Wisconsin Supreme Court rejects appeal by Green Party candidate to reprint ballots

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Monday ruled against the Green Party's presidential candidate who wanted to get on the state's November ballot.

The state's elections commission did not include the candidate, Howie Hawkins, and his running mate, Angela Walker, on the ballot due to discrepancies in their paperwork, and Wisconsin's top court ruled that Hawkins waited too long to challenge this decision. Had the court ruled in favor of Hawkins, tens of thousands of ballots that have been mailed to voters would have been invalidated.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, more voters are expected to mail in their ballots across the country, and Wisconsin election officials said they weren't sure if they would even be able to reprint more than one million ballots with Hawkins' name before the election.

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"Election chaos averted," Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul (D) said in a statement, adding that the ruling "helped safeguard the smooth functioning of the upcoming election." Robert Smith, a spokesman for Hawkins, said the court's decision set a "dangerous precedent where a major party can effectively decide which minor parties can participate in elections by conjuring up arbitrary requirements on the fly to remove its opposition." The Green Party's legal team has ties to the Republican Party, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.