A group of disabled people in Madison, Wisconsin, had to file a lawsuit in Dane County Circuit Court in order to be able to cast an electronic absentee ballot in future elections. But it doesn’t look like it will make any difference in time for the 2024 presidential election.
Some disabled people can’t cast an absentee ballot in the traditional way. They can’t mark a printed ballot, put it in an envelope, and return it without the assistance of another person. This mostly applies to blind people, who typically need someone to read the printed ballot to them. But some disabled people who can see just fine, like me, may still need assistance because we don’t have the arm strength and/or dexterity to do all of that.
So if disabled people vote absentee—which we often choose to do because of a lack of accessible transportation or because our polling places aren’t accessible or whatever —we can’t do so privately and independently using a paper ballot.
The solution is simple. Thirty-one states, along with the District of Columbia, allow military and overseas voters to receive, cast, and return ballots electronically, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Wisconsin is one of them.
The plaintiffs said in their lawsuit, which was filed in April, that thirteen states have already allowed voters with disabilities to cast absentee ballots by email or through an online portal. They have sought the legal right to do the same, charging that the state of Wisconsin violates the federal Americans with Disabilities Act by denying voters that accommodation.
In June, a judge issued a temporary injunction in favor of the plaintiffs. He ordered the Wisconsin Elections Commission to email absentee ballots starting with the November 2024 election to Wisconsin voters “who self-certify to having a print disability and who request from their municipal clerk an electronically delivered absentee ballot in lieu of mailing.”
However, the ruling stipulated that these ballots could not be returned electronically and would still have to be printed out and mailed in.
Lawyers for the Republican-controlled state legislature have since appealed the judge’s decision and asked him to not enforce his ruling while the appeal is pending. In August, he refused this request.
Not long after, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals ruled in favor of lawyers for the legislature and granted them what the other judge would not grant them by putting his order on hold. There will be more legal maneuvering in the future so things may change again. But as things stand now, the Wisconsin Elections Commission will not have to do anything to make voting absentee easier and more fair for people with disabilities.
The effects of this case may well reverberate far beyond the borders of Wisconsin, which is a key battleground swing state. Republican pushback against these accessibility accommodations is yet another example of how forces in some states seem determined to make it harder for people who aren’t seen as reliably Republican voters to cast their ballots. I believe that’s why the Republican-controlled Wisconsin state legislature has been fighting back in this case. I don’t believe that they give a damn about election integrity. They just want to win, by any means necessary.
So there’s a lot at stake here.