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RNC v. DNC: Absentee Voters and the Partisan Pandemic

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13 Apr 2020
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April 13, 2020

Republican National Committee v. Democratic National Committee, 589 U.S. ___ (2020) (per curiam).
Response by Professor Stephen B. Pershing
Geo. Wash. L. Rev. On the Docket (Oct. Term 2019)
Slip Opinion | SCOTUSblog

RNC v. DNC: Absentee Voters and the Partisan Pandemic

I

Literally on the eve of Wisconsin’s primary election of April 7, 2020, in the midst of the ever-worsening nationwide coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. Supreme Court rushed to issue a decision staying the only relief that could have allowed thousands of Wisconsinites to vote without putting themselves and their communities at risk of serious illness and even death. A federal district court in Madison—after hearing evidence that local election officials were impossibly behind in processing a virus-driven surge of timely submitted absentee ballot requests—had granted a preliminary injunction on April 2, relaxing the deadline for returning filled-in absentee ballots from the close of the polls on April 7 until the following Monday, April 13.1 To obviate the concern that voters would be able to cast ballots after initial results were announced, with the theoretical potential to turn the election after it ended, the court enjoined state and local officials from publishing any results until the new absentee ballot return deadline.

After a single day of briefing, and without oral argument, the Seventh Circuit upheld the district court’s injunction on Friday, April 3.2 On Saturday, April 4, Republican Party lawyers sought a stay from the U.S. Supreme Court’s Seventh Circuit Justice, Brett Kavanaugh, who referred the request to the full Court.3 The entire cycle of federal court orders took less than a week, a speed of presentation, deliberation and decision comparable to that of great cases like Cooper v. Aaron,4 New York Times v. United States,5 or United States v. Nixon.6

This drama took place against a backdrop of intense partisan conflict in Wisconsin state government.7 Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat8—who had said as late as April 1 that he lacked power to postpone the primary without action by the Republican-dominated state legislature—took that very step on April 6.9 The governor acted for the same urgent public health reasons that had already prompted him to order, in line with many other U.S. states, that except for essential trips or activities, Wisconsin residents should stay at home until April 24 and not go out at all.10

Republicans immediately challenged the governor’s election postponement order in the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which invalidated the order within hours and mandated that the election go forward.11 The U.S. Supreme Court decided the absentee ballot return case about 8 p.m. that evening.12 If the Wisconsin high court had allowed the governor’s postponement order to stand, the controversy before the U.S. Supreme Court would have been eclipsed by events and might not have been decided at all. The Justices, then, were necessarily deliberating on the assumption that the election would be held—and they already knew just how inhospitable and likely disenfranchising the next day’s experience would be for voters.13

II

The caption of RNC v. DNC14 proclaims the case as a partisan political dispute, even if the underlying policy question—whether and how to conduct a coordinated public activity during a nationwide health emergency—would presumably be apolitical for most activities other than elections (at least in a less superheated political environment). Indeed, the case was predictably partisan through and through, from the positions of the respective cheering sections to the evident consequences of the ruling.

The reason for the partisan cast is common knowledge among political operatives and observers. Republican political calculations in the United States are widely known to favor low turnout, particularly among urban, minority and lower-income voters. The Democratic calculus is the opposite. On those calculations the two major parties, and their allies or proxies, regularly arm-wrestle one another in legislatures and in the courts, from the same opposing positions, over a variety of voting measures that could affect turnout, from voter identification requirements to restrictions on voter registration, to limitations on early, absentee or mail-in voting.15 Wisconsin today is a particular partisan hot spot in this regard, both because of internal political polarization16 and controversial voting-related legislation,17 and because of the state’s position as a potential determiner of national elections.18

Nevertheless, as it has done a number of times in the past generation,19 the Supreme Court in RNC v. DNC indulged the notion, or perhaps the pretense, that it was deciding only matters of constitutional principle, and was not aligning itself with one party in the turnout wars or choosing the winners of elections.

