![]() ![]() “As the weeks wore on, the legislature dug into that position, allowing no accommodations, no flexibility for voters, and the governor slowly moved to the opposite side,” University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Barry Burden told Vox. But as the weeks progressed and local election officials told state leaders they couldn’t hold an in-person election under social distancing orders, Evers wanted to postpone. Many other governors, Republican and Democrat alike, have postponed their elections to not put voters or poll workers in imminent danger of getting the virus.Ī few weeks ago, Evers and Republican leadership in the state legislature actually agreed they would continue to hold an in-person election on April 7 and encourage more people to sign up for absentee ballots. Wisconsin is the lone state so far to proceed with a scheduled election since the coronavirus outbreak got serious in the US. ![]() Wisconsin’s on-again, off-again, on-again Election Day, briefly explained “The aftermath of what Wisconsin Republicans just made happen might change the politics of continuing with this kind of insanity,” said Ben Wikler, the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. Especially if voters get sick from in-person voting, it raises the question of how states should be preparing for November’s general election, where turnout will likely be much higher. Wisconsin’s decision to hold an election in the midst of a deadly pandemic could have profound consequences on American elections, far more than the state’s results. “Today’s election is now legal, but it is democratically & morally illegitimate.” citizens to risking their lives to exercise their right to vote today,” tweeted Sherrilyn Ifill, the president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “The WI legislature, the state Supreme Court & the U.S. Residents wait in a long line to vote outside the Riverside High School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on April 7. Madison and other areas also had more locations with drive-through voting. In the state capitol of Madison - which has less than half Milwaukee’s population - there were 66 polling places open, Beck pointed out. The lack of available poll workers on Election Day meant the number of polling places in Milwaukee shrank from 180 to just five for a city of about 592,000, according to Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reporter Molly Beck. “The black community in Milwaukee is facing the brunt of the coronavirus pandemic - accounting for over half of coronavirus cases and 81 percent of related deaths.” “For black people in Milwaukee, the fear is significant,” said Rashad Robinson, a spokesperson for Color of Change, of the calculus voters were making. The epicenter of the long lines and lack of polling stations appeared to be in Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s largest city, which is located in a county that’s home to nearly 70 percent of the state’s African American residents. Where you live determined how your Election Day experience went. This pileup of last-minute changes meant many voters had to make a choice: risk getting sick while exercising their constitutional right to vote in person, or stay home and safe without voting. Election results are expected to come in by next Monday. ![]() The Republican-majority state Supreme Court ruled the election would go ahead on April 7 as planned, and a separate US Supreme Court ruling late Monday night meant no extension for absentee ballots - effectively cutting many voters out of the process. Tony Evers on whether to postpone the election and further expand absentee ballot access. State Republicans on Monday won a recent and bitter back-and-forth with Wisconsin’s Democratic Gov. In some precincts, it was an event plagued by hours-long waits and a tremendous shortage of both polling workers and stations, prompting civil- and voting-rights activists to call the legitimacy of the election into question before polls even closed. Wisconsin held the first in-person election on Tuesday in the middle of the US coronavirus outbreak. ![]()
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