A federal lawsuit filed in Wisconsin that called into question the integrity of this year’s election has been dropped as the Trump campaign and other parties continue to pursue legal action in several other states.
The three plaintiffs, all Wisconsin voters, voluntarily withdrew the lawsuit on Monday. The legal action had been filed on Thursday in the United States District Court in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and argued that the absentee voting process in three counties, including the state’s two largest, included “illegal votes” that should invalidate the presidential election results. If the lawsuit had been successful, it would have delivered the Badger State’s 10 Electoral College votes to President Trump instead of President-elect Joe Biden, who won the state by about 20,000 votes.
It was not immediately clear why the plaintiffs dropped the litigation. When contacted by the Washington Examiner, one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers declined to comment, citing attorney-client privilege. The motion to dismiss came just before a status conference was scheduled to take place on Monday.
The lawsuit had targeted Milwaukee, Dane, and Menominee counties. Part of the lawsuit centered around “indefinitely confined voters,” who are citizens that Wisconsin law allows to vote absentee without showing photo identification. The law was designed to allow voters to self-certify as such if they are confined to their residences due to age, disability, or physical ailment.
Republicans in the state objected to this year’s number of indefinitely confined voters, with about 243,000 people listing themselves as such compared to only 72,000 last year. A GOP official recently told the Washington Examiner that Republicans believe the indefinitely confined voter law has been abused in this year’s election.
After the lawsuit was filed last week, a flurry of motions followed, including one by the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, which moved to intervene as a defendant in the case. The party took aim at the lawsuit in the 10-page motion.
“Through this action, Plaintiffs — who do not even live in the counties about which they complain—seek to disrupt the lawful certification of ballots in three of Wisconsin’s 72 counties based on nothing more than rank speculation and unsupported suspicion,” the motion read.
“Just reciting Plaintiffs’ outlandish request for relief is enough to demonstrate the threat it poses to the DPW’s members, candidates whom the DPW supports, and the DPW as an organization,” the motion continued.
The Washington Examiner reached out to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin for comment following the lawsuit’s Monday dismissal but did not immediately receive a response.
Wisconsin is one of the state’s that Trump’s team has homed in on following the election. The small margin of Biden’s apparent victory in the state is enough to trigger a recount, which the Trump campaign has indicated that it intends to demand. Canvassing is expected to be completed by the Tuesday deadline, after which Trump will have until 5 p.m. the following day to file a recount petition, with the recount process beginning after that.
As it stands on Monday, Biden leads in Wisconsin by 20,544 votes, with 49.6% of the vote. Trump has 48.9%.
