The July 8, 2022 Wisconsin Supreme Court decision was ‘yuge,’ but even if you follow conservative news sources, you have probably only heard part of it. There is a landmine for Biden tucked inside the 141-page decision.
While lengthy, the document is very readable, and I have made a special copy with the most important parts highlighted. If you want to download your own copy and read it (and you should), you can click HERE. You can start with just the highlights if you are in a hurry. I have also embedded the full thing, with the highlights, at the end of this article.
Quick Summary
The Wisconsin Supreme Court received the case back in April of 2022, and handed down the decision three months later. The part you have probably heard was that, without action from the Legislature, drop boxes are illegal. They also said that they were illegal in the 2020 election. Hmmm.
They went so far as to compare the use of drop boxes to ‘elections’ run by dictators. Read this quote from Justice Rebecca Bradley:
If the right to vote is to have any meaning at all, elections must be conducted according to law. Throughout history, tyrants have claimed electoral victory via elections conducted in violation of governing law. For example, Saddam Hussein was reportedly elected in 2002 by a unanimous vote of all eligible voters in Iraq (11,445,638 people). Examples of such corruption are replete in history. In the 21st century, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was elected in 2014 with 100% of the vote while his father, Kim Jong-il, previously won 99.9% of the vote. Former President of Cuba, Raul Castro, won 99.4% of the vote in 2008 while Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was elected with 97.6% of the vote in 2007.
In other words, elections must be run under the rule of law, and drop boxes were and are not legal in Wisconsin because only the State Legislature had the authority to authorize ballot drop boxes.
Donald Trump brought this up in 2020
On December 12, 2020, Donald J. Trump and Michael R. Pence (and others) filed a petition against Joseph R. Biden, Kamala D. Harris, and the Wisconsin Elections Commission (and others). The case became known as “Trump v. Biden.” In the petition, Trump’s team sought to invalidate more than 220,000 ballots, which was way more than the 21,000 vote margin. If granted, this would have been a sufficient number of Wisconsin ballots to change the state’s certified election results.
The case was kicked up to the Wisconsin Supreme Court which made the type of snap ruling we see so often in 2020 elections cases. The court ruled that there was “nothing to see here,” called the petition “meritless,” and kicked it out after less than two days. Click HERE to read the full case.
In their decision, the court actually made statements like “Dane and Milwaukee County Clerks issued guidance on Facebook,” and quoted statements from the Wisconsin Election Commission (WEC). But what did we learn in the first part of this article? That only the State Legislature can set election rules!
The Bombshell nobody is talking about
This is why, in the July decision, you find text calling for Trump v. Biden to be overturned. Read the following (starting at paragraph 116) from Justice REBECCA GRASSL BRADLEY (with concurrence from Chief Justice ANNETTE KINGSLAND ZIEGLER and Justice PATIENCE DRAKE ROGGENSACK):
This court’s decision in Trump gave WEC the power to materially alter how elections in this state are conducted – without a single procedural check. Trump should be overruled …
[…]
In Trump, a majority of this court allowed its notions of “equity” and “unfair[ness]” to trump the law.
[…]
The holding in Trump requires a vote cast in reliance on a document produced by the WEC’s staff to be counted even if the vote’s counting is unlawful under the statute the staff purportedly interpreted. The majority did not ground its decision in constitutional law but in equity. Equitable powers may be broad, but they must always be lawfully exercised.
[…]
Specifically, the Trump decision endorsed WEC’s elimination of duties prescribed by law by counting ballots unlawfully cast in accordance with WEC’s extra-legal directions … Ballots cast in contravention of the procedures specified in those provisions may not be counted. Ballots counted in contravention of the procedures specified in those provisions may not be included in the certified result of any election.”
[…]
This court should overrule its erroneous holding in Trump, restoring WEC’s documents to their proper, and quite limited, role… Trump should be overruled to restore the people’s supremacy over their public servants.
The question is – what will the Wisconsin Supreme Court do next?
WisconsinSupremeCourtRuling