MADISON, Wis. — In the swing state of Wisconsin, a judge is set to decide on Monday whether to let disabled people vote online from home this fall.
Right to a Disability In April, four disabled people, the League of Women Voters, and the state of Wisconsin sued to demand that disabled people be able to electronically cast their absentee votes from home.
As a temporary measure until the case is over, they asked Dane County Circuit Judge Everett Mitchell to allow the accommodation in the state’s primary election on August 13 and its presidential election in November. Mitchell set a meeting for Monday to talk about the injunction.
There are arguments in Wisconsin about who can and cannot vote postal ballots and where they can do so. This is because four of the last six presidential elections were decided by less than a percentage point.
In Wisconsin, anyone who is registered to vote can use a paper absentee ballot. Over the past few years, Democrats have worked to make the process easier while Republicans have pushed to make it harder. The state’s liberally leaning Supreme Court is thinking about whether to overturn a decision made by a conservatively leaning court in the past that banned absentee vote drop boxes.
The people who are suing want to be able to use an electronic absentee vote. They are Donald Natzke from Shorewood and Michael Christopher from Madison; Stacy Ellingen from Oshkosh has cerebral palsy; and Tyler Engel from Madison has spinal muscular atrophy.
They say that a lot of disabled people can’t use paper ballots without help, which is against their right to keep their votes secret. They say that if computer accessibility devices were allowed in their homes, they would be able to vote without help.
Also, they say that service members and people living outside of Wisconsin can use electronic absentee ballots to vote in elections. They say that the Americans with Disabilities Act and the federal Rehabilitation Act should give disabled people the same chances because they don’t allow groups that get federal money to discriminate based on disability.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that about one-fourth of all adults in the United States have a disability. A little more than a million Wisconsin people, or one in four, are disabled. The CDC defines disability as having trouble with hearing, seeing, moving around, thinking, living on your own, dressing, or bathing.
In the past few years, disabled people have been in a number of court cases over their ability to get to the polls. This is because many states run by Republicans have limited how and when people can vote. One problem they have fought over is whether someone else can return a voter’s mailed ballot and whether there should be limits on the types of help a voter can get.
Before 2011, disabled people in Wisconsin could vote electronically from home. But that changed when Republican Gov. Scott Walker signed a bill written by Republicans that only let military and foreign voters vote electronically.
Doug Poland, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said he didn’t know how many disabled people might be able to vote electronically from home in August and November if the judge gives the temporary injunction.
In 2022, a federal court agreed with disability rights activists and said that the Voting Rights Act applies to Wisconsin voters who need help mailing or sending their absentee ballot because they have a disability. The finding went against a conservative 4-3 decision made by the Wisconsin Supreme Court at the time that said voters are the only ones who can mail or return their ballot.
Voter fraud is very rare in the United States, despite what former President Donald Trump said, which was not true, that he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden because the race was fixed. The Associated Press looked into every possible case of voter fraud in six battleground states where Trump challenged the 2020 election results. They found less than 475 cases, which wasn’t nearly enough to change the outcome.