Remember Wisconsin

Wisconsin Republican state legislators, backed by Republican majority courts on the state and national level, forced Wisconsin citizens into a deadly and unnecessary decision: risk your life or give up your vote.

They did this for the recent primary election when they refused to call off in-person voting and extend voting by mail, basically to suppress the vote so that the Republican incumbent of the state supreme court would win reelection.  His vote would make it all but certain that the court would uphold throwing thousands of Wisconsin voters off the rolls for the November election.

With the state on covid 19 lockdown, many of the predominantly elderly poll workers would understandably not work.  So over a hundred of polling places in Milwaukee, where much of the black and poor populations reside, were cut down to two.  Polling places in affluent and white areas were pretty much unaffected.

Trying to manipulate the vote for political advantage is hardly unknown in American history.  But not until now has there been a major political party that is openly obstructing the exercise of the vote for potential voters they believe will vote the other way.  Nor has there been a party, or a President, who openly announced that this was a strategy to ensure party dominance.  With easier voting, the apprentice dictator said, no Republican might ever be elected again.

But then came election day, and despite the danger, despite rain and sleet, and hours in long lines, Wisconsin voters who could not get their mail-in or absentee ballots in time, came out and voted.  Turnout was 34%, high for a spring election, and on par with the last presidential nomination spring of 2016.

Interviews with voters on the day told a story that the results announced on Monday confirmed.  Voters were determined to vote no matter what.  And they were angry they were forced into this choice.  And they knew who was responsible.

Among those interviewed by various news media, African American voters in particular were insistent.  They knew of the sacrifices made by their grandparents and great-grandparents, and the deadly obstacles to voting in the South of their heritage.

In elective offices, the Democrats did very well.  Especially in the supreme court election, in which the challenger won handily, only the second to oust an incumbent judge in the past 50 years.  And she won by a lot.  Last year a supreme court seat was decided by a margin of 6,000 votes.  Jill Karofsky won by 163,000.

Joe Biden won the Democratic primary handily, and the next day Bernie Sanders strongly endorsed him, and Tuesday President Barack Obama endorsed him as well, in a video that begins with a truly presidential message on the Covid crisis.

But thousands were disenfranchised in Wisconsin, by the Republican insistence on voting during a pandemic, and by various others means that are becoming all too familiar.

Now Trump and Republicans are engaged in a stealth attack, and an even greater challenge to the November elections.  They not only oppose extending voting by mail, they seek to make it impossible by ending the mail altogether.

The US Postal Service, hit hard by the pandemic and its economics, is in financial trouble.  Trump announced he would veto any pandemic relief bill that included funds to keep the Postal Service in operation.  (This despite a multi-billion dollar bailout of the airline industry.)

Voting by mail is of course impossible without the mail.  And that seems to be what this is about.  The CDC is predicting a second wave of  covid19 epidemic in the fall.  Republicans want to force an entire nation to risk their lives to vote.

The Republican party knows no shame.  Remember Wisconsin, and its unsung heroes who would not be stopped from voting.