A close call at state Supreme Court
The political hypocrisy of 2020 was described forcefully by Douglas M. Hagerman in his guest opinion piece (”We should not have to live this close to election theft,” Dec. 15).
Like him, my wife and I could have had our lawful votes tossed out by a lawsuit challenging certain voting rules in effect for the Nov. 3 election. We used an official drop box to deliver our absentee ballots — one of the procedures that was targeted.
The lawsuit was defeated, but the action by the Wisconsin Supreme Court came in a 4-3 decision that probably would have gone the other way if not for the election of a liberal justice, Jill Karofsky, last April. In other words, three of the seven members of the state’s highest court were willing to entertain the idea of dumping up to 220,000 votes through this challenge.
A similar lawsuit against Wisconsin and three other key states was supported by more than 100 members of Congress, including one from northern Wisconsin, before it was rejected as without merit by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, supporters of President Donald Trump seem to have no qualms about trashing our votes to get him a second term, even if it takes changing rules after the election to do it.
As Justice Brian Hagedorn wrote in his majority opinion for the Wisconsin high court, you can’t change the accepted rules after the election is over and take away legitimate votes of thousands of people.
Time for the hypocrisy to stop.
Jim Carlson
Milwaukee