The Republican National Committee (RNC) and several conservative groups filed a motion to intervene in a Wisconsin court on Tuesday to stop a Democrat-backed lawsuit against state election laws that ensure integrity at the ballot box.
“As Democrats compete to see who can launch the most self-serving and frivolous attack on election integrity, Republicans remain committed to protecting your vote in the Badger State and nationwide,” RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel said in a statement.
Last month, a coalition of leftist groups filed a lawsuit seeking to undo a Wisconsin law prohibiting the use of ballot drop boxes in elections. In a case before the Badger State’s highest court last year, the then-Republican majority ruled the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s authorization of drop boxes in the 2020 election violated state law and that the devices could not be used for future contests.
In their July lawsuit — which was filed weeks before Democrats took control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court — the aforementioned left-wing groups opined that the court’s previous ruling should be overturned, baselessly claiming the prohibition on ballot drop boxes “severely burdens the right to vote.” The suit additionally “seeks to undo a requirement that a witness sign absentee ballots and that any problems with absentee ballots be corrected by the voter no later than 8 p.m. on Election Day,” according to Fox News.
In their motion filed on Tuesday, the RNC and affiliated groups argued they have “interests in the rules and procedures governing Wisconsin’s elections” and requested the state’s highest court “allow them to intervene in this case so they may protect those interests.”
The leftist groups who filed the lawsuit last month “demand that this Court nullify these election safeguards that Wisconsin has effectively employed [and] claim these requirements unconstitutionally burden the right to vote. They are wrong,” the RNC’s motion reads. “Movants seek to intervene to defend the constitutionality of the Commission’s election guidance. These election rules serve ‘the integrity of [the] election process’ and the ‘orderly administration’ of elections.”
“The Court should not set aside Wisconsin law, and it should not proceed without Movants’ participation,” the motion added.
Other Wisconsin court cases won by the RNC and its partners in recent years include rulings protecting GOP poll observer access and prohibiting “clerks from completing witness signature requirements that voters have to do themselves.”