The four-page per curiam opinion took pains to emphasize—“th[e] point cannot be stressed enough,” the majority pronounced—that it was not considering whether the primary election should be held in the first instance.20 It was deciding only the “narrow, technical question”21 whether the district court should have intervened “so close to the election” to relax the deadline for casting absentee ballots.22

The opinion observed that the district court, which cited Burdick v. Takushi23 and Anderson v. Celebrezze,24 had concluded that foreclosing absentee balloting for this election, given the escalating health risks of the pandemic, not to mention the state’s stay-at-home order, unconstitutionally burdened Wisconsin citizens’ right to vote. But the per curiam itself did not cite Burdick or Anderson or their balancing-of-interests test, or discuss more than in passing the extent of the burden on thousands of late-processed absentee voters from a requirement to show up in person mid-pandemic or forgo voting altogether. Nor did the Court acknowledge that no precedent more specific than Burdick exists either way regarding election-eve voting procedure modifications during sudden public health emergencies. Instead, the Court blandly preoccupied itself with what it called the “Purcell principle.”25

That principle, if so it can be called, serves a legitimate purpose as a check on election-eve judicial interventions in ordinary circumstances: It cautions courts not to add to voter confusion, or administrative burdens on election officials, by ordering changes to election procedures with little time to implement them.26 But in this case, the majority had to choose between enforcing its long-standing presumption against changes to voting parameters uncomfortably close to an election—a presumption erected in relatively normal times—and recognizing a late-occurring, utterly exceptional, even calamitous external development that could ruin the election and taint its result unless parameters were changed to make voting easier and safer. The Court chose the former, and in disingenuous fashion.

The Court’s immediate analytical conundrum was that its decision would have to flout the rule of Purcell in order to enforce it, i.e., the Court would have to intervene at the eleventh hour in order to “correct” the district court’s “error” in intervening at an earlier hour.27 The Court majority decided to enforce its rule even at that severe cost—and, in the bargain, accepted enormous burdens on real, live voters, whose sacrifices it had to discount in order to validate the invocation of the rule for its own sake. In other words, to enforce the rule against election-eve court interference in “principle,” it allowed itself to lose sight of the rule’s real-world purpose to make elections and voting less burdensome, not more so, to voters and election officials alike.

That is what makes the resulting decision so unsatisfying. The Court could easily have invoked Burdick and Anderson, as did the district court, to recognize what was before its eyes:  that thousands of blameless Wisconsin voters, whom the state could not adequately serve with absentee ballots because of once-in-a-lifetime external adversities, should not have to choose between total disenfranchisement and an unreasonable health sacrifice to exercise their constitutional right to vote. Instead, to reach its result the Court had to take a much more difficult road, blinding itself to several obvious facts at once.

First, it had to call the unique force majeure coronavirus situation not “substantially different” from an “ordinary election,”28 a proposition that, as Justice Ginsburg’s dissent said, “boggles the mind.”29 This part of the Court’s holding alone should disturb anyone concerned with fair umpiring by a judiciary that is called upon ever more often to decide election disputes.30

Second, the Court had to find fault with both the seekers and the grantor of the injunction below. The per curiam opinion complained that the injunction papers below had failed to ask for relaxation of the absentee ballot postmark deadline. However, as the dissent pointed out, the majority ignored that the injunction-seekers had asked for just such relief during the telephonic conference on April 1, 2020, by which time the virus’ impact in Wisconsin had greatly worsened compared to the time of the initial filings.31

And third, the majority had to stretch to find the district court’s publication delay solution wanting. This the Court accomplished with the improbable assertion that unpublished results could leak, with “grave” consequences to the election’s “integrity.”32 The opinion even said, falsely, that the district judge had “in essence enjoined non-parties” by ordering election officials to delay publication of initial vote tallies.33 In fact, the Wisconsin Elections Commission was an original named defendant, but did not challenge the preliminary injunction on appeal.

Certainly a “hard cases make bad law” argument could be made against malleating legal doctrine to respond to this or any crisis.34 Making or giving law to govern the political process concededly poses some of the hardest cases possible in a representative democracy. But RNC v. DNC, whatever its emotional and political freight in a frightening moment of the nation’s history, was not a hard case. The situation cried out for a remedy; the district court provided a fair one, tailored to the need; and the Supreme Court alone made the case harder, by slighting in the balance of harms—indeed, almost ignoring—the most obvious and severe public health exigencies in a century. Whether or not it intended to punish Wisconsin voters for participating in an election, the Court effectively held them hostage to a formalistic and self-defeating abstraction.

