HOW DONALD TRUMP PLANS TO WIN IN NOVEMBER
…An upset Wisconsin voter because the GOP
run state supreme court said they must vote in-person, not by mail
This is how Donald Trump
plans to win the election in November.
The Republican run Wisconsin Supreme
Court blocked their own Democratic Governor, Tony Evers’ executive
order “suspending in-person voting” in this Tuesday’s elections. This launched a final scramble for election
officials to prepare their many polling places. The "in person voting suspension" was
called for because there was no protection for the voters or the workers from
the virus pandemic or the weather at hundreds of polling places.
This decision against the suspension came the same day the Governor
issued the order, which had prompted an immediate legal challenge from
Republican lawmakers, They had argued that postponing the election would sow confusion.
In a 4-to-2 decision, the state court offered no official explanation for the
ruling, but there is a strong conservative majority on the state court.
But this doesn’t stop here.
The US Supreme Court on Monday also
blocked the lower court’s six-day extension of the receipt deadline for mailed
ballots, turning aside pleas that thousands of the state’s voters will be
disenfranchised because of mail disruptions caused by the pandemic. The US Court’s
ruling was 5 to 4, of course, because of the court’s conservative majority.
These fast developments unleashed a torrent of
confusion across Wisconsin. After
Evers issued the order, some local governments announced that the voting
was actually canceled, while state officials urged election clerks to proceed as
if all the polls would open.
“Unfortunately, they turned the health of our
state into a political issue,” said Lois Frank, the village
clerk in tiny Cambria, in eastern Wisconsin.
This bitter showdown presented a grueling test
case for other states planning primaries during the coronavirus pandemic,
not to mention the November elections. It also offered the likelihood that
Wisconsin, one of the most important presidential battleground state, that
could become the center of partisan battles as the health crisis continues to
upend the 2020 race.
Evers said he made the decision because of the
serious warnings by the White House over the weekend, when several Trump
administration officials predicted that virus infections would worsen
dramatically during the coming week. Mass cancellations by the poll workers,
and subsequent consolidation of voting sites, also diminished the prospect for
safe elections, he said.
Many of the citizens of Wisconsin vote by
mail. But for those that go to the
polls, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, there are now only 5 polling sites for
in-person voting since the blocked executive order. (There are normally 180
polling sites in Milwaukee.) Therefore, with the cold weather and the
inability to govern the personal distancing, as expected, many voters did not
show up. This is always better for
Republicans than it is for Democrats.
“At the end of the day, this is about the
people of Wisconsin,” Evers said in an interview . “They frankly
don’t care much about Republicans and Democrats fighting. They’re scared. We
have the surgeon general saying this is Pearl Harbor. It’s time to act.”
The abrupt move came after the GOP-controlled
state legislature had refused to postpone the vote during a special session
Evers called on Saturday.
Shortly after Evers issued the order, the
Assembly’s GOP Speaker, Robin Vos tweeted: “We don’t live in a banana
republic where the executive can just cancel elections because he doesn’t want
to hold them.”
The day’s events left voters and local election
officials reeling, and it left open many questions. Such as, how many poll workers would show up
Tuesday; how many polling sites would be able to open; and whether precautions
would be made, or even possible, to prevent the spread of the pandemic.
Members of the Wisconsin Election Commission
huddled in an emergency meeting Monday evening, expressing uncertainty about
how to enforce the US Supreme Court’s ruling ordering that all absentee ballots
be postmarked by Tuesday. A lower court
had ordered election officials to accept ballots received as late as April 13,
but it did not set a postmark deadline, which would have allowed voters to cast
ballots after Election Day.
“We failed them,” Democratic appointee
Ann Jacobs said of voters, “and the glee with which this is being extolled
[by the GOP] as a victory is astonishing.”
As of April 6th, Wisconsin reported
2,440 confirmed coronavirus cases and 77 fatalities. State officials said the
real numbers are probably much higher, and that moving ahead with the election
would only accelerate the spread.
“I just hope people keep us in their thoughts
and prayers because, on that day, we’re going to be on the front lines just
like the health-care workers,” said the Cambria, Wis.
clerk, who has health issues and has been forced to defy her doctor’s orders to
stay home to avoid infection. “I just personally know a lot of clerks that
do have health risks, myself included.”
Ted Faust, who resigned in protest as clerk of
Waterloo Township last week and urged his county’s other clerks to do the same,
said holding the election “doesn’t seem sensible whatsoever.”
“It seemed to me that things had developed into
a contest for political advantage between the governor and the legislature,
with we clerks being the pawns in between,” Faust said. “It just
feels like you’re being used.”
Jay Heck, the executive director of Common
Cause of Wisconsin, said he was “terrified” by the idea of the state
holding the election Tuesday, given the mounting health risks.
