Wisconsin Court Shrugs, Mails Ballots Anyway — carl j. nichols…

In a ruling that shocked absolutely no one who has been paying attention to Wisconsin politics since roughly the invention of the fax machine, a state appeals court has decided that Carl J. Nichols—a conservative attorney who has spent the better part of forever litigating the 2020 election like it's a fantasy football league he's convinced he can still win—cannot single-handedly stop the state from mailing out absentee ballots. The court's decision, delivered with what I can only assume was a collective eye-roll audible from Green Bay to Kenosha, rejected Nichols' attempt to block clerks from sending mail ballots ahead of the upcoming election. His argument, as far as anyone can tell, was essentially: "What if we don't, though?" Nichols, a former Trump administration official who has made a second career out of election litigation, argued that mailing ballots before a certain date violates state law. The appeals court disagreed. This is the legal equivalent of trying to return a toaster at Costco three years later with no receipt and a vague story about how it "never really worked." Let's be clear about what's happening here. This is not about voter fraud. This is not about election integrity. This is about the fact that mail ballots are, objectively, a good idea for anyone who doesn't want to stand in a line behind a guy in a "Let's Go Brandon" shirt who's been practicing his rant since 2020. You can vote in your pajamas. You can vote while eating leftovers. You can vote while pretending to listen to your spouse talk about their day. It's democracy, but comfortable. And that's exactly what scares the people filing these lawsuits. The more people who vote, the less predictable elections become. Mail ballots make voting easier, and easier voting means more voters, and more voters means the people who've been winning by keeping the electorate small start losing. It's not rocket science. It's not even regular science. It's just math. Nichols and his ilk have been trying every legal Hail Mary in the playbook: lawsuits in multiple states, emergency appeals, procedural challenges, and the occasional press conference that looks like it was filmed in a basement with a ring light from Wish. None of it has worked. The courts keep saying the same thing: you can't just make up a rule because you don't like the outcome. The real kicker? The Wisconsin ruling means ballots are going out. Clerks are mailing them. Voters are getting them. And the only thing Nichols has accomplished is adding a few more billable hours to his calendar and a few more entries to his Wikipedia page under "Notable Failed Lawsuits." Congrats, buddy. You're the legal equivalent of a guy who yells at the ref from the nosebleeds. This is the pattern now. Every election cycle, a new batch of lawsuits gets filed, a new batch of courts says no, and a new batch of lawyers sends out fundraising emails claiming they're fighting for "election integrity" while cashing checks from people who think the moon landing was filmed in a warehouse. It's a grift. It's a business model. And it's exhausting. The Wisconsin court did the right thing, which is to say it did the boring thing: it followed the law. Mailed ballots are legal. Courts have said so. Again. And again. And again. At some point, you'd think the people filing these suits would get the message. But that would require them to be interested in reality, and reality doesn't raise as much money. **Closing Opinion:** Nichols lost, the ballots are going out, and democracy will survive another day despite his best efforts to litigate it into submission. If these people spent half as much energy on actual voter outreach as they do on losing lawsuits, they might actually win an election on the merits. But that would require offering voters something other than grievance and a grudge. Good luck with that.