U.S. Senate See Full Big Line

(D) J. Hickenlooper*

(R) Somebody

80%

20%

Governor See Full Big Line

(D) Joe Neguse

(D) Phil Weiser

(D) Jena Griswold

60%

40%↓

Att. General See Full Big Line

(D) M. Dougherty

(D) Alexis King

(D) Brian Mason

40%

30%

Sec. of State See Full Big Line

(D) George Stern

(D) A. Gonzalez

(R) Sheri Davis

40%

30%

State Treasurer See Full Big Line

(D) Brianna Titone

(R) Kevin Grantham

(D) Jerry DiTullio

60%

30%

20%

CO-01 (Denver) See Full Big Line

(D) Diana DeGette*

(R) Somebody

90%

CO-02 (Boulder-ish) See Full Big Line

(D) Joe Neguse*

(R) Somebody

90%

CO-03 (West & Southern CO) See Full Big Line

(R) Jeff Hurd*

(D) Somebody

80%

40%

CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado) See Full Big Line

(R) Lauren Boebert*

(D) Somebody

90%

10%

CO-05 (Colorado Springs) See Full Big Line

(R) Jeff Crank*

(D) Somebody

80%

20%

CO-06 (Aurora) See Full Big Line

(D) Jason Crow*

(R) Somebody

90%

10%

CO-07 (Jefferson County) See Full Big Line

(D) B. Pettersen*

(R) Somebody

90%

10%

CO-08 (Northern Colo.) See Full Big Line

(R) Gabe Evans*

(D) Yadira Caraveo

(D) Joe Salazar

50%

40%

State Senate Majority See Full Big Line

DEMOCRATS

REPUBLICANS

80%

20%

State House Majority See Full Big Line

DEMOCRATS

REPUBLICANS

95%

April 21, 2020 11:05 AM UTC

Preventable Tragedy: Wisconsin Elections Spread COVID

1 Comments
by: Colorado Pols

Wisconsin voters in line, April 7, 2020.

NBC News has a sad but very predictable update on the recent elections held in the state of Wisconsin, in which the Democratic governor attempting to delay voting until a vote-by-mail system could be put in place was overruled by the state’s conservative-dominated Supreme Court:

Officials have identified seven people who appear to have contracted the coronavirus through activities related to the April 7 election in Wisconsin, Milwaukee’s health commissioner said, and advocates worry it could be just the “tip of the iceberg.”

Commissioner Jeanette Kowalik said six of the cases involve Milwaukee voters and one is a Milwaukee poll worker, the Journal Sentinel reported…

Wisconsin proceeded with in-person voting only after a bitter partisan fight. The state’s Democratic governor tried to shift the election to vote-by-mail and postpone it, but was blocked by the conservative majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the Republican-controlled legislature, prompting the chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party to warn that voters would die as a result.

Now, Wisconsin Democrats worry there may be more yet-to-be-reported cases since Milwaukee officials say they have only about 30 percent of the data in yet and officials in other parts of the state have yet to release information on Election Day-related infections.

Images of Wisconsin voters futilely attempting to practice social distancing while standing in line at polling places caused nationwide outrage, and called attention once again to the GOP’s very deliberate policy goal of obstructing the right to vote for urban and minority populations in particular. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the stark contrast between states which enforce rigid and often arbitrary laws requiring additional correspondence with officials to avoid being purged from the rolls and costly government issued IDs to register well in advance and states like Colorado, with accessible, secure mail ballots and same-day voter registration was emerging as a major new civil rights frontier. The net result is severely unequal access to the vote across different states.

Now, unfortunately, we may soon be talking about a cost in lives. But even under a tragic headline, there’s some hope for Wisconsin in this story–delivered by none other than Colorado Division of Elections Director Judd Choate:

Judd Choate, the director of elections in Colorado, one of five states that vote entirely by mail, said he actually saw a silver lining in Wisconsin’s ability to dramatically scale up absentee mail balloting…

“They went from almost no vote-by-mail to over half vote-by-mail in a couple of weeks,” Choate told reporters on a call organized by the National Vote at Home Institute. “Yes, there were lines, yes there were these odd circumstances of people wearing masks and standing a great distance apart from each other. But that’s the in-person part. The vote-by-mail part actually went pretty well.”

For the voters who were able to take advantage of absentee ballots in Wisconsin, that’s a win. But the sum of Wisconsin’s experience, from the partisan political battle preceding lines on Election Day to the cases of pandemic disease that appear to have directly resulted, could not be a more powerful argument for every state to adopt Colorado’s model of all-mail ballots without delay.

One thought on “Preventable Tragedy: Wisconsin Elections Spread COVID”

DENependent says:

April 21, 2020 at 4:37 pm

If I were someone potentially in my deathbed due to this I would be taking a video of myself to post to YouTube to play over and over and over whenever one of these elected “judges” were up for reelection.

This is the world we live in. Unfortunately in order to get the basic needs of life we have to put our bodies in harms way and ask our loved ones to politicizing the hell out of it if we die.

Of course, the Republicans will immediately try to say anyone who does this is “no angel” and try to find other reasons that the person’s life is not actually that valuable. No children, unmarried, too old, poor, etc.

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Preventable Tragedy: Wisconsin Elections Spread COVID

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