Federal appeals court upholds Wisconsin's right to restrict voting hours

A three-judge federal appeals court panel on Monday upheld several restrictions on voting implemented by Wisconsin Republicans.

The panel, all GOP appointees, allowed the state to restrict early voting hours and require 28 days of residence in a district to vote, rather than 10, The Associated Press reported. The panel had not taken up the state’s requirement of photo IDs for voters but said voters can present expired student IDs or vote without ID if they present an affidavit stating they tried to get one.

“Wisconsin has lots of rules that make voting easier,” said Judge Frank Easterbrook, who wrote the opinion, according to the AP. “These facts matter when assessing challenges to a handful of rules that make voting harder.”’

State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R), a congressional candidate, said the decision “puts municipalities in every corner of Wisconsin closer to equal footing when it comes to early in-person voting.”

State Democrats, however, blasted the ruling as enabling voter suppression in a state that was key to President TrumpDonald John TrumpUtah Lieutenant Gov. Cox leads Huntsman in close governor’s race Trump tweets ‘we all miss’ Ailes after swiping at Fox Former NFL player Burgess Owens wins Utah GOP primary MORE’s 2016 victory and is likely to be pivotal again in November. The president won the Badger State by about 22,000 votes, one of his slimmest state margins of victory.

“As Trump and his team become increasingly nervous for November, a Republican-controlled court just made another egregious assault on voting rights in Wisconsin,” state Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler said, according to the AP. “Trump knows his path to victory involves suppressing the vote as much as possible, and as we saw on April 7 when Republicans forced thousands of people to vote in-person during a pandemic, there is no low they aren’t willing to stoop to to grab power.”

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Republicans implemented many of the restrictions after achieving a trifecta in the state’s government in the 2010 elections. After two 2016 rulings allowing affidavits in place of photo IDs, as well as another ruling that allowed the voter ID requirement to stand but threw out several other requirements, Democrats won every state office on the ballot in 2018.