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| Madison, Wisconsin's voter ambassador effort is increasing voter turnout. Gov. Scott Walker and Republicans have worked to suppress voter turnout, and insulate the GOP from voter sentiment, an anti-democratic enterprise. |
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Madison, Wisconsin—The 2018 mid-term, general elections look to offer a reversal of political fortune in Republican-led Wisconsin this coming November.
Anti-Trump animus, women-are-human sentiment, public school defenders, local clean water, citizen-action groups, and anti-Foxcon voters are poised to become electoral factors.
The most potent force in the electoral landscape may be a non-partisan, pro-voting rights counter-attack against the Republican-enacted transformation of election law and voting rights.
Led by an unassuming Madison City Clerk, one Maribeth Witzel-Behl, Madison has pioneered a voter outreach effort begun in 2012 after Wisconsin Republicans passed the first of dozens of changes to state election law drafted to obstruct young, minority and marginalized voters.
Four of Wisconsin’s five most-populous cities have implemented, plan or are contemplating similar voter outreach initiatives in the Summer when gubernatorial and congressional primaries begin on June 30, according to city clerk websites and offices reached by phone.
Voter-outreach programs or increased multiple early-voting look to appear in Milwaukee, Madison, Kenosha and Racine.
Voter Obstruction Is No Accident
Andrew Goodman, a former UW-Madison freshman and slain civil rights worker, was murdered along with James Earl Chaney and Michael 'Mickey' Schwerner by terrorists in Mississippi in 1964 for helping black Mississippians register to vote.
Voting rights are under attack again, though it’s not homicide, torture and terror targeting voters and rights activists.
It’s Republican-enacted laws and antagonistic poll workers, and the voting rights fight is right here in Wisconsin.
Today, brilliant, young students like Goodman, Cheney and Schwerner might come to the Badger State to help targeted populations.
In fact in 2017, students, the Andrew Goodman Center’s Vote Everywhere Ambassadors and the Morgridge Center for Public Service hosted Voterpalooza on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus to help students vote, the most-recent in a series of voting rights forums held on the UW campus.
In mid-March, President Barack Obama’s former attorney general, Eric Holder, came to Madison and Milwaukee for chats about student and minority activism and voter engagement.
Holder works with a national group fighting gerrymandering. In February Holder sued Gov. Scott Walker for his refusal to call a special election in a northeastern state senate district, blocking over 172,000 residents of representation, lest Republicans face another loss before the November general election. On March 22, Wisconsin voters prevailed against Scott Walker.
Scott Walker exposed the vulnerability of Wisconsin to determined, anti-democratic political forces that achieve electoral success in part by rigging election law, blocking elections and obstructing voters.
Wisconsin Republicans enacted some 35 statutory changes to election law passed along party-line votes since 2011, The Capital Times newspaper noted.
The 2016 presidential general election saw Wisconsin's voter turnout fall to a two-decade low, dropping three percentage points from 2012, 67.34 from 70.4, data housed at the Wisconsin Elections Commission show.
In July 2016, a landmark voting rights case, One Wisconsin Now v. Thomson, a federal judge swept away much of the Republican voter-obstruction law as "pretextual" (misrepresentative) in legislative intent, though further federal litigation sustained the constitutionality of the voter-restrictive photo voter ID law passed in 2011.
Republican-appointed federal appellate judges narrowly upheld the photo voter ID law against a furious judicial dissents authored by retired judge Richard Posner.
Madison Fights Back
"Our goal is for each eligible voter to be able to cast a ballot and have that ballot counted," emailed Witzel-Behl in March 2018 in a typically understated, and rare public comment on the effort of Madison to help voters vote.
Witzel-Behl, City Clerk since 2006, is laconic in communications, measuring the success of elections on ballot accessibility, and not the soaring turnouts voter-friendly city elections have garnered.
An examination of Madison voter turnouts since 2012 reveals helping voters to vote may prove decisive at the ballot box against Republicans who have hindered voters.
"The Madison clerk's office takes every opportunity to educate the public and engage voters in the election process. Whether it's a retirement facility or a student organization, essentially any community group that wants to be more informed or get training to do voter registration will get a visit from the clerk and her staff," said Barry Burden, Professor of Political Science, Director of the Elections Research Center, and the Lyons Family Chair in Electoral Politics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in a March email. "In 2016 the clerk's office took good advantage of changes in the absentee voting law to offer early voting opportunities at libraries and other facilities across the city. It appears that all of this proactivity paid off in robust turnout in the presidential election despite a decline statewide."
Madison has facilitated record-breaking voter turnouts the last two years, including the February 2018 Spring primary held during inclement weather, which featured numerous polling sites running out of ballots, as city couriers rushed ballots across town on dark, icy roads.
In the 2018 Spring election, Madison chalked up 29.4 percent turnout in elections where single-digit turnouts used to be the norm.
After the One Wisconsin decision, Madison was freed to increase the operating hours and number of early-voting (in-person, absentee), places from what was a statutorily-mandated one site to now a record-high 15 voting stations.
Many Madison voting places are now sited in neighborhoods with high minority and student populations.
The multiple early-voting sites combined with the aggressive City voter outreach saw early voting in the 2016 presidential election jump 21 percent from 2012, a bigger increase is expected in the 2018 gubernatorial, state legislative and congressional general election.
Voting for the Fall general election will begin 45 days before the Nov. 6 Election Day around September 22.
Battle of Voter Registration
The Republican strategic war against voting in 2015 (Wisconsin Act 261), outlawed Special Registration Deputies, (except for care homes), who formerly could resister voters and verify residency.
Registration after Wisconsin Republicans enacted 2015 (Wisconsin Act 261) takes some 30 minutes, whereas pre-Act 261, voters could register in a process taking some six minutes.
The second-most populous and fast-growing city committing to help rather than obstruct voters makes Madison the first among Wisconsin's 1,851 municipalities to implement such a comprehensive pro-voter project.
A knowledgeable source in Madison City Hall, speaking on background because she is not an official spokesperson, says several other Wisconsin municipalities have contacted the City Clerk's office for the purpose of replicating Madison's mounting voter turnouts.
Kenosha, Wisconsin's fourth most-populous city, adopted a voter ambassador project in 2016 similar to Madison’s.
In Milwaukee, the city plans some 20 voter registration 'kiosks' for voting registrations. Milwaukee is also increasing its early-voting sites from three in 2016 to some eight this Summer when early voting begins on June 30 for the gubernatorial, and congressional primaries.
Other private organizations have joined in the fight for voting rights in Wisconsin.
In Dane County, the Dane County Voter ID Coalition has drawn voting rights, labor and civil rights groups together under the mission to "maximize voter participation in the electoral process."
Several UW campuses have implemented voter outreach programs similar to Madison's.
Bottom Line for November
In 2014, a poorly run Democratic campaign for governor with weak support from a moribund state Democratic Party lost to Scott Walker by 136,793 votes (54.84 turnout), the ceiling for Walker.
In 2012, a well-run Democratic campaign for president won by 213,019 votes (with a 70.40 turnout).
Led by Madison which appears likely to increase the anti-Scott Walker vote by some 30,000 voters from 2014 by virtue of expected near-presidential-level turnouts, black folks, brown folks, unions, the universities and the cities that are the bane of Republican policymaking are fighting back by enhancing democracy, voters in particular.
Their aim is to help voters register and vote.
Andrew Goodman would be proud. Scott Walker may be sorry.
If as many pols predict on background, pro-voter initiatives by cities and UW campuses result in record turnout in the November general election, Wisconsin will have pointed the way for electoral success against Scott Walker and other national anti-democratic forces seeking to dismantle voting rights.
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