MADISON — The Wisconsin Supreme Court heard two voting-related lawsuits on Tuesday that could impact privacy and accessibility for some Wisconsinites.
The first case asks justices to decide whether it’s considered a public record when a judge sends notice to the Wisconsin Elections Commission that they have declared someone ineligible to vote due to incompetency.
The conservative Wisconsin Voter Alliance, which previously filed two failed lawsuits seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election, brought the lawsuit after requesting incompetency notices from county courts. Lower courts couldn’t agree on whether the forms were public records, since court documents related to guardianship cases are confidential.
Samuel Hall Jr., an attorney representing the Walworth County court official named in the lawsuit, said Tuesday that an appeals court decision in favor of the Wisconsin Voter Alliance “blasts open the door for the personal information of some of the most vulnerable people in our communities to be broadcast not only to those with noble and good intentions but to those who might do these folks harm.”
Watch: Wisconsin Supreme Court hears two voting lawsuits
The Wisconsin Voter Alliance wants to compare lists of people declared incompetent with voter rolls because it believes people who are ineligible to vote may be used to commit election fraud. Multiple reviews of recent Wisconsin elections have found no evidence of widespread fraud.
“What we want is eligible people to vote and people who are adjudicated by a circuit court judge ineligible to vote, not to vote,” the group’s attorney, Erick Kardaal, said in court.
The second case challenges the city of Racine’s use of a van as a mobile early voting site in 2022. Republicans argue state law prohibits the use of mobile voting sites and say the van was sent primarily to Democratic-leaning wards. Early voting locations must not favor one political party over another under state law.
“The use of the van is unlawful,” said conservative attorney Lucas Vebber. “Only fixed, physical buildings are intended to be used as sites.”
In addition to determining whether mobile voting sites are illegal, the Supreme Court could use its ruling in this case to offer guidance to clerks on how they should interpret the law when choosing where to place early voting sites.
Republicans argue that a provision in state law requiring early voting sites to be located “as near as practicable” to the clerk’s office means they should typically be located in the same ward or require an analysis of voting trends in other wards.
“If early voting sites have to be packed into one single ward, that’s going to make it much, much more difficult for our constituents and our voters to get to that ward and to find transportation,” said Democratic National Committee attorney Charles Curtis.
The court’s decision in the mobile voting case won’t affect the administration of the 2024 presidential race due to an order the court issued earlier this year keeping a lower court’s ban on mobile voting sites in place through the November election and allowing clerks to continue placing early voting sites as they always have.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court is expected to issue its decisions in both cases in the coming months.
