Back in 2022, a complaint was filed against the Racine, Wisconsin city official regarding an innovative voting method. What was that? Oh, back then, the city officials decided to use a van that travelled in different parts of the city and made it much easier for people to vote early and in person. Well, at least that’s what those city officials believed but many people were opposed to this decision to use a van to make voting easier.
For example, there were some Republicans who went on to say that this might even be a violation of the state election laws since it was seen that the van mostly wandered around in the Democratic parts of the city, and the Republicans said that this is just an unfair advantage to just one party. This is exactly why this Wisconsin Mobile Voting Lawsuit came into the picture, and today, we’ll be taking a good look at the most important details of this case, so here we go then.
That’s when a man named Ken Brown, who leads the Republican Party in Racine County, filed a lawsuit.
Who Sued Who, and Why?
Well, first of all, just know that it was Ken Brown (a Republican Party leader down there in Racine Country) who first filed a complaint with the Wisconsin Election Commission after the local election that went down in August 2022.
As per Ken Brown, the van was only used in areas that are heavily Democrat-leaning, so that is a clear unfair advantage to just one party, and that is just purely unfair. But the thing is, the Wisconsin Elections Commission actually disagreed with him and went on to just straight up dismiss his complaint, and that was just 4 days before the actual elections down there in the county.
Up until this point, it was just a complaint, but since this complaint was dismissed Ken Brown was unhappy about it all, and he took this matter to court right away.
The Arguments
Well, one side strongly agrees that a mobile voting van isn’t illegal because it isn’t mentioned anywhere in the Wisconsin law. The people who support this say that this is the kinda voting method that is making it much easier for people to vote.
The Republicans, however, had a different view, and what’s that? Well, as you already have a good idea of this, they aren’t actually out there making mobile voting vans illegal, they only have the problem with how the van was only wandering around in Democratic-leaning areas of the city, which is a clear and unfair advantage to one party only. And that’s the concerning part about this lawsuit or this whole scene.
Wisconsin’s Supreme Court Steps In
In the lower court though, the judge actually agreed with Ken Brown, but then Wisconsin’s Supreme Court came up with a decision on this case. It was just this year in February 2025 when we saw a ruling, and yes, the court actually dismissed the entire case altogether. Why? Because they said Ken Brown didn’t have legal “standing.” In simple terms, they said he wasn’t personally affected enough by the van to sue over it.