Federal appeals court upholds Wisconsin right to restrict voting hours

A three-judge federal appeals court panel confirmed several voting restrictions implemented by Wisconsin Republicans on Monday.

The panel, all appointed by the Republican Party, allowed the state to restrict early voting hours and require 28 days of residence in a district to vote, instead of 10, The Associated Press reported. The panel had not accepted the state’s photo identification requirement for voters, but said voters can submit expired student IDs or vote without identification if they file an affidavit stating that they attempted to obtain one.

“Wisconsin has many rules that make voting easier,” said Judge Frank Easterbrook, who wrote the opinion, according to the AP. “These facts are important when evaluating challenges to a handful of rules that make voting difficult.”

State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R), a congressional candidate, said the decision “puts municipalities in every corner of Wisconsin closer to a level playing field when it comes to early voting in person”.

However, state Democrats criticized the ruling for allowing voter suppression in a key state to President TrumpDonald John Trump Top intelligence officials issue statements criticizing the leak of information about Russian rewards. Information on Russian rewards was included in Trump’s daily briefing: Reports that Senators will have access to intelligence about Russian rewards on US troops MOREThe 2016 victory is likely to be crucial again in November. The president won the Badger State by approximately 22,000 votes, one of the state’s slimmest margin of victory.

“As Trump and his team get more and more nervous for November, a Republican-controlled court has just carried out another vicious assault on voting rights in Wisconsin,” state Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler said, according to the AP. “Trump knows that his path to victory is to suppress the vote as much as possible, and as we saw on April 7, when Republicans forced thousands of people to vote in person during a pandemic, there is nothing under that they are not willing to lower themselves. ” to take power. “

Republicans implemented many of the restrictions after achieving a trifecta in state government in the 2010 elections. After two 2016 rulings that allowed affidavits rather than photo IDs, as well as another ruling that allowed the Voter ID requirement, but rejected other requirements, Democrats won all state offices on the ballot in 2018.