our Constitution for "Here& Now".
Milwaukee late this week, a Dane County judge refused to put on
hold his ruling that allows disabled people in Wisconsin to
be emailed absentee ballots at home for November's presidential
election. to not enforce his ruling, while
their appeal of a lawsuit brought on behalf of voters with
disabilities is pending. But the Dane County decision now allows
clerks to email ballots to voters who self-certify that
they can't read or mark a paper ballot without help. Disability
Rights Wisconsin was among those who brought the lawsuit. Kit
Kerschensteiner is director of legal and advocacy services, and
she joins us now. Thanks very much for being here.
>> Thank you for inviting me. >> So what is your reaction to
the judge now granting voters with disabilities the ability to
cast ballots electronically? >> It's a good first step. It's
not the total solution because this was a temporary injunction.
We didn't ask for all the relief. We don't have the time
to fix what needs to be fixed between now and November. So the
suit will continue past Novembe. We're hoping to get a way for
people with print disabilities, which can be either due to
vision issues or, physical disabilities. I that need help
casting a ballot. We're hoping that they can get a way to get
an absentee ballot electronically sent to them.
They can mark it with their devices, and it can be
electronically returned. >> That's the piece that's
missing. day. When we go through to the
final trial, which will be sometime off in the future,
certainly far past November. >> So why was the suit brought
in the first place? >> Because it's fair. It's a
fair playing field for people of the state, no matter if they
have a disability or not, to be able to cast a private ballot
and the state we've we at DEA and others as well have been
asking for this for a long time, and we haven't made any
progress. So it was time to bring the Americans with
Disabilities Act, the Rehabilitation Act, the state
Constitution, and the federal Constitution, all of which lead
to this result. could this affect,
>> no one really tracks that exactly. But, there's people
with disabilities generally in the in the nation or 15 or 20,
25% of the population. Now that's all types of
disabilities. So it narrows down when you're talking about people
with print disabilities, but it's tens of thousands.
>> And what concerns are there that the Wisconsin Elections
Commission will actually be able to get this up? And going so
that voters can access this? >> Well, with this first step
that only requires them to email the ballot to the individual,
that should not be that difficult because they already
do it for excuse me, for individuals who are in the
military or living abroad, we're expanding. As a matter of fact,
excuse me. Up until recently, in the last ten, 12 years,
everybody could ask for a ballot to be emailed.
>> And so do voters. Know that they can do this now? Or how is
that kind of messaging going to go out?
>> Because we are a local system. All the individual
clerks have to be involved in are going to be in charge of
this week is only going to be able to provide them the
guidance and the support, but it's the clerks that have to do
this. >> So we spoke about the fact
that the another prong of what you're looking for is the
ability for voters who need this kind of access to be able to
email it back to the clerk. >> Well, return it there.
Different states are already doing it in different ways. Some
require you to email it back, some have a portal and you can
actually cast your ballot online through a secure portal. And
it's there. So what that's remedy will look like in the end
is still something we need to explore. What what will work in
Wisconsin. status quo now until potentially
an appeal gets in the way, is that the voters will have to
have it hand-delivered to the clerk well, or put in the mail,
or put in a drop box, >> they will they will have to
print it out, but they will be able to market, privately if
they have some sort of readily available software that's out
there for folks who need screen readers or all sorts of
different things that you can use nowadays to take the printed
word and, and be able to manipulate it so you can deal
with it. All right. >> Well, we will be watching