MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Voters in swing state Wisconsin whose absentee ballots don't arrive by Election Day should be allowed to cast provisional ballots at the polls to ensure their votes are counted, a lawsuit filed Friday argues.
The lawsuit comes amid growing concerns about how quickly the United States Postal Service will be able to deliver ballots ahead of the November midterms. Control of Congress is at stake, and Wisconsin voters will be electing a new governor as well as determining control of the Legislature.
The bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission warned the U.S. postmaster general in May that any delay could deprive citizens of their fundamental right to vote. In January, a group of mostly Democratic U.S. senators also wrote the postal service, raising concerns that a change in how it postmarks mail could invalidate many mail-in ballots.
The lawsuit comes after the mail-in ballots of nearly 150,000 California voters were rejected, the vast majority of them because of late postmarks, despite the state's efforts to count every valid vote in the June primary.
In Wisconsin, at least hundreds of ballots were not counted in the April election because they arrived late, based on an elections commission survey of election clerks. More than 300 ballots in Milwaukee and more than 100 in Fond du Lac were rejected for arriving too late.
The lawsuit was filed in Dane County circuit court by the liberal Madison-based Law Forward firm and Washington, D.C.-based Fair Elections Center on behalf of a voter and the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin.
A spokesperson for the elections commission had no immediate comment.
“Every voter in Wisconsin that puts an accurately requested absentee ballot in the mail on time expects their vote will be counted,” said Debra Cronmiller, executive director of League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, in a statement. “Delays in mail delivery prevent that. It is time to have a remedy for these eligible voters.”
Currently in Wisconsin, voters are prohibited from casting a provisional ballot in person on Election Day. The lawsuit is asking a judge to rule that if a voter's absentee ballot has not arrived, they can then cast a provisional ballot. Absentee voters in the state can track the status of their ballots, so they would know on Election Day whether it has been received.
Provisional ballots are set aside by election officials and only counted if a voter's absentee ballot is not delivered on time. If the absentee ballot does arrive on time, the provisional ballot would not be counted.
In Wisconsin, ballots must arrive at the clerk's office by the end of voting on Election Day in order to be counted.
FILE - Absentee ballots during a count at the Wisconsin Center, Nov. 8, 2022, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Morry Gash, File)
WINDER, Ga. (AP) — A teenager has pleaded guilty to all 55 counts, including murder, in a shooting nearly two years ago at Apalachee High School in Georgia that killed two students and two teachers.
Colt Gray, 16, entered the plea Friday without having reached a deal with prosecutors. He had previously pleaded not guilty to charges in the Sept. 4, 2024, shooting that also left several others wounded, at the school of 1,900 students about 45 miles (73 kilometers) northeast of Atlanta.
Gray, who was 14 at the time of the shooting, was charged as an adult. His trial had been scheduled to start in mid-October.
A jury in March convicted his father, Colin Gray, on charges including second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter, and he is scheduled to be sentenced next week. Prosecutors said he gave his son the assault-style rifle used to open fire at the school.
Teachers Richard “Ricky” Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53, and students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, died in the shooting. Another teacher and eight more students were wounded, seven of them hit by gunfire.
Barrow County Superior Court Judge Nicholas Primm questioned Gray to ensure he understood the consequences of his plea and was entering it voluntarily. Gray responded, “Yes, your honor,” each time.
Murder carries a minimum sentence of life in prison. The judge must decide whether Gray should be eligible for parole after hearing victim statements, evidence and each side's summary of the case.
Gray sat next to his attorney at a table in the courtroom with his legs chained.
Family members of those killed and students who were shot gave statements, expressing anger and grief, with most asking the judge to sentence Gray to life without parole.
Breanna Schermerhorn, whose son Mason was killed, said she does not forgive Colt Gray. While adults around him missed warning signs, she said, he decided to bring the gun and to pull the trigger.
“Those decisions were his and his alone,” she said. “Mason deserved a future and we all deserved a future with Mason in it, and Colt took that from Mason and everyone who loved him."
