RITE Supported the Defense of Wisconsin’s Witness Requirement for Mail Ballots in an Amicus Brief
MADISON, WI – In a Thursday evening ruling, a federal court in Wisconsin denied liberal activist attorney Marc Elias’s effort to block the state from enforcing its longstanding requirement that mail voters have a witness confirm their compliance with the state’s voting laws. This continues a losing streak for Elias in his efforts to distort the Materiality Provision of the venerable Civil Rights Act into a tool to undermine America’s elections. At the end of March, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals similarly rejected his effort to use the same law to block Pennsylvania from enforcing its requirement that voters sign and date their mail ballots. The three judges who decisively rejected his arguments in these two cases were all appointed by Democrat Presidents.
“Since its founding in 2022, RITE has been extremely active in Wisconsin and is proud to have made yet another contribution to the integrity of elections in that state. It’s essential that people voting by mail follow the law in doing so, and Wisconsin has implemented a witness signature requirement that helps ensure they do just that. This case marks another example of liberal activists’ transparent and shameful efforts to co-opt important civil rights legislation for their partisan agendas. Sadly, it is all too clear that these activists are more interested in making unfounded accusations than in ensuring impartial and accurate elections.”
– Derek Lyons, President of RITE
The court’s opinion is a decisive rejection of Elias’s ill-conceived legal argument. As the Court put it, “the most obvious problem” with the argument “is that it simply does not make any sense.” The court later added that the “absurd results to which” his arguments “would lead are reason enough to reject” them. The court also emphasized the importance of the Third Circuit’s recent unequivocal rejection of his out-of-the-mainstream theories, observing that the “Third Circuit’s reasoning is persuasive” as it comprehensively “explains why the statute’s text, legislative history, and logic all support an interpretation that the Materiality Provision does not apply to ballot preparation.”
The defeated litigants have twenty-nine days to decide if they want to test their arguments with the Court of Appeals. RITE will continue to defend election law in Wisconsin, as necessary.
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