A recording of a webinar sponsored by the WI Interfaith Voter Engagement Campaign, June 15, 2020.

As November’s monumentally important election approaches, litigation addressing voting rights and election administration will proliferate. This year, due to Wisconsin’s spring election coinciding with the initial restrictions in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, lawsuits began earlier and more aggressively than anticipated. A federal judge extended some deadlines pertaining to the April 7 spring election, the state supreme court rejected attempts to avoid in-person voting while the state was shut down, and several court cases that could impact the partisan primaries in August and the general election in November are being actively litigated.

Madison-based attorneys Jeff Mandell and Doug Poland have represented parties in litigation involving the purge of registered voters from the poll books, the voting procedures for the April 7 election, and are now representing parties seeking to secure a fair, accessible, and safe vote for Wisconsin voters in August and November. Jeff and Doug share an update on election litigation, discussing the various lawsuits that have been filed, what has been decided, what is yet to be decided, and other disputes on the horizon that could impact the coming elections.

Doug Poland is a Member of Rathje Woodward, and the founding member of the firm’s Madison office. Doug has more than 25 years of significant experience in class action, mass tort, product liability, and consumer fraud, and voting rights and election litigation matters. Doug served as co-lead trial counsel for plaintiffs who successfully challenged the Wisconsin Assembly legislative districts before three-judge federal panels in 2012 and 2016. Doug serves as counsel to plaintiffs in two lawsuits that obtained extensions of the deadline for absentee ballot returns in the 2020 Wisconsin spring general election, and who now seek relief with respect to the August and November elections. Doug also represents the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin in opposing the attempt to purge hundreds of thousands of registered Wisconsin voters from the poll books.

Doug is a Ruling Elder at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Madison, and serves on the Personnel Committee of the John Knox Presbytery.

Jeff Mandell is a partner at Stafford Rosenbaum, where he leads the firm’s practice groups dedicated to litigation, appellate, and election and political law. Jeff maintains a broad litigation and appellate practice and appears frequently before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. He was lead counsel to the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin and others in challenging the constitutionality of the Legislature’s December 2018 extraordinary session. He represents the Service Employees International Union and some of its members in opposing the attempt to purge hundreds of thousands of registered Wisconsin voters from the poll books. And he serves as co-counsel with Doug and others to plaintiffs seeking relief with respect to the August and November elections.

Jeff previously served as Legislative Director at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in Washington, DC; in Madison, he is an active congregant at Beth Israel Center, where he serves on the Board of Directors.