UPDATE: The Wisconsin Supreme Court has rejected the governor's decision to delay the election.
NEWS: Wisconsin Supreme Court rejects Gov. Evers attempt to postpone election. pic.twitter.com/DHfgeERWAi
— Jason Calvi (@JasonCalvi) April 6, 2020
ORIGINAL POST
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers has issued an executive order to move Tuesday's elections to June 9, citing safety concerns for in-person voting during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"I'm standing up for them," Evers said of concerned Wisconsinites. "I'm standing up for those people who are afraid and that's why I'm doing this."
In addition to the Democratic primary between frontrunners Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT), Wisconsin was to hold a high stakes state Supreme Court election on Tuesday. Conservative incumbent Justice Dan Kelly, who was appointed by former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, faced a dangerous challenge from progressive candidate Judge Jill Karofsky.
But, safety trumped politics.
"It could end up in the Supreme Court yet today but the bottom line is the people of Wisconsin, they don’t care about the fighting between Democrats and Republicans — they're scared," @GovEvers said in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
— Molly Beck (@MollyBeck) April 6, 2020
Wisconsin is in good company with 15 other states who have postponed their own primaries, those being Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, West Virginia, and Wyoming. The Democratic National Committee delayed their convention until August 17, just a few days before the Republican National Convention.
As of last week, former Vice President Biden had still supported proceeding with Tuesday's elections.
Full video of Joe Biden endorsing in-person voting in the April 7, 2020 Wisconsin primary amidst the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic--and declining to personally support an all-mail election: pic.twitter.com/ySaEhMg7t2
— Colin Kalmbacher (@colinkalmbacher) April 2, 2020
"A convention having tens of thousands of people in one arena is very different than having people walk into a polling booth with, uh, accurate spacing to six to ten peop - uh, feet apart one at a time going in and having machines scrubbed down," he tried to argue.
Reports suggest that Gov. Evers's decision will result in several court challenges in the coming days.