A Wisconsin judge has doubled down on a prior ruling demanding that over 209,000 names be removed from the state’s voter rolls before the 2020 election, the New York Post reports.
Ozaukee County Circuit Judge Paul Malloy had previously ruled in December that the 209,000 names must be purged, as they all failed to respond within 30 days of being sent mailers inquiring whether or not they had moved out of the state. But the state’s election commission has refused to start removing the names, thus leading to Judge Malloy holding the entire six-member commission in contempt.
Malloy has faced resistance from the board’s three Democratic members and the state’s Justice Department, which is currently controlled by Democratic Governor Tony Evers. Democrats tried to ask Malloy to put his ruling on hold for an appeal, but he rejected their request.
As a result, Judge Malloy has now issued a daily fine for every day that the names are not purged: Each of the commission’s Democrats must pay $250 for each day, while the commission itself must pay $50 every day, until the names are removed.
The vast majority of the affected votes would come from the big cities and college campuses, which mostly vote Democratic. As such, Democrats claim that the ruling is an attempt at voter suppression, while Republicans claim that leaving the names on the voter rolls would lead to more widespread voter fraud, which almost always benefits Democratic candidates. Wisconsin is seen as one of the key swing states in the 2020 election, after President Trump narrowly won the state in 2016.