Wisconsin’s voting problems began long before the pandemic
Those in power have been working for years to prevent votes from counting.
Wisconsin’s disastrous attempt to hold an election last month during the COVID-19 pandemic offered a disturbing portrait of the state of American democracy. Only five of the usual 180 polling sites in Milwaukee were open. Despite stay-at-home orders, voters waited hours in line to vote—with little social distancing. Thousands of voters who requested absentee ballots never received them. Anyone hoping for a free, fair, and safe election in Wisconsin was treated to the troubling spectacle of voters risking their lives to vote. “This is so wrong,” a voter told NBC News. “Stop playing politics with our lives.”
Many commentators have observed that if the United States attempts to hold the fall election during a protracted pandemic, Wisconsin’s experience might be a harbinger of what happens nationally. But the problem demonstrated in Wisconsin goes far deeper than the pandemic.
The fundamental problem is a lack of consensus that all adult citizens should be able to vote and have their votes counted equally. If Americans were to agree on this basic right of democracy—and history does not suggest that this agreement would come easily—then solutions to the technical problems involved would follow.