III

As it happened, the election results, when released April 13, surprised most observers.35 Nevertheless, the Supreme Court’s decision in RNC v. DNC is, to put it politely, paradoxical. It violated the Court’s professed non-intervention value in order to enforce it. And it required thousands of voters to risk their and their fellow citizens’ health in order to avoid complete disenfranchisement. In both respects the ruling effectively tainted an election in order to save it.36

From this strange result, two inferences concerning the new Court’s modus operandi might occur to the cynics among us: Either the Court majority so much prefers the more rigid or formalistic of two possible readings of a statute, of the Constitution, or of a real world situation, that it can accept severe burdens on constitutional rights in order to exercise that preference; or it is showing a darker ulterior preference for the litigant whom the five conservative Justices would rather see prevail in the nation’s partisan contests.37 The Court’s willingness to apply the same formal standards to all who come before it, regardless of partisan political consequences, is likely to remain questionable until the less supple reading of the law comes from the other side of the aisle. Given the content of America’s two major competing constitutional ideologies, and the chasm between the political camps that espouse them, the Court is unlikely to be given that chance any time soon.

Steve Pershing, who has taught voting rights law at GW since 1999, is an experienced public interest litigator and law teacher with a lifelong passion for civil rights. From 1996 to 2005, he was a senior attorney in the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Justice Department, litigating minority voting rights across the nation. From 1989 to 1996, he litigated voting and other civil rights and liberties cases as legal director of the Virginia ACLU, and for the 20-plus years since then has served on its legal panel. He is now in his fourth decennial census cycle litigating voting cases on behalf of racial and language minorities.

