The Supreme Court blocks extended voting in Wisconsin Primary

On Monday, The Supreme Court issued a new rule that refuses to extend the deadline for absentee voting in the Wisconsin Primary, as cases of the coronavirus continue to rise. Yahoo Finance’s Rick Newman shares the details.

Video Transcript

ADAM SHAPIRO: As we continue on Yahoo Finance right now, I want to bring in Rick Newman because believe it or not, people are lining up without protective gear. They may not be able to get it in Wisconsin to vote in that state's primary. Rick, what do you got for us on this? Because we know it's been a court battle to either do it or not.

RICK NEWMAN: Yeah, the election is on. People are-- they're not just lining up. They're lining up for blocks, apparently, with appropriate distance between them. When you go into the polling place, you're going to get hand sanitizer. You have to stand away from the polling workers when you present your ID.

So they've worked out some procedures here. But there are very few polling places open. So in Milwaukee, the original plan for it was 180 different places to vote. That's down to five. So that's one of the reason the lines are so long. But look, people are saying, screw this virus. I'm going to vote. And you know, that's kind of encouraging.

So let's remind people what they're actually voting for here. This is the Democratic primary that we've sort of forgotten about. It seems very likely Joe Biden is going to win. He could win by double digits. But we're not going to have results at least for a week. It looks like there are going to be a lot of absentee ballots. We probably will get some exit polls, so we'll have an idea who the winner is here but we're not going to know for sure until next week at the earliest.

JULIE HYMAN: And Rick, just to be clear here, the Supreme Court, which allowed this election to go ahead, wasn't really ruling overall in the election, right? They were just ruling on the advance notice that election officials gave to extend the window for absentee ballots, if I'm understanding it correctly. What are then the implications of that, if any, for the other elections we could get this year?

RICK NEWMAN: Yeah, this is an unusual case. I mean, it's not as if every state is going to have to go through this. The reason this is happening is the governor is a Democrat and the legislature is controlled by Republicans, and they did not agree on what to do about the election. So in other state-- you know, most other states, they have agreed. They've just simply postponed it.

But you're right. The governor tried to cancel this through emergency order yesterday at the last minute. Republicans took it straight to court and ended up at the US Supreme Court. And they did rule on this question. So the governor wanted to extend absentee ballots so you could have a week from today before you mailed your ballot in. And the US Supreme Court said, nope, any absentee ballots have to be postmarked today, no later than today, or they don't count.

So I guess the lesson for other states is work this out ahead of time if you want to extend the election or extend absentee ballot-- absentee voting. Don't do it at the last minute.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Rick, following up on something you said when we first talked to you, which is people are saying, you know, to heck with the virus, I'm voting. Could this be a primer for the November presidential election? This calls for perhaps it should be a mail-in vote, but maybe we're seeing, despite the-- what do they call it-- the distancing, the social distancing, people want to vote.

RICK NEWMAN: Yeah. Well, let's hope it's not a preview of what happens in November, but it's certainly a warning of what could happen if we're not prepared in November. So we've still got several months. You know, a lot of states have mail-- vote by mail, but they don't-- it's not set up for everybody.

So states that want to do that, I mean, they do have the time to prepare for that. Wisconsin will also show us what if we do have a resurgence of the virus next fall? How does it go when people vote amid a pandemic as they are doing right now? Will they see any, you know, additional infections, for example, among poll workers or people who voted?

Or will they-- will the social distancing work and all the other precautionary measures? I mean, let's hope we're in better shape by the time people go to vote in the general election in November, but if we're not, Wisconsin gives us some idea what might happen.