In last week’s marquee race, liberal challenger Jill Karofsky beat conservative state supreme court incumbent Daniel Kelly by 10 points, narrowing the court’s right-wing majority just as it is likely to hear some big cases, including on redistricting Wisconsin’s highly gerrymandered legislative maps. With thousands of poll workers choosing not to show up and many polling places closed, turnout was only a bit more than 30 percent, and the vast majority of votes came in by mail. Nevertheless, thousands still risked their health to vote in person, their only option after Wisconsin Republicans refused proposal after proposal to make voting more accessible in light of the pandemic. They refused to extend mail-in ballot deadlines, relax voter ID requirements, send absentee ballots to all voters or move to an all-mail election. They litigated to the U.S. Supreme Court efforts by Gov. Tony Evers (D) to ease the process.

Though they failed to swing the race for Mr. Kelly, Republicans’ voter suppression strategy was hardly victimless. More than 11,000 voters asked for but were not sent absentee ballots. The U.S. Supreme Court declared that mail-in votes had to be postmarked by Election Day, but hundreds came in with missing or marred postmarks, leaving election officials to argue about what to do with them. Untold numbers of people understandably declined to vote in person. Others may have contracted covid-19 from staffing or waiting in line at polling places. Further litigation is a certainty.

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Led by President Trump, who has railed recently against mail-in voting, Republicans may conclude that their best hope lies in suppressing turnout even further than they tried to in Wisconsin. That would be a mistake. Many states still require residents to have a valid excuse in order to obtain an absentee ballot, cumbersome witness signature requirements or strange deadlines by which mail-in votes must be received. GOP leaders should join in removing these barriers. If people cannot vote safely in person, the only reasonable option is to let them vote by mail.

Imagine the confusion Wisconsin has seen over the past couple of weeks, 51 times over, in November, heightened further if presidential election results are too close to call. If Republicans continue to act on the calculation that lower turnout favors them, this chaos might be the result.

Ultimately, the Republican Party faces a choice. It can continue to devote its efforts to suppressing the vote because it knows that it loses when more people turn out. Or it can try to appeal to voters through more attractive policies and candidates. It seems obvious which path leads to a brighter future, not only for the party but also for democracy itself.

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