Pandemic-Caused Mail-in Ballot Push Reduces Effect of Frank Easterbrook Opinion Against Voting Rights

Madison, Wisconsin — Wisconsin pro-voting advocates are urging citizens to act now in an effort to help voters cast their votes and have their votes counted.

Public and private initiatives protecting this foundational right come as anti-voting forces aligned with the Republican Party use the COVID 19 crisis, litigation and sabotage of the U.S. Post Office to decrease voter turnout.

Prior to the Coronavius COVID 19 pandemic, Wisconsin voting rights workers noted with concern a then-pending voting rights case, decided in June 2020, Luft v Evers; One Wisconsin Institute, Inc. v Jacobs, (Nos. 16-3003, 16-3052).

Judge Frank Easterbrook, the anti-voting forces' go-to judge on the U.S Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, penned a bizarre opinion in this appellate circuit now overrun with Republican-appointed judges thanks to Senate Democrats' and Pres Obama's political incompetence.

Easterbrook writes that statutory discrimination against minorities is not discriminatory if discrete demographics vote in a similar political fashion and reside prominently in urban jurisdictions, Luft v Evers; One Wisconsin Institute, Inc. v Jacobs, (Nos. 16-3003, 16-3052), (Marley, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel). 

So, Easterbrook reasons, the Voting Rights Act and the First Amendment lose force if people who can be measured by the same ethnicity, also vote in an identical political fashion as targeted by statute.

Easterbrook reinstated Republican-enacted restrictions against early voting.

But the pandemic makes in-person, early voting a risky proposition.

Now, a massive, pandemic-induced absentee-ballot effort seeking to overcome other Republican anti-voting efforts likely will blunt the effect of anti-early-voting efforts like Luft by promoting early, mail-in ballots.

This pandemic, second-order effect on voting rights thus can be seen in isolation this election cycle as a happy accident following Luft v Evers; One Wisconsin Institute, Inc. v Jacobs.

Though Luft v Evers; One Wisconsin Institute, Inc. v Jacobs reinstated Republican-enacted restrictions on early, in-person voting, the decision is likely to have less importance now that a massive push for mail-in absentee voting has been launched after the pandemic hit.

The nonpartisan counteroffensive against Republicans is joined by election clerks in metro voting districts notes In These Times, pointing to public-private partnerships that have emerged in reaction against the Republican Party, (WISC-TV).