A Wisconsin judge has ruled that more than 200,000 voters who failed to respond to an October mailing, flagging them for having potentially moved, must have their names stricken from the registration rolls.
A lawsuit, filed on behalf of three Wisconsin voters by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL), alleged that the Wisconsin Election Commission was not following the law when they allowed a two-year grace period to go by for residents who had moved to change their address. The commission sent a mailer asking people to update their addresses. About 234,000 failed to respond in the 30-day window.
The judge, Paul Malloy, denied a request by Election Commission attorneys to put his decision on hold. He ordered the Commission to follow the law requiring voters who didn’t respond to be deactivated.
Instead of obeying the law, the WEC sued.
“Instead of reversing course, the Wisconsin Election Commission has stubbornly doubled down. This lawsuit is about accountability, the rule of law, and clean and fair elections.”
The case is important for both sides ahead of the 2020 presidential race in narrowly divided Wisconsin, which President Donald Trump won by fewer than 23,000 votes in 2016. Liberals fear the voters who could be purged are more likely to be Democrats. Republicans argue allowing them to remain on the rolls increases the risk of voter fraud.
The WEC, which has an equal number of Republicans and Democrats, is fighting the lawsuit. It argues that the law gives it the power to decide how to manage the voter registration list.
This seems a pretty straightforward house cleaning task that in normal times wouldn’t get a second look from anyone. But, of course, it’s seen by the left as “voter suppression” because dead people and people who have moved — perhaps to another state — didn’t respond to the mailer.
I guess most of the dead people are Democrats.
Malloy gave a sensible reason for his ruling.
“I don’t want to see anybody deactivated, but I don’t write the legislation,” Malloy said. “If you don’t like it, then I guess you have to go back to the Legislature. They didn’t do that.”
If you think the law suppresses votes, then change the law. Malloy isn’t a liberal judge who believes you can just make the law up as you go along.
As of Dec. 5, only about 16,500 of those who received the mailing had registered at their new address. More than 170,000 hadn’t responded, and the postal service was unable to deliver notifications to nearly 60,000 voters.
If the post office can’t deliver the mail to an address where you’re registered to vote, that’s a pretty good sign that you’ve moved or are dead. But we should keep them on the rolls because…Democrats say so.
The Democrats on the commission claim that the last batch of people who were dropped from the rolls under similar circumstances was confused and angry and that there were complaints. No word if they have any proof at all of any of that.
With registering to vote so ridiculously easy — same-day registration is allowed in Wisconsin — you have to wonder why there’s any controversy here at all. The reason is simple: it allows Democrats to scare voters into thinking that Republicans don’t want them to vote. Maintaining accurate and up-to-date voter registration rolls is critical to holding a clean election.
So why are Democrats so hysterically opposed?
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