  1. See DNC v. Bostelmann, No. 20-cv-249-wmc (W.D. Wis. Apr. 2, 2020), https://www.democracydocket.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/41/2020/04/2020-04-02-Order-on-Motion-for-Preliminary-Injunction.pdf.
  2. See DNC v. Bostelmann, No. 20-1538 (7th Cir. Apr. 3, 2020).
  3. In the immense hurry of Supreme Court proceedings, dictated of course by the imminence of the election, Justice Kavanaugh ordered the Democratic respondents to file briefs by the next day, Sunday, April 5. He then referred the stay request to the full Court. It is reasonable to suppose that Justice Kavanaugh authored a memorandum to accompany that referral, and that his colleagues in the majority used or worked from that memorandum in drafting their per curiam opinion. Although the Court generally leaves its rulings on stay requests unsigned, and cannot be said to have varied that practice for this case, it nevertheless appears that the unsigned opinion protected a controversial Justice against personal blowback from a decision that many would see as baldly partisan.
  4. 358 U.S. 1 (1958) (ordering school desegregation in Little Rock, Ark., as a definitive assertion of federal power under the Supremacy Clause; often called a modern Marbury v. Madison).
  5. 403 U.S. 713 (1971) (invalidating prior restraint on publication of the “Pentagon Papers,” a comprehensive and damaging Defense Department study of U.S. policy and military failures in Vietnam).
  6. 418 U.S. 683 (1974) (rejecting executive privilege for the White House “Watergate tapes”: the decision led directly to the resignation of President Nixon).
  7. Perhaps the most important item on the April 7 primary ballot was a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court itself. An avowed political and ideological conservative Justice, Daniel Kelly, a candidate for re-election on the very ballot at issue, recused himself formally from the Court’s April 6 decision. But that afternoon, shortly before the ruling was issued, he declared on Twitter, apparently in his private capacity as a candidate: “While the Governor’s order is being challenged in court, we urge clerks, poll workers, and voters to stand ready to conduct the election tomorrow.” Daniel Kelly (@JusticeDanKelly), Twitter (Apr. 6, 2020, 4:01 PM), https://twitter.com/JusticeDanKelly/status/1247253021479833602?s=20.
  8. Governor Evers narrowly won election in 2018 over incumbent Republican Scott Walker, whose extreme positions against labor unions, gun control and abortion had prompted a 2012 recall movement that he narrowly survived by far outspending his Democratic opponent, Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett. See Paul Abowd, Wisconsin Recall Breaks Record Thanks to Outside Cash, Ctr. for Pub. Integrity (May 9, 2014) https://publicintegrity.org/politics/wisconsin-recall-breaks-record-thanks-to-outside-cash/. Republicans, still dominant in the legislature after Mr. Evers became governor, tangled with him repeatedly, in particular on April 4, 2020, when they refused to entertain his proposals to modify this election and adjourned in each house within seconds of convening the special session he had ordered. See Bill Glauber and Patrick Marley, In Matter of Seconds, Republicans Stall Gov. Tony Evers’ Move to Postpone Tuesday Election,” Milwaukee J.-Sentinel (Apr. 4, 2020), www.jsonline.com/story/news/2020/04/04/wisconsin-legislature-adjourns-special-session-monday-voting-track-tuesday-election/2948444001/.
  9. Gov. Anthony Evers, Exec. Order No. 74 (Wisc. Apr. 6, 2020) (postponing in-person voting until June 9; allowing absentee voting until then; calling another special legislative session April 7 to set definite primary date), www.documentcloud.org/documents/6825792-Evers-EO-suspending-election.html.
  10. State of Wisconsin Department of Health Services, Emergency Order No. 12 (Wisc. March 24, 2020), www.wpr.org/sites/default/files/health_order_12_safer_at_home.pdf.
  11. See Wisconsin Legislature v. Evers, No. 2020AP608-OA, slip op. at 4 (Wis. Apr. 6, 2020), www.wicourts.gov/news/docs/2020AP608_2.pdf.
  12. See Robert Barnes, Supreme Court Rules for Republicans over Wisconsin Vote, Highlighting Partisan Divide Before November Poll, Wash. Post (Apr. 7, 2020), www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-rules-for-republicans-over-wisconsin-vote-highlighting-partisan-divide-before-november-poll/2020/04/07/ed18b1e0-78d5-11ea-a130-df573469f094_story.html. One of the many ironies here is that in both cases, state and federal, the judges and justices heard argument, conferred, and decided the issues entirely by electronic means, with no in-person interactions, thus securing for themselves the very protections ultimately denied to Wisconsin voters. See See DNC v. Bostelmann, No. 20-cv-249-wmc (W.D. Wis. Apr. 2, 2020), https://www.democracydocket.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/41/2020/04/2020-04-02-Order-on-Motion-for-Preliminary-Injunction.pdf (discussing April 1 evidentiary conference); Barnes, supra note 11 (reporting that at conference, Chief Justice Roberts was the only Justice in the Court building, with the others participating from their homes); Evers, slip op. at 1 (indicating no oral argument held); cf. Kate Sullivan, Republican Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Wears Protective Gear While Telling Voters They Are ‘Incredibly Safe To Go Out,‘ CNN (April 6, 2020), www.cnn.com/2020/04/07/politics/wisconsin-robin-vos-protective-gear/index.html (showing Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, dressed in a gown and face mask, claiming it was “incredibly safe to go out” and vote).
