are acceptable at the polls. The court blocked an option to allow people to vote without an ID if they show an affidavit saying they tried to obtain one. Judge Frank Easterbrook, who wrote the opinion, noted that the restrictions don’t burden people in the state, where voters still enjoy more ways to register, long poll hours on Election Day and absentee voting options than in other states. “Wisconsin has lots of rules that make voting easier,” Easterbrook wrote. “These facts matter when assessing challenges to a handful of rules that make voting harder.” State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, a Republican who is running for Congress this fall, called the decision a win for fair elections.
“The ruling puts municipalities in every corner of Wisconsin closer to equal footing when it comes to early in-person voting,” Fitzgerald said. “I applaud the 7th Circuit on its decision and look forward to moving on with this Fall’s elections.” Democrats railed against the decision, calling it an “assault on our democracy.” “As (President Donald) Trump and his team become increasingly nervous for November, a Republican-controlled court just made another egregious assault on voting rights in Wisconsin,” state Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler said. “Trump knows his path to victory involves suppressing the vote as much as possible, and as we saw on April 7 when Republicans forced thousands of people to vote in-person during a pandemic, there is no low they aren’t willing to stoop to to grab power.”
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