1/ THREAD: Background on purging voter rolls in Wisconsin. A circuit court judge in conservative Ozaukee County ordered the purge of 234,00 voters from the rolls. jsonline.com/story/news/pol… #wipolitics #votingrights
2/ The conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) sought an injunction to purge the rolls within 30 days of voters who may have moved. A state election board notified these voters by letter in October to update their addresses.
3/ Three voters sought a purge of the rolls with WILL's representation. (Taxpayer standing for causes of action is relatively expansive in Wisconsin.)
4/ The statute states that registration shall be changed from eligible to ineligible if there is *reliable* information that someone has moved. docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statu…
5/But the database used, ERIC, is unreliable. urbanmilwaukee.com/2019/11/29/lwv…
6/ If conservatives (and the court) were simply 'following the law' they would have addressed thoroughly whether ERIC is reliable, as that's an express requirement of the statute.
7/ 6/ Although these taxpayer-plaintiffs sought an injunction, Circuit Judge Malloy issued a writ of mandamus, a more assertive action in which a court orders that something be done by an official or agency (in this case, the elections board) to purge the rolls.
8/ The purge will have a disproportionate impact on Democratic voters, and the letters went to about 7% of *all registered voters* - a significant proportion jsonline.com/story/news/pol…
9/ Many of these letters went to college towns, like my own city of Whitewater, Wisconsin - where the local campus population is a majority of the city. In Whitewater, about *17* of registered voters received the letter.
10/ Some reporting suggests that this purge will impact the presidential election, but it will have a more *immediate* effect: the purge would happen before Wisconsin's spring supreme court race, where a GOP-backed incumbent (Justice Dan Kelly) is vulnerable.
11/ The Wisconsin Supreme Court now has a 5-2 conservative split; if conservative Kelly is defeated, it would be more narrow a 4-3 split.
12/ There is sure to be an appeal. /END
