This story was being repeated around the state as county elections offices, overwhelmed by the unprecedented number of absentee ballot applications, were amassing a backlog of unanswered requests.
Additionally, there were some instances where miscommunications between the post office and the elections office led to ballots being returned to the sender, rather than delivered to the applicant.
BLOC joined other advocacy groups that were filing lawsuits, arguing for a delay of the election until absentee ballots arrived and safe participation could be guaranteed.
Just five days before the election, a landslide of events contributed to further chaos.
A ruling on April 2 by U.S. District Judge William Conley recognized that the delay in getting absentee ballots to voters would deal a significant blow to the election’s integrity. But believing that changing the date of the election was not within his purview, Conley instead decided to extend the deadline for the return of absentee ballots. Under his order, the April 7 election date wouldn’t be changed, but voters would be allowed to return their absentee ballots up to April 13.
The Republican National Committee joined the state Republican Party and the Republican-led State Legislature in filing an appeal to Conley’s order the very same day.
Elections officials, meanwhile, now had the additional task of including instructions about the new April 13 deadline with the absentee ballots they were trying to push out.
Then on April 3, Governor Evers called for a special session of the Legislature, asking that the state’s lawmakers cancel in-person voting due to coronavirus concerns. He also asked for an extension of the deadline for mail-in ballots.
But the Republican leadership in the Wisconsin Legislature declined to convene. In a joint statement, Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald accused Evers of “feckless leadership” and caving to “national liberal special interest groups.”
“Hundreds of thousands of workers are going to their jobs every day, serving in essential roles in our society,” they continued. “There’s no question that an election is just as important as getting take-out food.”
The Republican leaders insisted that the election be held as originally intended.
April 6, the day before the election, was filled with a series of events that surely caused whiplash among Wisconsin’s electorate:
Apparently deciding that he did have authority after all, Evers issued an executive order that would postpone the election for two months.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court, in a 4-2 vote, quickly batted the Governor’s order down.
And later in the day, in a 5-4 vote that split along the ideological lines Americans have come to expect, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Judge Conley’s decision to extend the deadline for returning absentee ballots.
“This court has repeatedly emphasized that lower federal courts should ordinarily not alter the election rules on the eve of an election,” the SCOTUS decision said.
And so, on election day, the people who had requested but never received their ballots by mail turned out in spite of the pandemic. In spite of the drastically reduced number of polling places. In spite of the hours-long lines that stretched out of the polling places, down the street, and in some cases went on for many blocks. In spite of the rain showers passing through.