US presidential primaries: Joe Biden wins in Wisconsin as a liberal supreme court challenger stages upset

As former US Vice-President Joe Biden scored a widely expected win in the Wisconsin Democratic presidential primary, a liberal challenger for a state supreme court seat declared victory in an upset hailed by Democrats as boding well for the presidential election in November, The Guardian reports.

The state supreme court is expected to rule in numerous voting rights cases in the lead-up to the presidential election, including a case in which 200,000 voters could be purged from voter rolls. Wisconsin is a swing state that narrowly voted for Donald Trump in 2016.

With most precincts in the state reporting, Judge Jill Karofsky held what looked like an insurmountable lead over conservative state supreme court justice Daniel Kelly.

The state’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers, had attempted to postpone the election, but he was rebuffed by the Republican-led legislature and the conservative-controlled state supreme court.

“Although we were successful in this race, the circumstances under which this election was conducted were simply unacceptable, and raise serious concerns for the future of our democracy,” Karofsky said in a statement. “Nobody in this state or in this country should have been forced to choose between their safety and participating in an election.”

Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, had held a large lead in polls before the vote was held. His main opponent, Bernie Sanders, dropped out of the presidential nominating race the day after the vote. Sanders endorsed Biden’s candidacy in a video chat on Monday.

The results from Wisconsin on Monday were drawn from election day the previous Tuesday, which was marred by long lines of voters forced to go to the polls in person as coronavirus ravaged the country.

Coronavirus fears led to an unprecedented number of requests for absentee ballots in the state, numbering more than 1m, but many voters reported that they had not received ballots by election day.

Democracy advocates raised an alarm of potential mass disenfranchisement, especially for minority voters in the city of Milwaukee. Owing to a lack of poll workers amid the pandemic, the election was conducted with just five Milwaukee polling sites.