Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/19a1016_o759.pdf
Page Number: 8

4 

REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE v. 
DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE 
GINSBURG, J., dissenting 

ballot  requests.  ___  F. Supp.  3d,  at  ___–___,  2020  WL 
1638374,  *4–*5.  The  Court’s  suggestion  that  the  current 
situation is not “substantially different” from “an ordinary 
election”  boggles the mind.  Ante,  at  3.  Some 150,000 re-
quests  for  absentee  ballots  have  been  processed  since 
Thursday, state records indicate.2  The surge in absentee-
ballot requests has overwhelmed election officials, who face 
a huge backlog in sending ballots.  ___ F. Supp. 3d, at ___, 
___,  ___–___,  ___–___,  2020  WL  1638374,  *1,  *5,  *9–*10, 
*17–*18.  As of Sunday morning, 12,000 ballots reportedly 
had  not  yet  been  mailed  out.3  It  takes  days  for  a mailed 
ballot to reach its recipient—the postal service recommends 
budgeting a week—even without accounting for pandemic-
induced mail delays.  Id., at ___, 2020 WL 1638374, *5.  It 
is therefore likely that ballots mailed in recent days will not 
reach  voters  by  tomorrow;  for  ballots  not  yet  mailed,  late 
arrival is all but certain.4  Under the District Court’s order, 
an  absentee  voter  who  receives  a  ballot  after  tomorrow 
could still have voted, as long as she delivered it to election 

—————— 

2 See Wisconsin Elections Commission, Absentee Ballot Report, Apr. 2, 
2020,  https://elections.wi.gov/node/6806;  Wisconsin  Elections  Commis-
sion,  Absentee  Ballot  Report,  Apr. 
2020,  https://elec-
tions.wi.gov/node/6808; Wisconsin Elections Commission, Absentee Bal-
lot  Report,  Apr.  4,  2020,  https://elections.wi.gov/node/6814;  Wisconsin 
Elections Commission, Absentee Ballot Report, Apr. 5, 2020, https://elec-
tions.wi.gov/node/6815. 

3, 

3 See Wisconsin Elections Commission, Absentee Ballot Report, Apr. 5, 

2020, https://elections.wi.gov/index.php/node/6815. 

4 See, e.g., Tr. 18–19 (Apr. 1, 2020) (testimony that mail delivery “can 
take up to a week” or longer, threatening “the opportunity for the voter 
to receive [the absentee] ballot by mail”); id., at 35 (testimony that the 
“transaction time from the time the clerk puts [an absentee ballot] in the 
mail to the voter receiving it could take up to a week”); id., at 40 (testi-
mony agreeing that “there will be some people who request . . . [an] ab-
sentee ballot [on April 2] who will not be receiving it in time to put it in 
the mail by April 7th”); Brief for City of Green Bay as Amicus Curiae in 
No. 3:20–cv–00249 (WD Wis.), p. 5 (“[D]elays at the post office are . . . 
affecting the speed with which voters receive their ballots . . . .”).