(VitalNews.org) – Wisconsin’s attorney general has been pushing back against a request from people to allow disabled people to vote electronically from their homes. Josh Kaul told Dane County Circuit Judge Everett Mitchell that allowing this would create confusion among other voters and could end up adding security risks as well.
Said Karla Keckhaver, the Assistant Attorney General, “This court cannot change the rules of the election now … regardless of how hard or easy it is to make those changes.”
Disability Rights Wisconsin, the League of Women Voters, and four disabled people joined together to push for a lawsuit in April, which this hearing was a result of. The group has stated that many people who are disabled can’t cast paper ballots properly without assistance, which goes against their right to cast a secret ballot.
They have asked Mitchell to allow disabled people to vote from their homes electronically using devices that would help them read and write independently. They have also added that they’d like to be able to cast these votes electronically instead of mailing their ballots out.
Erin Deely, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, said that military and overseas voters can request these absentee ballots electronically, so not allowing those who are disabled to do the same is a “severe burden” on them.
Keckhaver said that doing this for this election season would create lots of confusion for the state’s clerks and that they wouldn’t have enough time to train them on the new system for disabled voters. She also said that the email systems that clerks use aren’t government emails so this could lead to security problems and potential hacking.
A decision is said to be made within the next few days about whether this will be implemented or not.
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