Shayna Aspinwall, Richard Aspinwall's wife, lamented that the lives of their daughters, who were 2 and 5 when their father died, will be “forever marked by his absence.”
“It is a life sentence of grief and trauma for those left behind,” she said.
A teenage student who was shot recalled that day, telling the judge she remembered feeling “really scared and confused because I saw Colt standing in the door with a gun.” The Associated Press is not identifying the girl, who is a minor.
She said she realized she had been shot and asked a friend to hold her hand. She asked other friends to call her brother to let him know she'd been shot and didn't know if she'd make it. She had multiple surgeries and wasn't able to walk for about a year.
“After the shooting, I struggled with so much anxiety, and I felt like my life was over,” she said.
Apalachee High School Principal Jessica Rehberg said in court that Colt Gray’s “cruel actions” deserve “the harshest consequences.”
The hearing is expected to extend into next week, and Gray's defense attorney wrote in a court filing that he plans to call a psychologist, a counselor at the juvenile detention center where he has been held and his grandmother to testify.
Barrow County Sheriff’s Office Investigator Jason Smith testified about the timeline of the shooting based on video footage. Gray told his second period teacher just before 10 a.m. that he need to go see a crisis counselor but instead went to a bathroom to prepare for the shooting, Smith said.
He emerged from the bathroom at 10:21 a.m. and when he was unable to get back into his classroom, he went down the hall to another classroom, where he opened fire and then shot other people in the hallway. He ultimately surrendered to law enforcement officers.
Smith said he interviewed Gray at the school and again at the sheriff’s office.
“Colt indicated that it was spontaneous, that it was a last minute thing,” that he heard voices and on the way to the crisis counselor and “decided to do the shooting,” Smith said. But the investigation showed that the shooting had been planned in detail for some time, he said.
The investigator described pages of a notebook Gray had that included a detailed step-by-step plan to get himself ready in the bathroom that included notations like, “Don’t shoot anyone in the bathroom. You will alert people.”
On one page he wrote, “I’m not a killer,” and “I’m scared.” On several pages, the word “why” was written dozens of times. He also estimated the number of people he would kill and injure. In one place, he wrote, “Surprised if I make it.”
Sheriff’s deputies had previously interviewed Colt and Colin Gray in May 2023 about an online threat linked to the son. Colt Gray denied making the threat.
Investigators also found a shrine in Colt Gray's bedroom to Nikolas Cruz, the shooter in the 2018 massacre at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, prosecutors have said.
An investigator testified during Colin Gray's trial that he had been aware that his son's mental health had deteriorated and sought help from a counseling service weeks before the shooting. But the father never followed through on getting help for his son, the investigator said.
His mother, Marcee Gray, who was separated from Colin Gray, told investigators she had urged him weeks before the shooting to secure his guns and restrict their son’s access to them. Instead, over time, Colin Gray bought the boy ammunition, a gun sight and other shooting accessories, records show.
Judge Nicholas Primm holds a plea document for Colt Gray, the 16-year-old Apalachee High School shooting suspect, at Barrow County Superior Court in Winder, Ga., on Friday, July 24, 2026. (Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
Colt Gray, left, the 16-year-old Apalachee High School shooting suspect, stands next to his attorney Charlton Allen and pleads guilty at Barrow County Superior Court in Winder, Ga., on Friday, July 24, 2026. (Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
Colt Gray, the 16-year-old Apalachee High School shooting suspect, pleads guilty at Barrow County Superior Court in Winder, Ga., on Friday, July 24, 2026. (Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
Colt Gray, the 16-year-old Apalachee High School shooting suspect, is led in by deputies for a plea hearing at Barrow County Superior Court in Winder, Ga., on Friday, July 24, 2026. (Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
FILE - School shooting suspect Colt Gray exits the Barrow County Courthouse, Dec. 9, 2025, in Winder, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, Pool, file)
