A very partisan battle is being fought in Wisconsin over whether or not to purge 200,000 voters from the rolls just before the 2020 election.
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the fight is currently in the hands of the Wisconsin Elections Commission. The body is deadlocked as the three Democrats have blocked the three Republicans from removing voters from the rolls. The voters in dispute will remain active while an appeal is ongoing.
These voters were initially listed in an October letter from the Wisconsin Elections Commission as having potentially changed addresses. They would have been purged in 2021 but for a lawsuit from the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty that argued the date should be pushed up to before the 2020 election.
Earlier this month, Ozaukee County Circuit Judge Paul Malloy, appointed by former Republican Gov. Scott McCallum, agreed with that opinion. Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul asked the District 4 court of appeals to review the case. Meanwhile, those who brought the initial lawsuit are trying to get the state Supreme Court, with its Republican majority, to take up the case before the appeals court makes a decision.
Meanwhile, the League of Women voters is suing the commission in federal court in an attempt to keep the voters registered for 2020.
Those votes could be hugely significant for the upcoming presidential election. In 2016, President Donald Trump won the state and its 10 electoral votes by fewer than 23,000 votes.
Let the cheating begin.
I have often said that the most dangerous thing is to not know the Republican mindset.
Trump, and many others, believe that they have the G-d-given right to rule. Not govern, mind you, because governing involves compromise. They wish to rule because they firmly believe that they are correct in everything, from social to monetary issues. They cannot see any compromise between their point of view and any other.
Accordingly, anything they do to assure that they rule is okay, as well. After all, we liberals and independents simply don’t know that the Republican Way is the only way. So, if they can’t convince us, they’ll just make it so they don’t have to. Thus, gerrymandering and voter suppression are their tactics of choice.
They know they are the party of the angry white folks. They also know that those folks will be in the minority soon. So, they have to double down on all their efforts to stack the courts with right-wing ideologues, and press Republican governors and legislators to cull voting lists and shut down voting places where “those people” vote, and, in essence, make it increasingly difficult for anyone except white folks with money to vote.
I think we have one, or maybe two, chances left to undo all that. However, it must be done at the local level, first. Republican statehouses have to be flipped to maintain electoral integrity. Lawsuits against gerrymandering must be sustained.
Fight back, and let’s keep our democracy.
You have the majority of the media in this country telling Trump voters to hate Democrats. Why do the DNC not treat these people like the bad-faith actors that they plainly are?
Reach out and point, Dems. Either that, or get outside of 30 miles from a major city and turn on a radio, and begin to realize where you are, and what America has become while you were dismissing the ‘flyover states’.
For more Republikkklan ratfukking, enjoy this little morsel
Every single Indivisible group in Wisconsin should make it its mission to ensure they take voters to the registration offices, wherever they may be.
For myself, I can and will file for a year-long absentee ballot request for all FOUR elections that will take place in 2020.
If one thinks one’s registration is in question, it is their duty to make one’s registration valid before the elections.
Do I think the purge is wrong? Possibly. I don’t know where it’s all taking place. But voters have the responsibility to ensure they vote and, if they don’t, to make sure they are registered in time for the elections. Some of it is self-accountability. I’m traveling four and a half days a week and I can still make it happen.
ETA: having had a registrar of voters in my family, they can only do what they’re permitted to do. If one doesn’t vote for an extended period of time, it’s legal to remove the voter from the rolls, as they probably no longer live in the area for a variety of reasons, including death.