If Wisconsin cannot guarantee that absentee ballots will be counted, the state should take measures to assure that every citizen's voice can be heard.
Disenfranchising tens of thousands of Wisconsin voters is outrageous.
From the Washington Post:
In Tuesday’s Wisconsin elections, more than 100 municipalities will not have enough poll workers to open a single voting location. Tens of thousands of voters who have flooded election offices with mail-ballot requests in recent days are at risk of not receiving them on time. And Sally Cohen, an elderly woman with kidney disease and asthma who is self-isolating in her apartment in Madison, isn’t sure she’ll be able to vote at all because of a state law requiring a witness to sign her ballot envelope.
“I was just distraught this morning when I opened it and saw that you have to have a witness,” said Cohen, who is 77 and a retired paralegal. “I thought, ‘I just can’t do it.’ They suggested having the mailman look through the picture window, but I’m on the third floor, so that won’t work.”
Voters, election officials and civil rights leaders across Wisconsin are angry that the state legislature is going forward with the April 7 presidential primary and local elections even as the novel coronavirus continues its march across the country. The public health risk is too high, and asking voters to venture out of their homes directly contradicts state and local emergency orders to shelter in place, they say.
Leaders in the Republican-controlled legislature say that moving the voting date so late in the process would sow confusion and create a leadership vacuum in cities and towns holding contests for municipal posts that will be vacant as early as mid-April.
“I understand things are getting much different out there, and there are obviously a lot of concerns about what an election would look like on April 7, with the amount of poll workers and volunteers that we’re going to need,” Scott L. Fitzgerald, the Republican majority leader in the Wisconsin Senate, said in a news conference last week. “We’re monitoring it very closely, but at this point, I don’t see a change really to the April 7 date.”
So, Tony Evers declares I can't have a dinner party but he won't protect my right to vote?
Unacceptable.
If the date of the election can't be moved, provisions can made to count the absentee ballots that municipalities fail to process in time.
It sure as hell isn't my fault China lied about this virus and the world is locked down.
DELAY THE ELECTION.
Judge slams Wisconsin governor, lawmakers for not delaying election amid coronavirus outbreak. via @thehill https://t.co/BRN9HVj65H
— The Wheeler Report (@WheelerReports) April 2, 2020
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