Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/20a66_new_m6io.pdf
Page Number: 32

Cite as:  592 U. S. ____ (2020) 

9 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

facts would mean, as the chair of the Wisconsin Elections 
Commission  testified,  that  many  thousands  of  timely  re-
quested and postmarked votes—potentially into the six-fig-
ure range—would not be counted without a short extension 
of the ballot-receipt deadline.  See ___ F. Supp. 3d, at ___, 
2020 WL 5627186, *21; Electronic Case Filing in No. 3–20–
cv–459, Doc. 299 (WD Wis.), p. 9. 
  The  concurrence  fails  to  give  those  findings  the  respect 
they are due.  Of course, the concurrence says it is not com-
mitting  that  elementary  error;  according  to  JUSTICE 
KAVANAUGH, he disputes only the district court’s “specula-
tive  predictions,”  not  its  statement  of  “historical  facts.”  
Ante, at 15–16.  But the concurrence alternately rejects, ig-
nores, or accepts only pro forma the district court’s account 
of the facts (just the facts).  In responding to this dissent, 
the concurring opinion acknowledges that in-person voting 
in Wisconsin “can pose a health risk.”  Ante, at 16.  Yet in 
condemning the injunction, it continues to insist—how else 
could it reach the decision it does?—that going to the polls 
is “reasonably safe” for Wisconsin’s citizens, contrary to the 
expert testimony the district court relied on.   Ante, at 17.  
Similarly, the concurrence nods glancingly to increased bal-
lot applications, see ante,  at  16,  but  it  fails  to recount (as 
the district court did in detail) how that influx has created 
heavy backlogs and prevented ballots from issuing in timely 
fashion.   And  it does  not discuss  the evidence  of  unusual, 
even  unprecedented,  delays  in  postal  delivery  service  in 
Wisconsin.  In short, the concurrence refuses to engage with 
the  core  of  the  analysis  supporting  the  district  court’s  in-
junction:  that  a  veritable  tsunami  (in  the  form  of  a  pan-
demic)  has  hit  Wisconsin’s  election  machinery,  and  dis-
rupted all its usual mail ballot operations.  And as to the 
supposedly “speculative prediction” that without the ballot-
receipt extension as many as 100,000 timely cast mail votes 
would go uncounted?  That estimate itself derived from the