State High Court Nullifies 2018 Election

Wisconsin Supreme Court. Photo by Dave Reid.

The double-standard is a fresh way that Wisconsin Republicans and their cudgels are keeping Walkerism alive across state government.

They can’t outright cancel elections, but Republican legislators have a right-wing dominated state Supreme Court to keep alive the reactionary governance voters rejected in the Democrats’ statewide office sweep in November, 2018.

This goes beyond snubbing special legislative session requests and pretending the governor isn’t part of the process.

Several weeks ago, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority hamstrung the executive’s ability to put public health ahead of enabling a pandemic.

Then Thursday it once again OK’ed most of the GOP’s partisan, post-2018 election power grabs, thereby extending Walkerite control of the Capitol despite his defeat, and also put restrictions on victorious Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul which had not applied to the ousted GOP AG Brad Schimel.

The right-wing 5-2 majority on the WI Supreme Court upheld nearly all aspects of the Walkerites’s unprecedented lame-duck power grab that elevated already-embedded GOP legislative leaders and weakened Gov. Evers and AG Kaul even before they took office.

Friday the right-wing justices slapped limitations on the Wisconsin Governor’s veto authority that hadn’t restricted Scott Walker:

A divided state Supreme Court scaled back Democratic Gov. Tony Evers‘ veto authority Friday, throwing out three changes he made to the state budget last year.

The ruling, written by conservatives who control the court, is a setback for Evers and future governors. For decades, the high court has given Wisconsin governors broad authority to rewrite budgets and some other legislation using partial vetoes.

These are big wins for the GOP and its wealthy donors whose encrusted conservative extremism is crumbling nationally.

The Republicans’ next goals: suppressing Democratic voting sufficient to swing the state for Trump, and cutting Evers out of the upcoming redistricting of legislative and congressional seats and extending the lopsided GOP gerrymander for another decade of one-party, favor-dispensing self-dealing.

Meanwhile, we await the GOP-dominated legislature’s approval of a new Wisconsin license plate slogan:

“Elections don’t matter here.”