For the first time in nearly 25 years in his
role, he is not encouraging people to vote in person, which “flies in the
face of everything I believe in.”
“It’s insanity. It’s just insanity,” an
emotional Heck said midday Monday, before the governor’s order, describing the
ways people could contract coronavirus at a polling place. “It makes me cry
thinking about what is going to happen.
It really does.”
It appeared that the results of Tuesday’s vote
would also not be immediately available. Meagan Wolfe, the state election
administrator, said late Monday that she is instructing clerks not to report
election results until 4 p.m. on April 13 and that releasing any totals before
then would violate a federal court order issued last week.
Tuesday’s contests included the Democratic
presidential primary between former vice president Joe Biden and Sen.
Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), as well as local elections and a high-stakes
contest for the state Supreme Court, which features a conservative incumbent
facing a liberal challenger. (It is
well known that this was the reason for the state court to go against the governor’s
order. They want this conservative
incumbent to win.)
“I just absolutely believe the people of
Wisconsin are ready for this and will embrace it, and I’m counting on the
judicial system to feel the same,” Evers said. “Regardless
of the legal issues, I absolutely have the belief that the governor has to step
up and stand up for those people. No one else is.”
Unfortunately, the conservative state supreme court
disagreed.
Republicans had opposed moving the election
date with their legislation, arguing that doing it 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.
Evers’ order Monday both postponed Tuesday’s
voting and extended the terms of thousands of municipal officials whose terms
expire in April and are on the spring ballot.
The US Supreme Court in its decision said lower
courts had ordered an extension “which would allow voters to mail their
ballots after election day, which is extraordinary relief and would
fundamentally alter the nature of the election by allowing voting for six
additional days after the election.”
The US Supreme Court’s liberals: Ruth Bader
Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, they all
objected.
“This Court now intervenes at the eleventh hour
to prevent voters who have timely requested absentee ballots from casting their
votes,” Ginsburg wrote.
She said it, “boggles the mind” that the
court majority was trying to apply the court’s usual rules in an unprecedented
time of national turmoil.
“The question here is whether tens of thousands
of Wisconsin citizens can vote safely in the midst of a pandemic,”
Ginsburg wrote, adding: “Either they will have to brave the polls,
endangering their own and others’ safety. Or they will lose their right to
vote, through no fault of their own.”
Democrats and voting activists accused
Republicans of trying to suppress voter turnout intentionally to help an
incumbent candidate for the state Supreme Court, conservative Justice Daniel
Kelly, keep his seat.
President Trump offered his own boost to
Kelly’s campaign Monday night, tweeting: “The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled
that tomorrow’s election will proceed as scheduled. VOTE for Justice Daniel
Kelly tomorrow, and be safe!” Trump
is also starting to declare that voting by mail is “totally corrupt”. Expect to hear him say that from now until
November.
Local officials and civil rights advocates had
commended Evers’s decision Monday.
“Governor Evers’ action today firmly places him
on the right side of public health and the right side of history,”
Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett said in a statement. “Wisconsin citizens can be
proud that he is saving lives and bolstering our democracy.”
“We encourage those voting absentee to make
every effort to return their absentee ballots by tomorrow to guarantee their
vote is counted,” said Chris Ott, who heads the ACLU of
Wisconsin. “We also ask those planning to vote in-person to check media
reports on Tuesday, to confirm whether or not the Governor’s order to postpone
still stands.”
That is no longer true, with mass cancellations
among poll workers forcing local election administrators to shutter hundreds of
voting sites, the governor said. Milwaukee, for instance, announced late last
week that it planned to open only 5 voting sites compared with the usual
180.
“Frankly, I don’t know how 5 polling
places in the city of Milwaukee can be safe, and that’s why I’m doing what I’m
doing,” Evers said at a news conference Monday.
On Sunday, two Democratic appointees on the
Wisconsin Elections Commission denounced the legislature for moving forward
with in-person voting, warning that the move would put the lives of Wisconsin
voters at risk.
“Your failure to address these profound issues
and the safety of all of Wisconsin’s residents during yesterday’s special
session is unconscionable and is an abdication of your constitutional
responsibilities as our leaders,” said Ann Jacobs and
Mark Thomsen in a letter to Assembly Speaker Vos.
In addition, the mayors of 11 Wisconsin cities,
including Milwaukee, Madison and Green Bay, they urged state Health Services
Secretary Andrea Palm in a letter to use her emergency power to
postpone voting Tuesday. Obviously that
didn’t happen.
Voter’s beware, the GOP and the
president will be taking advantage, wherever possible, to keep Americans from
voting Democratic in the 2020 presidential elections.
Copyright G. Ater 2020
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