Civil rights lawyers filed an emergency appeal Thursday asking the U.S. Supreme Court to declare Wisconsin’s voter ID law unconstitutional.
The American Civil Liberties Union argued in a brief to the High Court that the law, which requires voters to present a signed photo identification at the polls, will prevent a substantial number of voters from being able to cast their ballots in the upcoming November general election.
“Voting is the foundational element of a free society. Chaos in an election—especially when entirely preventable—is undemocratic,” ACLU attorneys said in the court brief.
A Marquette Law School poll released Wednesday revealed that a fifth of registered voters have not learned that a photo ID will be required this November. Awareness of the ID requirement is higher among the law’s supporters, with 76 percent knowing that an ID will be required, compared to 65 percent of opponents.
The poll shows that 65 percent of Democrats know about the requirement, compared to 79 percent of Republicans.
The filing follows a nearly three-year legal battle that has seen the law—Act 23—struck down by U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman in April, then upheld by a panel of three federal appeals judges in September.
After the law’s opponents asked the full Seventh Circuit Court to rehear the case, the court denied the request last week as it could not reach a majority vote.
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals denied a request from the law’s opponents last week that asked the full court to rehear the case because the court could not reach a majority vote.
The five dissenting judges in the last decision said the court of appeals “should not [accept], as the state is willing to do, the disenfranchisement of up to 10 percent of Wisconsin’s registered voters.”
The law, which the ACLU called “one of the strictest voter ID laws in the country,” provides a list of nine forms of ID, including a driver’s license or passport, that can be used to obtain a ballot, either as an absentee voter or at the polls.
Adelman concluded following his decision that more than 300,000 of the state’s registered voters do not have the type of photo ID required by the law and Thursday’s ACLU filing claimed there isn’t time to sufficiently educate voters in the next 36 days before the Nov. 4 election.
