Day 80

[matt (Matt Kiser)]

1/ Biden created a bipartisan commission to study adding seats to the Supreme Court. Biden said the group has 180 days to produce a report on court expansion, term limits, and other “recommendations as to how to reform the court system, because it’s getting out of whack.” The executive order also mandates that the group holds public meetings and take input from a range of stakeholders. Biden previously said he’s “not a fan” of adding additional seats to the Supreme Court in order to alter its ideological balance, which currently has a 6 to 3 conservative tilt. Meanwhile, Justice Stephen Breyer, one of the court’s three liberals, recently warned against expanding the Supreme Court, saying its authority depends on “a trust that the court is guided by legal principle, not politics.” (New York Times / Politico / Washington Post / NPR)

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This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/2021/04/09/day-80/

[dragonfly9]

Marc E. Elias (marceelias)

WI Supreme Court Rules Against Voter Purging

April 9, 2021

WASHINGTON, D.C. —In a 5-2 decision, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the Wisconsin Elections Commission cannot purge 69,000 voters from the voter rolls that it suspects have moved addresses. The case was filed in 2019, and targeted 234,000 voters at the time who were sent a mailing from the Commission asking them to confirm their address, but had not replied. The conservative plaintiffs alleged that the Commission could and should unilaterally purge these voters from the rolls if they did not respond within 30 days. The plaintiffs asked a lower court for a writ of mandamus directing the Commission to purge those voters.

The state Supreme Court relied on Wisconsin’s uniquely decentralized elections system in their ruling, in which they said that the responsibility of removing ineligible voters from the rolls lies with the 1,850 municipal election clerks who manage local election administration in the state, not the Commission. This decision keeps 69,000 voters who have potentially moved on the list until local election clerks review and remove them themselves.

Joe Biden won Wisconsin by less than 21,000 votes.