MADISON, Wis. – A Wisconsin judge is expected to consider Monday whether to allow people with disabilities to vote electronically from home in the swing state this fall.
Disability Rights Wisconsin, the League of Women Voters and four people with disabilities filed a lawsuit in April demanding that people with disabilities be able to vote electronically from home.
They asked Dane County Circuit Judge Everett Mitchell to issue a temporary injunction before the lawsuit is resolved, granting accommodation in the state’s Aug. 13 primary and November presidential election. Mitchell has scheduled a hearing for Monday on the injunction.
Questions about who can vote absentee and where they can do so have become a political flash point in Wisconsin, where four of the last six presidential elections have been decided by less than a percentage point.
Any eligible voter can vote by paper ballot in Wisconsin. Democrats have pushed to make the process easier in recent years, while Republicans have tried to limit it. The liberal-leaning state Supreme Court is considering whether to overturn a ruling that prohibits absentee ballot boxes which was issued by an earlier, conservative-leaning version of the court.
Those suing for the right to vote via electronic voting include Donald Natzke of Shorewood and Michael Christopher of Madison, both of whom are blind; Stacy Ellingen of Oshkosh, who has cerebral palsy; and Tyler Engel of Madison, who has spinal muscular atrophy.
They argue that many people with disabilities cannot vote on paper without assistance, violating their right to protect the secrecy of their votes. They say allowing electronic accessibility devices in their homes would allow them to vote without assistance.
They also point out that military and overseas voters are allowed to vote electronically in Wisconsin elections. People with disabilities should have the same opportunity under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Federal Rehabilitation Act, which prohibits all organizations that receive financial assistance from discriminating on the basis of disability, they argue.
People with disabilities make up about a quarter of the U.S. adult population, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Slightly more than one million adults in Wisconsin, or one in four, are disabled, defined by the CDC as having difficulties with mobility, cognition, independent living, hearing, vision, dressing or bathing.
People with disabilities have fought several legal battles in recent years over access to the polls, as many Republican-led states have restricted how and when people can vote. Among the issues they fought for were the limits of the types of assistance a voter can receive and whether someone else can return the ballot sent by the voter.
People with disabilities in Wisconsin were allowed to vote electronically from home until 2011, when then-Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, signed a GOP-authored bill that restricted electronic voting to military and overseas voters only.
Doug Poland, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said he has no estimate of how many people with disabilities will be able to vote electronically from home in the August and November elections if the judge issues the injunction.
A federal court sided with disability rights activists in 2022 and said the Voting Rights Act applies to Wisconsin voters who need assistance mailing or delivering their absentee ballots due to a disability. The ruling overturned a 4-3 decision by the then-conservative-leaning Wisconsin Supreme Court that only the voters themselves They can return the ballot in person or mail it in.
Despite the opinion of former President Donald Trump False allegations that he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden because the race was rigged, voter fraud is extremely rare in the United States. One Associated Press review of every potential case of voter fraud in six swing states where Trump challenged the 2020 results, they found fewer than 475 cases, which were not enough to influence the outcome.
