So I have refused to comment before reading the SCOTUS decision on the extension of time for voters to return absentee ballots for the primary election in WI (which the state will hold under untenable conditions tomorrow) until I had read it twice. It is unconscionable.

It is among the most cynical decisions I have read from this Court - devoid of even the pretense of engaging with the reality that this decision will mean one of two things for many WI voters: either they will risk their health & lives to vote, or they will be disenfranchised.

COVID-19 is not mentioned until the penultimate paragraph of the majority opinion - and then only to insist that the narrowness of the decision does not address whether the pandemic justifies modifications to the election?

Purcell - decided just 6 years ago is treated as precedent so deeply embedded and unyielding that it cannot yield to the context of an election that is simply like no other that members of the Court have seen in their lifetimes.

Treating the issue in this case as a “narrow, technical question” rather than one involving the exercise of a fundamental right amidst a frightening health crisis renders the Court so embarrassingly small.

To see the right that the Supreme Court described 132 years ago as “preservative of all rights,” treated so cavalierly by this Court tonight is a low moment for our democracy. The dissent is devastatingly on point. https://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/19A1016.pdf

But, still we fight on.