The state Democratic Party has responded to a suit by the Trump campaign that challenged the use of mail-in voting in the primary election.

“Following the crisis from the global pandemic, and after a very well publicized and traumatic Election Day in Wisconsin, interest in mail-in balloting spiked for the Primary Election to a threshold beyond whatever could have been previously anticipated in the light of Act 77,” the state Democratic Party statd in a brief in support of a motion to intervene.

“The avalanche of applications had a second impact — in many counties the ballots were delayed in being mailed out. This delay compounded problems with the mail – from a vast increase in mailed packages to public confusion about how to properly disinfect mail received. As a result, voters had less time to complete and return ballots, even when the ballots were properly received.”

They contend that alternate ballot collection sites were used in approximately 20 counties due to the increase in ballots requested and the closure of county offices due to COVID-19.

“There have been no credible allegations of voter fraud in connection with the over 2,000,000 vote-by-mail ballots applications that were received and completed in the Primary Election,”they assert. “Here, Plaintiffs seek to invalidate procedures of the Commonwealth’s vote-by-mail program for an alleged fear of voter fraud in the absence of any evidence of such wide-spread fraud.

“Were the Court to grant Plaintiffs’ relief, it would be harder for citizens to vote in the Commonwealth and potentially disenfranchise thousands of voters who fail to follow immaterial procedural instructions. While voters are instructed to use a privacy envelope in submitting their ballot, the Commonwealth’s Department of State, accurately noted that there is nothing in the Election Code permitting or authorizing a County Board of Election to discard a ballot cast without a privacy envelope.”