Federal Judge Tosses Democratic-Funded Lawsuit to Remove Witness Requirement on Absentee Ballots

A federal judge in Wisconsin has dismissed a lawsuit seeking to remove the witness requirement on absentee ballots.

The lawsuit, filed by the law firm of Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias, sought to cancel the witness requirement for voters who cast absentee ballots on the grounds that it violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In a scathing ruling, U.S. District Judge James Peterson said that the “demand simply does not make any sense.”

“Under plaintiffs’ interpretation, every witness would have to determine the voter’s age, residence, citizenship, criminal history, whether the voter is unable or unwilling to vote, whether the voter has voted at another location or is planning to do so, whether the voter is capable of understanding the objective of the voting process, whether the voter is under a guardianship, and, if so, whether a court has determined that the voter is competent,” he wrote.

The ruling was celebrated by Derek Lyons, president of Restore Integrity and Trust in Elections (RITE), who described it as a failed attempt by liberal activists to undermine the ingrity of America’s electoral process.

Since its founding in 2022, RITE has been extremely active in Wisconsin and is proud to have made yet another contribution to the integrity of elections in that state,” Lyons said. “It’s essential that people voting by mail follow the law in doing so, and Wisconsin has implemented a witness signature requirement that helps ensure they do just that.

This case marks another example of liberal activists’ transparent and shameful efforts to co-opt important civil rights legislation for their partisan agendas. Sadly, it is all too clear that these activists are more interested in making unfounded accusations than in ensuring impartial and accurate elections.

Jason Snead, Executive Director of Honest Elections Project, similarly applauded the ruling:

A federal judge has officially thrown out a lawsuit filed by Left-wing attorney Marc Elias challenging a key election integrity provision requiring absentee ballot signature verification, exposing his radical legal strategy to flood the zone with dozens of frivolous lawsuits. The plaintiff’s theory in this case was yet another example of Elias and the left twisting old statutes to attack modern ballot safeguards.

In this case, they asked a court to conclude that requiring a witness signature on a mail ballot was illegal vouching under the Voting Rights Act. In the Jim Crow era, many places required a registered voter to vouch for the qualifications of a new voter in order to prevent African Americans from voting. Obviously, that law was not intended to prevent widely used election integrity measures for mail ballots. Fortunately, common sense prevailed, and an Obama-appointed judge agreed, wisely dismissing the case.

In simple terms, one might be forgiven for asking why Democrats want to remove the witness requirement unless they were seeking to subvert the system and carry out election fraud. Needless to say, that is exactly what they have in mind.

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