A Marinette County judge on Friday slapped a temporary restraining order on the Wisconsin Elections Commission in a lawsuit alleging the election regulator puts Badger State voters in the untenable position of committing election fraud or opting not to cast an absentee ballot.
The litigation is the latest in a long line of complaints against a dysfunctional elections commission and its embattled administrator, an agency that has had trouble following Wisconsin election law over its tumultuous existence. WEC’s latest controversial decision could prove costly to voters and taxpayers alike.
Judge James Morrison issued the temporary restraining order, enjoining WEC from requiring that Wisconsin’s approximately 1,900 local election clerks use suspect absentee ballot envelopes while the court deliberates on the merits of the complaint.
The lawsuit was brought on behalf of a Wisconsin voter by Attorneys Kevin Scott and Daniel Eastman.
The complaint alleges that in approving new ballot envelopes recommended by WEC staff, the commission violated Wisconsin election law. If used, the envelopes “would cause voters to falsely certify that the ballot envelope itself is an original or a copy of the ballot request generated through MyVote when it is not in any way.”
“By forcing people to falsely certify that the return envelope itself is a copy of a completely different document, WEC created a situation where people who requested absentee ballots through MyVote were either committing election fraud by making a false statement in conjunction with voting a ballot, or were forced to not vote absentee —
