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Dear Friend,
Yesterday, despite urgent warnings from public health experts about the need to stay home and practice social distancing, conservative judges ordered Wisconsin to hold an election—and tens of thousands of Wisconsinites were disenfranchised.
Wisconsin Republicans refused to postpone the election or broaden access to mail-in voting. The Wisconsin and US Supreme Court sided with them. In-person voting was a disaster, as many polling places were forced to close due to a lack of poll workers, and lines to vote in cities like Milwaukee were hours long.1 Seniors and others in risk groups were forced to simply stay home and skip voting.
It was a total disaster, and if we don't act now, it could be a preview of the November general election. We could see millions of voters being forced to choose between their health and their civic duty, with polling places in cities overwhelmed, just like yesterday in Wisconsin.
The only way to ensure that we can hold a free and fair election this November is if Congress passes a national vote-by-mail law NOW.
Will you donate $5 to help pass a national vote-by-mail law?
The Wisconsin primary was nothing less than a total breakdown of democracy.
Once the "safer at home" order was issued, more than 1.3 million Wisconsinites requested absentee ballots, entirely overwhelming the board of elections. By the week of the primary, hundreds of thousands of people hadn't received a ballot, and thousands more couldn't return their ballots because of coronavirus-related barriers.2
The Republican legislature blocked the governor’s attempt to postpone the election until June, and then sued to stop him from extending absentee ballot deadlines until after voting day. The conservative majority on the Supreme Court upheld the legislature's suit, literally disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of people.
Meanwhile, hundreds of people refused to work at the polling sites and expose themselves to the coronavirus, closing down hundreds of sites. In Milwaukee, just five of 180 sites remained open, and hours-long lines discouraged people from voting.3
Make no mistake: stopping hundreds of thousands of voters was the plan of the Wisconsin legislature all along.
Conservatives have long known that higher turnouts mean more progressive elections, and a widespread vote-by-mail initiative terrifies them. Vote-by-mail is already highly successful in Washington, Colorado, and three other states, where turnout is often higher than in the rest of the country.4
This week, Georgia mailed absentee ballots to all 7 million registered voters to help people avoid in-person polling for the primary. The Republican Speaker of Georgia's House, David Ralston, called the move "extremely devastating to Republicans and conservatives in Georgia."5
Donald Trump said that the Republican leadership should "fight very hard" against mail-in voting, because it "doesn't work out well for Republicans."6 But Democratic leaders in Congress aren't doing enough to make sure that vote-by-mail is available to everyone this fall.
After the current wave of the pandemic ends, scientists are worried about a second occurrence in late October—just in time to interrupt the general election.7 We can't let anti-democracy state legislatures block their residents from voting—and we CANNOT let Trump use this as an excuse to undermine a free, fair, and safe election.
We know that vote-by-mail is the best way to guarantee every American's vote in the election this fall, but we’re facing strong opposition by Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump. More than 80,000 Demand Progress members have emailed Congress to say that the public wants vote-by-mail, and we're going to publicly call out any member of Congress who tries to block this law.
Will you donate $5 to help pass vote-by-mail legislation to protect our civic rights in November?
Thanks for standing with us.
Robert Cruickshank,
Demand Progress
Sources:
1. The New York Times, "Some People Got to Vote Today," April 7, 2020
2. The New York Times, "Wisconsin Primary Recap: Voters Forced to Choose Between Their Health and Their Civic Duty," April 7, 2020
3. Ibid.
4. National Conference of State Legislatures, "All-Mail Elections (aka Vote-By-Mail)," accessed April 8, 2020
5. Atlanta Journal Constitution, "Pressure mounts for further delay of Georgia’s May primary election," April 2, 2020
6. Politico, "Trump: GOP should fight mail-in voting because it ‘doesn’t work out well for Republicans’," April 8, 2020
7. Al Jazeera, "'Strike again': US scientist predicts coronavirus return in fall," April 1, 2020
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