In a Victory for Voters, Wisconsin Judge Rejects Bid to Upend Certain Aspects of Absentee Voting Process
A Wisconsin judge today rejected a right-wing lawsuit that sought to upend certain aspects of the state’s absentee voting process and impose additional burdens on voters and election officials ahead of the state’s upcoming August primary elections.
In a complaint filed in February, Amberg resident Thomas Oldenburg asserted that all individuals who request an absentee ballot via the state’s online voting portal, MyVote, must be required to return a signed copy of that request alongside their completed absentee ballot for their vote to count.
Additionally, the suit asked the court to prohibit the use of an absentee ballot envelope approved by the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) last August that doubles as a voter’s official absentee ballot request — an envelope design that Oldenburg claimed would “exacerbate and foment election fraud.”
Prior to today’s oral ruling, the judge granted Oldenburg’s request to temporarily block the WEC-approved ballot envelope as litigation proceeded on whether to permanently ban the use of the envelope. Today’s order vacates the temporary injunction, thereby reinstating the use of WEC’s envelope for the state’s upcoming Aug. 13 primary and November general election.
In a press release following the unanimous approval of the new envelope last summer, WEC said the design would “provide voters with a more user-friendly way to vote absentee in upcoming elections.”
But Oldenburg argued that the new envelope flouted Wisconsin law and could not serve as a legally viable replacement for a signed copy of one’s original absentee ballot request.
WEC urged the court to dismiss the case, writing in a court filing that altering the state’s absentee voting rules “would risk disenfranchising tens or even hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin voters in upcoming elections, a stunningly undemocratic result that could not be undone even if Defendants were to prevail on appeal.”
The Democratic National Committee (DNC), which intervened in the litigation, described Oldenburg’s sweeping request “an eleventh-hour attack on absentee voting” that could result in the disenfranchisement of thousands of Wisconsinites who request absentee ballots through the MyVote portal.
According to the DNC, the MyVote system, upon receiving a request for an absentee ballot, transmits that request form to local election officials rather than the actual voter. In turn, the committee argued that it would’ve been extremely difficult for hundreds of thousands of absentee voters to themselves meet the burdensome standards that Oldenburg sought to impose.
The DNC noted in a court brief that “MyVote has been a rousing success and a widely used tool for eligible voters,” describing how in April, 54% “of the 362,353 voters who requested absentee ballots during the spring election and presidential preference primary…used MyVote to do so.”
Prior to Oldenburg’s most recent lawsuit, his attorneys posed an unsuccessful legal challenge on behalf of a different plaintiff who hoped to invalidate the use of the MyVote portal as a means of requesting absentee ballots.
And in 2020, both the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a post-election lawsuit from the Trump Campaign that aimed to toss out thousands of in-person absentee ballots in heavily Democratic counties on the grounds that the ballot envelopes could not double as ballot request forms.
In today’s ruling tossing the suit, the judge also denied Oldenburg’s request to impose sanctions on WEC officials, whom he claimed were not complying with the court’s temporary restraining order.
The decision comes on the heels of many other voting rights victories in Wisconsin this election cycle, including the state Supreme Court’s reversal of a previous ban on secure ballot drop boxes and a court of appeals ruling that is expected to significantly reduce mail-in ballot rejections.