A federal judge in Wisconsin ruled on Monday that absentee or vote-by-mail ballots can be counted for an additional six days after Election Day, according to ABC.
U.S. District Judge William Conley, an Obama appointee, ruled in favor of the Democratic Party and other left-wing groups after they sued to demand an extension of the deadline for counting ballots.
The same judge had also issued a similar extension for counting absentee ballots in Wisconsin’s primary earlier this year, which led to 7 percent of all ballots cast in that election being counted a week Election Day. Prior to Conley’s ruling, the deadline to return an absentee ballot was 8 P.M. on Election Day.
The ruling was opposed by the Republican National Committee, the Wisconsin GOP, and most of Wisconsin’s Republican lawmakers, while those in favor of it included the Democratic National Committee, the Wisconsin Democratic Party, and multiple far-left groups.
The Republican groups pointed out that the current election system gives voters more than enough time to postmark and return absentee ballots before Election Day. Conley, however, falsely accused the Wisconsin legislature of “opting to disregard the voting rights of these so-called procrastinators,” and also falsely claimed that “Wisconsin’s election system sets them up for failure in light of the near certain impacts of this ongoing pandemic,” even though the pandemic has all but completely subsided already.
While most of the far-left activists and Democrats celebrated the ruling as “a victory for democracy,” the ruling greatly increases the chance of mass voter fraud in a crucial battleground state. Andrew Hitt, the chairman of the Wisconsin GOP, said that he and his allies were reviewing the next possible courses of action in response to the order.
Conley’s ruling is the third such major ruling on voting deadlines in a crucial swing state in roughly one week. Last week, the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court declared that absentee and mail-in ballots can be counted up to three days after Election Day. In Michigan, another single, far-left judge extended the deadline to count “late” ballots by up to two weeks after Election Day, and also took the radical step of legalizing ballot-harvesting, a highly illegal process by which any third-party group or person can offer to retrieve someone else’s ballot on their behalf. The process, now only legal in the states of California and Michigan, is extremely prone to voter fraud and legitimate voter suppression.
All three states, located in the Rust Belt, are considered the core three states that gave President Donald Trump his electoral victory in 2016, and as such are considered crucial to his possible re-election this November.