  13. Brief for the Democratic National Committee in Opposition to Application for Stay at 5–6,RNC v. DNC, No. 20-1538 & 20-1539 (U.S. Apr. 4, 2020) (describing coronavirus dangers to voters, virus-driven poll worker shortages, and widespread polling place closures expected for April 7 as averred by election officials’ affidavits); see also City of Milwaukee Election Commission, Notice of Polling Stations for Primary Election (Apr. 3, 2020), https://city.milwaukee.gov/ImageLibrary/User/dwalton/kdzapat1/2020-Spring-Election/TypeDNoticeSpringElection2020.pdf; Mary Spicuzza & Alison Dirr, Why Did Milwaukee Have Just 5 Polling Places? Aldermen Want Answers, Milwaukee J.-Sentinel (Apr. 10, 2020), www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/04/10/coronavirus-milwaukee-aldermen-want-answers-polling-places-primary-election/5127577002/ (reporting that because of coronavirus-related poll worker shortages, city election officials opened only five of the city’s 180 polling places on primary day).
  14. No. 19A1016 (U.S. Apr. 6, 2020).
  15. See, e.g., North Carolina NAACP v. McCrory, 831 F.3d 204 (4th Cir. 2016) (striking down voter ID requirements, early and absentee voting restrictions); Crawford v. Marion Cty. Bd. of Elections, 553 U.S. 181 (2008) (upholding voter ID requirement). The RNC and DNC themselves regularly spar in the courts. See, e.g., Democratic National Committee v. Republican National Committee, No. 18-1215, 2019 WL 117555 (3d Cir. Jan. 7, 2019) (ending 28-year litigation over voter interference by partisan poll watchers); Feldman v. Ariz. Sec’y of State’s Office, 842 F.3d 613, 638-39 (9th Cir. 2016) (striking down polling place consolidations, rules against counting otherwise valid votes cast out of precinct, and other voting access restrictions in Arizona).
  16. The U.S. Supreme Court is no stranger to partisan manipulations of the Wisconsin political process. In Gill v. Whitford, 138 S. Ct. 1916 (2018), the Court was presented with Wisconsin’s Republican-engineered legislative gerrymander, one of the nation’s most severe. In order to avoid deciding the justiciability vel non of political gerrymanders across the board, the Court handed down a strained opinion—reminiscent of the awkward decision it cited, United States v. Hays, 515 U.S. 737 (1995)—holding that individual voters lacked standing to contest harms to their group’s political interests statewide. The Court held that voters had standing only to challenge the district in which they lived, on proof that its lines in particular were gerrymandered—proof that they had submitted but that the majority opinion ignored. Meanwhile, in the fall 2018 Wisconsin state assembly and senate elections, 54% of votes cast went to Democratic candidates, compared with 46% for Republican candidates—a 190,000-vote margin—but Republicans held or captured 63 of the 99 total legislative seats. See Wisconsin Elections Commission, 2018 Fall General Election Results, https://elections.wi.gov/elections-voting/results/2018/fall-general.
  17. See Frank v. Walker, 17 F. Supp. 3d 837 (E.D. Wis. 2014) (striking down statewide voter ID requirement), rev’d, 768 F.3d 744 (7th Cir. 2014), cert. denied, 135 S. Ct. 1551 (2015); Milwaukee Branch of NAACP v. Walker, 851 N.W.2d 262 (Wis. 2014) (enjoining voter ID requirement to the extent compliance depended on fee-required official documents).
  18. See, e.g., 2016 U.S. Presidential Election Results: Wisconsin, N.Y. Times (Aug. 1, 2017), https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/results/wisconsin (showing that Donald Trump prevailed over Hillary Clinton by approximately 23,000 votes statewide).
  19. Today’s partisan politics caselaw is arguably defined by several blockbuster 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court decisions of this sort: Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000), which effectively decided the 2000 presidential election by invalidating the Florida courts’ interpretation of state law prioritizing completeness of ballot-counting over compliance with arbitrary deadlines; Vieth v. Jubelirer, 541 U.S. 267 (2004), which held partisan gerrymanders beyond the reach of the courts under equal protection and left only a sliver of hope for a future First Amendment argument that a gerrymander effectively silenced one party’s voters; Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013), which gutted the Voting Rights Act’s “preclearance” provision, the requirement that jurisdictions with a history of racially discriminatory voting practices submit changes in those practices to federal authorities for advance review; Citizens United v. Federal Election Comm’n, 558 U.S. 310 (2010), which struck down limits on “independent” campaign contributions and expenditures as a matter of free expression, and fostered the modern era of “super PACs” able to raise and spend unlimited campaign funds without disclosing their funders’ identities; and Rucho v. Common Cause, 139 S. Ct. 2484 (2019), which closed the First Amendment door left ajar in Vieth by holding that not even the most severe partisan gerrymanders could so offend the expressive rights of voters that a court could step in to redress them.
  20. RNC v. DNC, slip op. at 4.
  21. Id. at 1.
