Legislatively Speaking
By Senator Lena C. Taylor
Lena C. Taylor
April 7 was Election Day in Wisconsin. It shouldn’t have been. Like 16 other states and one territory, around the nation, Wisconsin elected officials should have prioritized the health and wellbeing of voters. Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, West Virginia,
Wyoming and Puerto Rico either postponed their elections or switched to a system of mailed ballots. Over 14,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, as of this week. In Wisconsin, we have reached nearly 115 deaths. Milwaukee County comprises half of the state’s cases and deaths in Milwaukee have a distinctive racial fault line.
Yet, Wisconsin’s Republican elected state officials chose to further risk the lives of our residents. Why they made this choice can be debated. Were they unwilling to postpone the election to protect a Supreme Court seat or local races on the ballot? Did they not believe that COVID-19 was a serious threat? Or were the state’s Republicans digging in early to avoid a national movement to expand mail-in voting? After all, Donald Trump is fearful that increased access to voting would hurt his re-election prospects. We may never know the honest answer to these questions.
We also can’t ignore the role that local officials played in jeopardizing the danger of community spread of Coronavirus to area residents. The idea that the mayor, of the largest city in the entire state, would allow only five polling locations to be open in Milwaukee is unconscionable. While the city of Madison afforded its residents roughly 66 sites to vote, we watched in disbelief the treatment Milwaukeeans faced will trying to cast their ballots. Voting lines extended up to 10 blocks. Residents stood in line for two to four hours. Many were sent to polling locations across town for no apparent reason, even when the Milwaukee Election Commission website said they were at the correct site. And no one could explain why a staff member of the Election Commission was walking around Washington High School, a polling location, wearing a white bathrobe over his clothes with a “Princess Cruise” logo on it. Residents were offended and wondered if they were being taunted, all at the same time.
The stories that voters shared with me and my team will remain with me forever. Residents who were turned away because it took nearly an hour to find parking, seven blocks to walk to the voting site, and then being told that they were too late to vote. Residents who said they have never missed an election but couldn’t risk their health or weren’t able to stand in the long lines.
The senior voters who said most of their residents, who typically voted in their senior housing, sadly made the decision to protect their lives instead of vote. They requested absentee ballots that never came.
On April 7, it was embarrassing and frustrating to be an elected official. There will be lives that will be forever changed or lost because we made residents choose to protect themselves from COVID-19 or VOTE.