A conservative justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court accused the court’s liberal majority on Thursday of going too far in an election case, saying they were acting more like lawyers for the Democratic Party than neutral judges.
The case was brought by the Democratic National Committee (DNC). They want to block Green Party candidate Jill Stein from being on the ballot in Wisconsin by challenging the legitimacy of her electors.
The court decided to take up the DNC’s case, but Justices Rebecca Bradley and Annette Ziegler strongly disagreed with the majority’s decision. Bradley said the majority was “stepping beyond its neutral role” and seemed to be helping the DNC get the case reviewed quickly.
The legal battle started when David Strang, the DNC’s deputy operations director, filed a complaint saying the Wisconsin Green Party doesn’t have qualified electors, which would violate state election laws. When Wisconsin’s election officials dismissed the complaint, Strang took it to the state’s Supreme Court, which has a liberal majority, asking them to remove Stein from the ballot.
Despite these challenges, there is history on Stein’s side. The Wisconsin Green Party was on the ballot in 2022, and Jill Stein received 30,000 votes in the state during the 2016 presidential election. In Wisconsin, small margins can make a big difference—four of the last six presidential elections were decided by fewer than 1% of the votes.
Rick Esenberg, President and General Counsel of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL), said this effort by the DNC is an attempt to take away the votes of thousands of Wisconsin residents. He warned that a last-minute decision by the Supreme Court in favor of the DNC could harm people’s trust in elections.
WILL also pointed out that in 2020, the state’s election commission rejected the Green Party’s attempt to get on the ballot, and the state’s Supreme Court dismissed the party’s petition at that time as being too late.
The Wisconsin Green Party has said they haven’t yet had a chance to get a lawyer but will fight to stop efforts to silence voices in swing states. Jill Stein’s campaign manager, Jason Call, said they will get legal help and fight the case, even though they were given a very short deadline to respond. He criticized the court’s timeline, saying it seemed politically motivated by the liberal majority.
Stein’s campaign promised to defend her right to be on the ballot in Wisconsin and said they would work to prevent the DNC from using the courts to influence elections. They also plan to run candidates in every swing district and for all statewide offices to push back against what they see as unfair tactics.
The court gave the people named in the DNC’s complaint, including Wisconsin Elections Commission administrator Meagan Wolf and commission members, until 5 p.m. Friday to respond.
Municipal clerks in Wisconsin will start sending out absentee ballots on September 19.