  22. Id. at 2 (citing Purcell v. Gonzalez, 549 U. S. 1, 4–5 (2006) (per curiam); Frank v. Walker, 574 U. S. 929 (2014); Veasey v. Perry, 135 S. Ct. 9 (2014).
  23. 504 U.S. 428, 434 (1992).
  24. 460 U.S. 780, 789 (1983).
  25. Id. at 3.
  26. Purcell, 549 U.S. at 4-5 (“Court orders affecting elections . . . can themselves result in voter confusion and consequent incentive to remain away from the polls. As an election draws closer, that risk will increase.”); see also Frank v. Walker, 135 S. Ct. 7, 7-8 (2014) (Alito, J., joined by Scalia and Thomas, JJ., dissenting) (dissenting from decision not to stay preliminary injunction against Wisconsin voter ID requirement) (“There is a colorable basis for the Court’s decision due to the proximity of the upcoming general election.”); cf. Veasey, 769 F.3d 890, 892 (5th Cir. 2014) (policing non-interference principle by staying trial court injunction against Texas voter ID requirement shortly before November 2014 general election) (“The Supreme Court has repeatedly instructed courts to carefully consider the importance of preserving the status quo on the eve of an election.”).
  27. RNC v. DNC, slip op. at 3.
  28. Id.
  29. Id. at 4 (Ginsburg, J., joined by Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, J., dissenting).
  30. See Confirmation Hearing on The Nomination of John G. Roberts, Jr. To Be Chief Justice of The United States: Hearing Before the S. Comm. on the Judiciary, 109th Cong. 56 (2005) (statement of John G. Roberts, Nominee to be Chief Justice of the United States) (remarking that as a judge in a constitutional system, “my job is to call balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat”).
  31. RNC v. DNC, slip op. at 6 (Ginsburg, J., dissenting); DNC v. Bostelmann, No. 20-cv-249-wmc (W.D. Wis. Apr. 2, 2020), https://www.democracydocket.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/41/2020/04/2020-04-02-Order-on-Motion-for-Preliminary-Injunction.pdf.
  32. Id. at 2 (majority opinion) (“It is highly questionable . . . that [an] attempt to suppress disclosure of the election results for six days after election day would work. And if any information were released during that time, that would gravely affect the integrity of the election process.”).
  33. Id.
  34. See Winterbottom v. Wright, 10 M. & W. 109, 116 (1842) (Ct. of the Exchequer) (opinion of Baron Rolff) (“[I]t is, no doubt, a hardship upon the plaintiff to be without a remedy, but, by that consideration we ought not to be influenced. Hard cases, it has been frequently observed, are apt to introduce bad law.”); see also Northern Securities Co. v. United States, 193 U.S. 197, 400 (1904) (Holmes, J., dissenting) (“Great cases, like hard cases, make bad law . . . because of some accident of immediate overwhelming interest which appeals to the feelings and distorts the judgment.”).
  35. Justice Kelly, a staunch supporter of former Gov. Walker who was explicitly endorsed by President Trump, lost to a more liberal challenger, Madison-area circuit judge Jill Karofsky. Two of Governor Walker’s appointees to the Milwaukee County Circuit Court lost to their challengers as well, continuing a trend begun in the April 2019 election when a different Walker appointee to the Milwaukee trial court also lost. The longtime Milwaukee city attorney was unseated in a landslide by an opponent who stressed policing reform. The Democratic presidential primary, as predicted, was won by former vice president Joe Biden, the result coming on a day when he received the formal endorsement of his last active rival for the nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders. Absentee balloting was heavy statewide, with almost 1.1 million absentee ballots reported returned by the extended April 13 return deadline, on just under 1.3 million reported applications. See Absentee Voting Statistics, Wisconsin Elections Commission (Apr. 13, 2020), https://elections.wi.gov/publications/statistics/absentee. That figure represented close to 90% of all ballots cast in the election. See Wisconsin Spring Election Results, Milwaukee J.-Sentinel, (Apr. 13, 2020), https://projects.jsonline.com/topics/election/2020/4/13/wisconsin-spring-election-results-april-7.html.
  36. The controversy is not over, however. Counties reported receiving some absentee ballots without postmarks, and were uncertain which ones to count without guidance from state election officials. Voting rights activists filed a new federal class action on April 13, before any results were published, seeking to have absentee ballots recounted on clear standards. See Chris Rickert, Group Files Lawsuit to Count Votes of Those ‘Disenfranchised’ by Decision to Hold April 7 Election, Wisconsin State J., (Apr. 13, 2020), https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/crime-and-courts/group-files-lawsuit-to-count-votes-of-those-disenfranchised-by-decision-to-hold-april-7/article_add7bf20-4362-50a6-be88-f56506098f3b.html#tracking-source=home-top-story-1.
  37. Cf. Wolf v. Cook Cty., No. 19A905, slip op. at 6 (U.S. Feb. 21, 2020) (Sotomayor, J., dissenting) (“[T]he Court’s recent behavior on stay applications has benefited one litigant over all others”).

Recommended Citation
Stephen B. Pershing, Response, RNC v. DNC: Absentee Voters and the Partisan Pandemic, Geo. Wash. L. Rev. On the Docket (Apr. 13, 2020), https://www.gwlr.org/absentee-voters-and-the-partisan-pandemic/.

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