Federal judge refuses to postpone Wisconsin primary

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Federal judge refuses to postpone Wisconsin primary

Matthew Fischer | Texas Tech U. School of Law, US

April 3, 2020 06:32:45 am

US District Judge William Conley ordered Thursday that the Wisconsin primary must still be held on April 7 but added notable adjustments.

Conley heard three consolidated cases that were each filed in response to the growing concerns over COVID-19 and holding elections. The complaints brought a number of statutory requirements and election-related concerns to the court that Conley appeared to agree with as his opinion displays distaste for his own ruling.

Conley opened his opinion with stating that:

Contrary to the view of at least a dozen other states, as well as the consensus of medical experts across the country as to the gathering of large groups of people, the State of Wisconsin appears determined to proceed with an in-person election on April 7, 2020.

Conley shared his disappoint in Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers and the Republican-led legislature’s unwillingness to reschedule the election despite the obvious risk to the people.

During a hearing this week regarding this ruling, Conley indicated that he was uncomfortable overruling state leaders’ decision to carry on with the election date. Conley wrote,

as much as the court would prefer that the Wisconsin Legislature and Governor consider the public health ahead of any political considerations, that does not appear in the cards, nor is it appropriate for a federal district court to act as the state’s chief health official by taking that step for them.

Conley did however extend the deadline to submit absentee ballots from April 7 to April 13 and waived the requirement to have the ballot signed by a witness. Wisconsin voters have already requested more than 1.1 million absentee ballots which already holds the record for the most requests for absentee ballots in the state.

Conley’s decision seems to have created a compromise between the requests to postpone and those eager to maintain the election’s schedule. Tom Perez, the Chair of the Democratic National Convention, applauded Conley’s decision, saying that,”Expanding access to absentee voting is critical in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and we continue to encourage all states to pursue vote-by-mail and no-excuse absentee voting to ensure that all eligible voters who want to cast a ballot have the means and ability to do so.”

For more on COVID-19, see our special coverage.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.