Wisconsin high court rejects voter records request

MADISON — A bipartisan majority of the Wisconsin Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an effort by a conservative activist who has challenged the legitimacy of the 2020 election to obtain guardianship records in order to root out ineligible voters in Wisconsin.

Ron Heuer, who leads a group called the Wisconsin Voters Alliance, filed the lawsuit at issue in 2022 in an effort to obtain records of people placed under guardianship to check them against the statewide voter list to ensure they’re allowed to vote.

At issue in the lawsuit is the balance between protecting the right to privacy for individuals who have been declared ineligible to vote based on incompetency and preventing valid votes from being canceled or diluted by ineligible votes.

The state’s highest court in a 5-2 decision ruled Heuer could not gain access to the records in a decision that included the court’s liberal majority of Chief Justice Jill Karofsky, Justices Janet Protasiewicz, Rebecca Dallet and Susan Crawford and conservative justice Brian Hagedorn in the majority opinion.

Conservative justices Annette Ziegler and Rebecca Bradley, who are both leaving the court, issued dissenting opinions.

Protasiewicz, writing for the majority, said the court’s ruling “is rooted in the legislature’s choice to protect the privacy of individuals subject to guardianship proceedings.”

She cited a portion of state law that says, “court records pertinent to the finding of incompetency are closed.”

In her dissenting opinion, Ziegler said the majority was applying the state law to documents that are not covered by the statute.

“The majority’s conclusion fails to recognize this important distinction: A finding of incompetency is distinct from a finding that one has lost the right to vote,” Ziegler wrote. “Instead, it adopts an overbroad and unworkable definition of what records pertain to a finding of incompetency to include [the guardianship forms].

“Holding that [the forms] are shielded from the public records law runs counter to the statute’s language, scheme, and the presumption of open government.”

In the wake of the 2020 election, Heuer and the Wisconsin Voters Alliance filed lawsuits in 13 counties to obtain Notice of Voting Eligibility forms, or records of people placed under guardianship, to check them against the statewide voter registration list, including in Walworth County, where the lawsuit before the Supreme Court originated.

In the lawsuit, Heuer and his group alleged the number of “ineligible voters” listed on the Wisconsin Elections Commission‘s public website was inconsistent with counties’ tallies from voting wards.

Heuer was previously hired by former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman as an investigator in a fruitless, taxpayer-funded review of the 2020 election. At that time, Heuer’s group had filed three lawsuits over aspects of the election — two of which sought to overturn the results. Heuer also drew attention for social media posts that invoked racist tropes and conspiracy theories.