The Republicans’ fix was in for the April 7 primary in Wisconsin, they thought. They counted on using the coronavirus crisis to drive down liberal urban turnout in Milwaukee and Dane counties, and thus reelect Trump-endorsed ultra-conservative Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly.
With the Republicans backed by the right-wing majorities on both the Wisconsin and US Supreme Courts, voters were placed in an impossible position, as Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in her forceful dissent. “Either they will have to brave the polls, endangering their own and others’ safety, “she declared.”Or they will lose their right to vote, through no fault of their own.”
But in the face of this dilemma, Wisconsin voters stood up for their right to vote, combining record-level absentee balloting with the tenacity to endure rain and hail and wait for hours in line (seven blocks long in my Milwaukee neighborhood) to exercise their right to vote.
The inspiring result: a blowout victory by liberal Judge Jill Karofsky over Kelly, trouncing him by a 55.3% to 44.7% margin. Karofsky’s victory was a triumph of citizens’ determination and courage against the odds. Before the results came in, the New York Times reported that liberals were “bracing for a defeat.
The Karofsky win occurred against all odds. With the coronavirus menace very real in Wisconsin (3,466 cases, 156 deaths, concentrated in Milwaukee) over 1,000 mostly elderly poll workers pulled out days before April 7. The city was able to staff just five polling places (instead of the planned 180) in a city of about 600,000. The demand for absentee ballots was so high that the local Election Commission could not keep up with the demand, and over 11,000 requests for ballots went unmet.
But the prospect of total chaos built as the calendar moved toward election day, and Republicans’ confidence in the outcome grew. With the prospect of a low-turnout race giving a boost to their favored Supreme Court candidate, the Republicans would not be dissuaded, even as the health crisis intensified. Forced by Gov. Tony Evers (D) to hold a special session to discuss a delay in the election, the Republicans gaveled the session to a close within seconds.
“There’s no question that an election is just as important as getting take-out food,” smugly stated House Speaker Robin Vos, and Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald. Vos cited the importance of holding the election on the designated day, regardless of the dangers involved: “We want to have elections on the day we pick. Let people choose their leaders, and then they’ll get the chance to deal with the virus “ The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wryly noted, “Fitzgerald and Vos had no answer to how local election officials are supposed to keep people safe as a massive shortage of poll workers has resulted in the closure or reduction of polling locations, forcing more people to vote at a single site. “
For his part, Vos became a target of national mockery on April 7 when he proclaimed that “It is incredibly safe to be here” while standing indoors, taking ballots from motorists as he was dressed head to foot in protective gear.
Yet as election day unfolded, the Republicans’ plans seemingly blew up in their faces. Ultimately, support for Karofsky over the unpopular Kelly, coupled with citizen outrage over obvious voter suppression tactics, buried the GOP’s favorite.
The Karofsky victory may have also revealed some deepening cracks in the Republican coalition. The Republicans for decades have counted on an overwhelmingly Republican vote in three high-turnout affluent “collar” counties surrounding Milwaukee. But in 2016, the Republicans were troubled to see those counties produce 25,000 fewer votes for Donald Trump in 2016 than they did for Mitt Romney in 2012, a drop-off larger than Trump’s victory margin This time around, further erosion of suburban Republican support was suggested by Karofsky garnering 6% to 7% 13% more of the vote than did Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in 2018.
Another positive development: an anti-gerrymandering advisory referendum won overwhelmingly, with 51 of the state’s 72 counties now on record against the Republican redistricting that has profoundly shifted Wisconsin politics to the right over the last decade. In Ratf*cked, David Daley details the secretive and sordid methods the GOP employed to configure one of most highly partisan electoral maps in the nation.
Given the way that state Republicans have tilted the playing field, the Karofsky victory is extremely consequential. It shifts the ideological balance from a 5-2 conservative majority to a narrower 4-3. Karofsky’s arrival comes at a moment when the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty is relentlessly pressing for the Supreme Court’s approval of a plan to purge 234,000 voters from voting rolls, just in time for the presidential election.
Although WILL’s supposedly accurate list of eligible voters embarrassingly contained some prominent elected officials, the legal arm of the Right has not been deterred by this evidence which helped to persuade the Wisconsin Election Commission to delay until 2021 a review of voter eligibility. However, the Supreme Court deadlocked 3-3 on the issue (with Kelly recusing himself) and the issue of the purge seems certain to arise again. Thus, Karofsky’s addition to the Court could prove to be momentous.
However, as Nov. 3 draws closer, the Republicans’ relentless maneuvers in the latest election foreshadow how that an increasingly authoritarian party is willing to re-write or even violate the rules in order to prevail, regardless of majority sentiment.
First, the voter purge issue still remains alive, with vast potential for generating fear and driving away voters.
Further, Republican officials have signaled plans to escalate their Election Day monitoring of voting. Critics have argued the “ballot security” tactics amount to voter intimidation, pointing to instances like the deployment of armed off-duty police officers in New Jersey in 1981 as Republican poll watchers in minority neighborhoods, which was stopped by a judicial consent decree imposed on the Republican Party. That ban was lifted in 2018 when a New Jersey judge declined to renew it. Trump campaign counsel Justin Clark recently told Republican lawyers meeting in Wisconsin, “Let’s start playing offense a little bit. That’s what you’re going to see in 2020. It’s going to be a much bigger program [for ‘ballot security”], a much more aggressive program, a much better-funded program.”
In addition, Wisconsin’s highly restrictive voter ID law, passed under Gov. Scott Walker in 2011, has had a strong effect on voter turnout. Political scientist Kenneth Mayer calculated that it reduced turnout by 11% in 2016, and will again pull down voting in 2020 among most Democratic constituencies like the poor, blacks, Latinos, and students.
Wisconsin is viewed by both parties as a high-stakes, must-win state. With Wisconsin captured by Trump in 2016 by a mere 22,748 votes, the Republicans’ willingness to use any possible maneuver to suppress the vote will be hugely intensified. While much of the nation recoiled in horror most recently when the Republicans and their judicial allies forced an election in the midst of a pandemic, GOP strategists will surely continue to look at Wisconsin as a model, where crassly undemocratic politics have paid off richly, falling short only on April 7.
Roger Bybee is a Milwaukee-based labor studies instructor and longtime progressive activist and writer who edited the Racine Labor weekly for 14 years. Email winterbybee@gmail.com.
From The Progressive Populist, May 15, 2020
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