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UPDATE: On Dec. 3, 2020, the Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected President Donald J. Trump’s last-minute bid to upend the state’s election results and refused to consider his legal team’s claims of hundreds of thousands of unlawfully cast ballots.
The day after Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers certified his state’s 2020 general election results — which put President-elect Joseph R. Biden on top of incumbent President Donald J. Trump by about 20,700 votes — Trump’s legal team filed a lawsuit to try to overturn the results.
Trump’s lawyers skipped over the lower courts and filed a petition directly with the Wisconsin Supreme Court on Tuesday arguing to have some 221,000 ballots cast in Milwaukee and Dane counties thrown out. Those are the same two counties in which Trump ordered a recount, and they are the only two in the state that lean Democratic.
Trump is not contesting any ballots cast in the other, majority-Republican counties.
He also wants the state’s supreme court to order the governor to rescind the vote certification.
Evers responded Tuesday night, telling the court Trump’s petition amounts to a “shocking and outrageous assault on democracy,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
Specifically, Trump wants the Wisconsin Supreme Court to throw out:
- 170,140 absentee ballots cast during the 14-day period prior to Election Day when in-person absentee voting was allowed, but for which no written application is on file. Wisconsin residents who vote in-person early first fill out a certification envelope that acts as the “written record.” Most requests these days are made online, though, the Associated Press reported, so the written record is no longer always on paper.
- 28,395 absentee ballots cast by residents who declared themselves “indefinitely confined” under the law, which exempted them from having to show any photo ID to cast their ballots. In March, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in another case that voters have the power to deem themselves confined without need of outside approval. More voters than ever declared themselves confined this year due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
- 17,271 absentee ballots submitted at what Trump’s lawyers call “illegal voting sites” set up in the state’s capital, Madison, by city officials. The temporary ballot drop-off sites were set up in 220 public parks and manned by poll workers as part of the city’s Democracy In the Park program. The effort was meant to help voters avoid crowds and circumvent the postal service and mail delays that had been widely reported.
- 5,517 ballots on which election clerks filled in missing address information on the certification envelope, a practice that has reportedly been in place for more than 10 of the state’s previous elections.
In his response to Trump’s arguments and request to disqualify the votes, Evers said the “relief” Trump wants is “wrong as a matter of law, incorrect as a matter of fact, and mistaken as a matter of procedure.”
“By focusing on alleged technical violations in only two counties, he has made plain that his intent is not to fairly determine who Wisconsinites voted for to lead our country,” the governor’s team’s response said. “He is simply trying to seize Wisconsin’s electoral votes, even though he lost the statewide election.”
Wisconsin has 10 Electoral College votes.
Evers and the state’s lawyers also argued Trump could and should have raised the challenges before the election, not after it.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court is considering two other lawsuits challenging the state’s election results, brought by La Crosse County Republican Party chairman Bill Feehan and unsuccessful Congressional candidate Derrick Van Orden. Both lawsuits make many of the same arguments as Trump’s.
Wisconsin’s vote certification came after recounts — which the Trump campaign paid $3 million for — were conducted in Milwaukee and Dane counties, according to CNBC. The recounts did not result in any net gain for Trump.
The petition in Wisconsin is only the latest in a long string of lawsuits and legal actions taken by Trump in the nation’s battleground states — including Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona — where Biden beat him. Trump has refused to concede the race despite the fact that Biden garnered 51.3% of the national popular vote and is on course to receive 306 Electoral College votes to Trump’s 232.
The Electoral College is scheduled to convene Dec. 14. Congress is scheduled to count the votes Jan. 6. Inauguration day is Jan. 20, 2021.
Did you cast a ballot in Milwaukee or Dane county in Wisconsin? What do you think about efforts being made to disqualify votes there? Tell us about it in the comment section below.
Trump is represented in the Wisconsin election results case by James R. Troupis of Troupis Law Office LLC and R. George Burnett of Conway, Olejniczak & Jerry SC.
The Wisconsin Election Results Lawsuit is Donald J. Trump, et al. v. Anthony S. Evers, et al., Appeal No. 2020AP001971-OA, in the Supreme Court of Wisconsin.
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