In his ruling last Thursday, the District Court judge, William Conley, declined to take what he called “the extraordinary step of delaying a statewide election at the last minute.” Nonetheless, he said, he was persuaded that “the asserted harm is imminent and a timely resolution is necessary if there is any hope of vindicating the voting rights of Wisconsin citizens.”

Tens of thousands of voters who requested their ballots on time faced little prospect of even receiving them until after Election Day. Consequently, Judge Conley ruled, ballots did not have to be postmarked by Election Day. As long as election officials received a ballot by the afternoon of Monday, April 13, six days after the election, it would still count, no matter the postmark. (In a subsequent order, Judge Conley barred release of the election returns until that date so that late absentee voters would be as ignorant of the outcome as those who cast their ballots on Election Day.)

In fashioning his order, Judge Conley noted that the head of the Wisconsin Election Commission had assured the court that moving the deadline “will not impact the ability to complete the canvass in a timely manner.” He also observed that “the amicus briefs from various local governments suggest that an extension of the deadline would be heartily welcomed by many local officials.” The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit denied the Republicans’ request for a stay. The urgent appeal to the Supreme Court followed.

I’ve described the reasoning in the judge’s 53-page opinion in this detail because anyone reading only the Supreme Court’s majority opinion would come away thinking that the order was the act of a rogue judge, cramming an extreme remedy for a nonexistent problem down the throat of a resistant public. There is barely a hint in the opinion of the turmoil in the country. Did it not occur to these justices to wonder why they were working at home rather than in their chambers? It was left to Justice Ginsburg in her dissenting opinion to point out that “the District Court was reacting to a grave, rapidly developing public health crisis.”

While the rest of us are obsessed with the dimensions of that crisis, the justices in Monday’s majority were for some strange reason obsessed with the notion that the Democratic plaintiffs had not asked the judge for the precise remedy he ordered; the opinion mentions this on each of its four pages. But as the plaintiffs told the justices in their brief, and as Justice Ginsburg concluded from reading the transcript of the District Court hearing, that wasn’t true. The plaintiffs “specifically requested that remedy at the preliminary-injunction hearing in view of the ever-increasing demand for absentee ballots,” she wrote.

The other three dissenting justices all signed Justice Ginsburg’s opinion; she spoke for them all. Her final paragraph is worth quoting in full:

“The majority of the court declares that this case presents a ‘narrow, technical question.’ That is wrong. The question here is whether tens of thousands of Wisconsin citizens can vote safely in the midst of a pandemic. Under the District Court’s order, they would be able to do so. Even if they receive their absentee ballot in the days immediately following Election Day, they could return it. With the majority’s stay in place, that will not be possible. Either they will have to brave the polls, endangering their own and others’ safety. Or they will lose their right to vote, through no fault of their own. That is a matter of utmost importance — to the constitutional rights of Wisconsin’s citizens, the integrity of the state’s election process, and in this most extraordinary time, the health of the nation.”