FILE - In this Tuesday April 7, 2020 file photo people vote in Milwaukee, Wis. Municipal clerks across Wisconsin on Monday, April 13 were set to start tallying votes from last week's chaotic presidential primary, a count that was delayed for several days by the legal struggle over whether to postpone the election due to the coronavirus pandemic. (Mike De Sisti/Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel via AP, File)
The news that at least 40 people in Wisconsin have been infected with COVID-19 as a result of going to or working at the polls on April 7 confirmed many of our worst fears about the consequences of Wisconsin’s disastrous refusal to postpone the spring election.
Wisconsin’s Election Day debacle, which threatened our health and our democracy, was a result of a cascading failure of leadership — from the state Legislature, which refused to postpone Election Day, to the nation’s highest court, which rolled back an extension that would have given voters an extra week to submit ballots by mail.
The result was disastrous, as voters were forced to choose between protecting their health and casting a vote. People from across the state turned out to vote in person, many waiting in two- or three-hour-long lines. Others faced total confusion surrounding the absentee ballot process, not knowing why the ballot they requested never came, or came on April 8 when it was too late to return.
In Milwaukee, it was a perfect storm that seemed specifically designed to suppress African American and Latino participation. Only five of 180 polling places were open, leading to enormous confusion about where in-person voting took place and hours-long lines at the few polling stations that remained open.
Those of us who worked as election protection observers on Election Day heard story after story of people who requested ballots that never came or waited for hours just to be turned away on a technicality. I watched one woman who had waited two hours at Washington High School get to the front of the line and be told she should have gone to a different polling place, but it was after 8 p.m. and so she was unable to vote. I helped other individuals determine what documents they needed to re-register to vote after they got to the front of the line and their registration wasn’t found.
Voters should never have been forced to choose between their health and safety and their ability to participate in the election. African Americans make up half of the COVID-19 cases in Milwaukee and about 80% of the deaths. The fact that black Wisconsinites had to endure a life-threatening ordeal to exercise their right to vote is a chilling reminder that African Americans continue to have to risk their lives for their voting rights, long after the civil rights era.
While this coronavirus may be novel, efforts to block the ballot and restrict voting rights are anything but. For years, elected officials have been all too willing to disenfranchise people by making it harder to vote, particularly when those people represent communities of color or have low incomes or disabilities.
The April 7 election was a catastrophe that cannot be repeated. Just as Wisconsin became a national embarrassment for electoral mismanagement, we can also become a national model for getting it right.
Wisconsin has three more elections scheduled for 2020, and it is critical that our elected officials act now to put in place election processes that ensure all voters can be safe while exercising their constitutionally guaranteed voting rights.
Recently the ACLU of Wisconsin and a coalition of more than 35 civil rights and advocacy organizations put forward a set of comprehensive recommendations for protecting the right to vote and safeguarding public health during this pandemic.
They include automatically mailing a ballot to every registered voter, without forcing voters to jump through burdensome hoops like having a witness or proof of an ID to request or return their ballot.
Voters should also be allowed to return ballots in multiple ways: through the mail, the use of secure drop boxes, and by dropping them off at polling locations on the day of the election. And every municipality should offer in-person early voting and voter registration in a way that can accommodate social distancing, as well as ballot drop boxes for several weeks before Election Day.
Many voters do not have traditional street addresses or lack reliable mail service, so expanded in-person early voting is critical to making sure people who need to vote in person can do so safely and securely.
However you may feel about the outcome, the April 7 election was an abysmal failure that was neither free nor fair. Votes were suppressed. People’s voices were silenced. And at least 40 people contracted a life-threatening illness. Next time, we must do better.
Molly Collins is the advocacy director of the ACLU of Wisconsin.
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