A number of writers have explained the motivations of the RNC in the matter of the Wisconsin vote yesterday. Here’s Eric Levitz of New York Intelligencer:
In the next year or two, Wisconsin will redraw all its electoral maps to comport with the new Census. And Evers will have the power to veto any gerrymander the legislature enacts. But Republicans could reject that veto, and bring a lawsuit claiming that the legislature has sole authority over redistricting. And if the conservative majority on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court buys that argument — just as it bought the GOP’s case for the constitutionality of voter-ID laws and union-busting measures (that together likely cost Hillary Clinton the Badger State in 2016) — then it will be game over. And Democrats will be all but incapable of governing Wisconsin before 2030. …
All of which is to say: Wisconsin Republicans are disenfranchising voters by holding an election mid-pandemic (while blocking measures that would allow all interested voters to safely cast ballots from home) so as to preserve their ability to disenfranchise voters through an egregious partisan gerrymander — and also, potentially, a voting-roll purge. …
As election law expert Rick Hasen recently observed, “only 38% of voters who had requested an absentee ballot in heavily Democratic Milwaukee County had returned one, compared with over 56% of absentee voters in nearby Republican-leaning Waukesha County.” In other words, the GOP has reason to believe that it has banked a solid lead in the absentee vote, and therefore has nothing to gain — but potentially, a State Supreme Court seat to lose — by allowing an extra week of absentee voting.
This will also continue the polarization of left and right in Wisconsin, unless a large number of voters die. That will not happen, I very much hope, so I think Wisconsin’s going to remain a bubbling cesspool of toxic-stupid politics.
