Here and Now
Maria Lazar, Chris Taylor on Wisconsin's 2020 Vote Lawsuit
Clip: Season 2400 Episode 2435 | 3m 20sVideo has Closed Captions
Maria Lazar and Chris Taylor on the 4-3 decision to reject "Trump v. Biden" in 2020.
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates Maria Lazar and Chris Taylor discuss the high court's 4-3 decision to reject "Trump v. Biden," a lawsuit to throw out some 220,000 ballots cast in the 2020 election.
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Here and Now is a local public television program presented by PBS Wisconsin
Here and Now
Maria Lazar, Chris Taylor on Wisconsin's 2020 Vote Lawsuit
Clip: Season 2400 Episode 2435 | 3m 20sVideo has Closed Captions
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates Maria Lazar and Chris Taylor discuss the high court's 4-3 decision to reject "Trump v. Biden," a lawsuit to throw out some 220,000 ballots cast in the 2020 election.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship>> Mayor Jim Paine, thanks very much.
>> Thank you.
>> In the last few weeks, President Donald Trump has continued to dredge up conspiracy theories about his election loss to Joe Biden in 2020.
Election controversies are often settled in court.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court election is less than a month away, pitting conservative candidate Judge Maria Lazar against Liberal candidate Judge Chris Taylor.
Here and now.
Senior political reporter Zach Schultz interviewed the candidates about an important Supreme Court decision from the 2020 election to ask them how they would have ruled.
>> We won.
Let's go.
>> In the days after Joe Biden won Wisconsin and the race for president in 2020, Donald Trump and his supporters immediately began spreading election conspiracies among his efforts to overturn the election, Trump's campaign sued in Wisconsin, attempting to throw out 220,000 ballots in Dane and Milwaukee counties, the two largest Democratic areas of the state.
The case reached the Wisconsin Supreme Court as Trump v Biden and with conservatives in control of the court, it was Justice Bryan Hagedorn who sided with the three liberal justices to deny Trump's request and refuse to take the case, saying the campaign did not have standing to sue.
The three other conservatives did not say whether they would have sided with Trump and thrown out the ballots, but they would have taken the case.
We asked the candidates in this election how they would have ruled if they'd been on the court.
>> I would have rejected that effort.
Again, that stands in contrast with my opponent.
My opponent has been supported in the past in her Court of Appeals race by the same individuals that led the charge in trying to overturn our 2020 election.
I think that was the right decision.
That was, again, a one only a one vote decision, which is alarming because if that case had been successful, hundreds of thousands of votes in the state of Wisconsin would have been thrown out.
And that's alarming to me.
>> Judge Lazar, like the conservatives who dissented in that case, focused on whether Trump had standing to file suit.
>> This is sort of an area that's really deeply in flux with our state Supreme Court.
They have issued several opinions that have gone around the edges of it, and so I'm not going to comment any further on where they would go, because I honestly believe that standing is going to come back up in our next term.
So when I'm on this court, I don't want to have someone say, you said in an interview, so now you can't rule in this case.
>> As far as whether someone's going to say, well, you didn't answer the question.
Trump v Biden, would you have overturned all those votes?
Can you give me a reaction to that?
>> I have answered the question, but with respect to overturning votes, I strongly believe that every vote should be counted.
So every legal valid vote should be counted.
So I wouldn't comment, and I don't actually know the parameters of how they were going to try to disenfranchize or not disenfranchize voters.
So I really don't have any further thing that I can say about that case.
>> Reporting from Madison.
I'm Zach Schulze for "Here& Now".
>> On the current Supreme Court.
Former Chief Justice Annette Ziegler announced this week she will not seek reelection, opening another
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