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| Jacob Lawrence - from the Migration Series (1940–41) |
Destroying black and brown lives, stripping human beings of dignity and liberty, have long been sport for white folks here. But Republicans have escalated systemic destruction of the foundational right to cast votes (see Article III, Wisconsin Constitution; Ballotpedia).
Trump's new effort to ultimately convince courts to declare that 100,000s of voters' ballots are illegal is the latest of this anti-human project.
Trump's campaign gives County Canvassing Boards names of disfavored voters and says, throw out these ballots.
Extreme action for certain, but business as usual in a broader sense.
I worked as a Wisconsin election inspector (poll worker), for some 60 shifts between 1998 and 2016.
It used to be funny — because it was pathetic — to witness the sudden chill in the room, uncomfortable shifting in chairs, worried expressions of white poll workers morphing into grimaces bordering on disbelief as young black men entered the polling place in the morning shift at the old Fire Station Number Two in Fitchburg, Wisconsin (Alder Dist One).
Well, who can blame the white folks?
You should have seen the voters' black hair, dark-brown skin, often adorned in golden jewelry and tight dark tee-shirts of I don't know what. You know what they do, who they are.
And our white votes get cancelled out by these guys?
It's the way it is.
White poll workers and the Fitchburg City Clerk's office were not amused by black folks. In fact, they were hostile to anyone who reported Fitchburg racism. I know. [By the way, anecdotal reports from the 2020 presidential general elections indicate the voting experience is getting better now.]
This is Wisconsin, so it may surprise readers what one becomes inured to, but from a first-person stand-point, I can say I tried to alert the political world about Fitchburg. See also Kaleem Caire, president and CEO of One City Learning Centers, and his experience with Fitchburg.
Nothing surprises me here.
Trump's latest absurd forays into obliterating swaths of voters can be seen as a continuation of white efforts to troll black and brown folks, ongoing Republican work to transform election law to stop non-Republican voters and a heightened operation against entire jurisdictions such as Dane County and Milwaukee County. (See Beck, Glauber and Marley, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Nichols, The Capital Times).
In 2016, in the voting rights litigation, One Wisconsin Institute v. Thomsen, much Republican voter-obstruction legislation was swept away, opening up metro voting districts to help voters vote and have those votes count.
Of course the Republican legal empire struck back.
In June 2020, Judge Frank Easterbrook, from the Seventh Circuit, using his propensity to play loose with facts, penned Luft v Evers; One Wisconsin Institute, Inc. v Jacobs, (Nos. 16-3003, 16-3052), (Marley, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel).
Easterbrook reinstated most of the Republican-enacted restrictions on early voting.
Easterbrook sees no racism in Republicans' Wisconsin election law, as long the Republican Party's animus toward minorities includes an animus toward Democrats. A bizarre judicial doctrine.
Crazy is the order of the day.
You hear about the Trump campaign attorney heading up the stop-the-ballots effort here?
Trump's lead attorney, Jim Troupis, and his wife's votes would be invalidated, were Trump to prevail in his current recount-and-stop ballots efforts in Wisconsin (see Beck, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, and Law and Crime).
This is because Trump wants early voting, (in-person, absentee), votes invalidated in Dane and Milwaukee counties.
One can think of a few Due Process and Equal Protection problems with Trump's sought-after remedy for an imagined injury at the hands of Dane and Milwaukee counties.
Bear in mind, limiting early voting and racial intent and effect in Republican efforts to halt voting in jurisdictions where black and brown people live is fine, [no Constitutional problems], with Easterbrook.
But even Easterbrook, were this case to reach the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, would recoil.
It's crazy time in Wisconsin, but crazy is pretty much standard-going the last ten years, and is consistent with Wisconsin's secular religion: Most white folks really don't like black and brown people very much.
