The Latest from Wisconsin

Associated Press:

Voters lined up to cast ballots across Wisconsin on Tuesday, ignoring a stay-at-home order in the midst of a pandemic to participate in the state’s presidential primary election.

The lines were particularly long in Milwaukee, the state’s largest city and a Democratic stronghold, where just five of the 180 traditional polling places were open. Many voters across the state did not have facial coverings, ignoring public health recommendations. The National Guard — and some Republican officials who resisted efforts to postpone the election — were called in to help run voting sites after thousands of election workers stepped down fearing for their safety.

Polls were scheduled to close at 8 p.m. CDT, although results were not expected Tuesday night. In the wake of a legal battle over whether to conduct the election as scheduled, a court ruling appeared to prevent results from being made public earlier than next Monday.

The chaos in Wisconsin, a premiere general-election battleground, underscored the lengths to which the coronavirus outbreak has upended politics as Democrats seek a nominee to take on President Donald Trump this fall. As the first state to hold a presidential primary contest in three weeks, Wisconsin becomes a test case for dozens of states struggling to balance public health concerns with voting rights in the turbulent 2020 election season.

...
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers issued an executive order Monday afternoon to postpone the election. Less than four hours later, the state Supreme Court sided with Republicans who said Evers didn’t have the authority to reschedule the race on his own.

Robert Barnes at Washington Post:

The Supreme Court on Monday night split along ideological lines to stop a plan for extended absentee voting in Tuesday’s Wisconsin primary, turning aside pleas from Democrats that thousands of the state’s voters will be disenfranchised because of disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

The ruling was 5 to 4, with the court’s conservatives in the majority.

The decision followed a familiar pattern on the court. But it was striking that in a case with partisan implications in the midst of a national crisis, the court could not find a way to overcome its usual differences.

In its brief order, the court majority said a plan ordered by a district judge and approved by an appeals court to extend absentee voting for a week was “extraordinary relief and would fundamentally alter the nature of the election.”

A “critical” point, it said, was that the relief was more than had been asked for by Democrats and liberal groups.

The unsigned opinion by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh granted a request from the Republican Party to put the plan on hold.

The lower court’s decision “contravened this court’s precedents” and violated the Supreme Court’s repeated instruction that “lower federal courts should ordinarily not alter the election rules on the eve of an election.”

RBG dissented:

NEW: SCOTUS says ballots must be postmarked by April 7 in order to count in WI.

Ginsburg says in dissent: "the Court’s order, I fear, will result in massive disenfranchisement...tens of thousands of voters who timely requested ballots are unlikely to receive them by April 7..." pic.twitter.com/ocbjMxAYmZ

— Vanita Gupta (@vanitaguptaCR) April 6, 2020