Last week’s election in
Wisconsin has caused a national uproar. There were no absolutely crucial
elections on the ballot. The Democratic primary between Biden and Sanders was
an afterthought. There were only a few statewide races. Democratic Governor
Tony Evers tried to postpone the election or mail
absentee ballots to every voter. Because the Republican-dominated state
legislature, state Supreme Court and US Supreme Court all insisted that elections
be held on the scheduled date, hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin voters were
forced to violate the statewide stay-at-home order to cast a ballot. In
Milwaukee, hundreds of poll workers called in sick or refused to work, so only
5 of 180 voting sites were open. Masked voters waited in lines for hours. In a
month, we’ll know the human toll of this democratic exercise. Far beyond the
importance of the results, the competing visions of democracy provoke a
question rarely asked in America: should we risk our lives to vote?
Wisconsin is a closely
contested state. Trump won it by less than 23,000 votes in 2016, less than
1%. Democrats won statewide races in 2018 for Governor and Attorney General by
1%. Every vote matters.
The story of how the
Wisconsin election was conducted is remarkably complicated and profoundly
partisan. Wisconsin is one of the most gerrymandered states in the country.
After the 2010 census, Republicans drew new legislative lines that guaranteed
them political control. In 2018, Democratic candidates for the state
legislature won 53% of the votes, but only one-third of the seats.
The discussions about this
election actually began in 2018, right after Tony Evers ousted Scott Walker as
Governor and the Democrats won other statewide victories. Looking far into the
future, Wisconsin Republicans discussed separating the re-election of
conservative state Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly from the Democratic
primary election, because they
feared large Democratic turnout would imperil his chances. Those
discussions went nowhere, possibly because holding an additional statewide
election would have cost millions of dollars.
Of the 11 states which had
scheduled elections in April, all
but Wisconsin postponed them or shifted to mailed absentee voting. The Republican
legislature in Wisconsin was nevertheless planning to hold the election as
scheduled. A week before the election day, Democrats challenged that plan in
federal court, and suggested that the deadline for mail-in ballots be extended
another week, because of the huge surge in absentee ballots. The federal judge
agreed. Republicans appealed to the Supreme Court in Washington, whose
conservative majority overturned that ruling hours before the election, leading
to statewide confusion about exactly when mail-in ballots needed to be
postmarked.
Thousands of potential voters
never received absentee ballot because of backlogs
in processing requests, thousands were unable to insure that their mailed
ballots arrived in time, and thousands simply stayed away from in-person voting
because of their fears of infection.
The results were announced
yesterday, delayed by a court order that extended the deadline for returning
absentee ballots. Democratic challenger Jill Karofsky won a resounding victory
over Kelly 55% to 45%. In local
elections across the state, progressive candidates and school funding
referenda won victories.
The partisan composition of
the Wisconsin Supreme Court will have significant consequences for future
state elections. Republicans have sought to purge the registrations of
200,000 voters, mostly in Democratic regions of the state, because of possible
confusion about their addresses. A circuit court in January ordered the purge
to happen, but an appeals court blocked that order. The state Supreme Court
deadlocked 3-3 on getting involved, but the issue will come up again.
Furthermore, the
gerrymandered Republican legislature will have control over the drawing of new
election maps after this year’s census. Democratic Governor Evers could veto
gerrymandered maps. Then the conflict could be decided by the state
Supreme Court.
The election of a state
supreme court judge is only one small data point in the effort to predict what
might happen in November across the nation. But it is the most recent evidence
we have, and it might show something about the influence of the coronavirus
pandemic on voting.
Of course, November is about
Trump. Trump endorsed Kelly in January and again since then. On the day of the
election, he claimed that his most recent tweeted endorsement the day before
had caused the Democrats to panic and try to move the election. Just another
silly lie from Trump.
This election falls into line
with a host of statewide elections across the country since 2018, which show a
rising tide of Democratic votes and failures of Trump endorsements. There are
other local explanations for this particular result, as there are for every
other recent election. But the data points are accumulating.
That’s a lot of words about
one state election. Am I making a mountain out of a molehill? Maybe. It has
been hard to find any good news lately. Trump gets worse every day. The
presidential election is 7 months away. So please excuse me for grasping at
this straw.
Steve Hochstadt
Jacksonville IL
April 14, 2020
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