A week from tomorrow thousands of Wisconsin residents will head to the polls to cast their ballots. It’s a bold move given that for the last year and a half we’ve been told that the election process both here in Wisconsin and across the country is rigged, unfair, and easily manipulated by outside forces.
And yet on Wednesday of next week, we will universally accept the results of those elections. The top-vote getters will move on to the April general election–and those not finishing above the cutline will graciously accept the results and concede defeat. No one will show up to the Boards of Canvass and challenge the numbers. No one will hold press conferences in front of lawn and garden centers informing the world that they will be launching their own investigation into “irregularities” in the voting and the counting. There will not be protests outside of city or town halls and nobody will be breaking down doors to disrupt meetings to approve the results. We will not have yard signs demanding we “stop the steal”–and losing candidates’ supporters will not keep their campaign signs and flags up for another two years. Polls will not show that a year from now, nearly half the voters will question the validity of the results.
There will be no accusations that Black residents were told they weren’t allowed to vote. There will be no stories next week about busloads of illegal immigrants being brought to polling places. The makers of the digital voting machines and the ballot tabulators will not be subpoenaed and ordered to turn over information on how their machines operate. Russian hackers will not be accused of changing results inside of machines with no wi-fi connections. Not a single person will claim to have seen the machines “change their vote” as they pressed the enter button. Poll workers will add missing information and correct errors on absentee ballot envelopes–and no one will complain.
We haven’t heard anything about absentee ballots being harvested in certain urban areas–and no one has demanded that ballots be mailed to everyone regardless of their voter registration status. There have been no “Voting in the Park” events because it’s “too hard” for people to get to the polls in person on this Election Day. Nobody is demanding that next Tuesday be a federal or state holiday so everyone has off of work to get out and vote. None of the candidates have been shown encouraging their supporters to get to the polls on the first day of early voting–and no one has been told to bring along two friends to vote with them. Reduced numbers of polling places due to staffing shortages or COVID restrictions have not been met with howls of opposition and accusations of targeting certain “communities of color”. The head of the US Postal Service is not being raked across the coals because delivery delays are going to “cancel” absentee votes.
The head of Facebook is not providing money to certain Wisconsin cities to “insure the accuracy of the counting process” this month. There will be no representatives of activist groups “volunteering” to “help out” at central counting locations. No clerks will quit next week in disgust, claiming that others “took over” the administration of the election. Mayors will not be threatened with jail if they don’t testify about their direction of election oversight–and there will be no counter-lawsuits claiming investigations into next week’s elections are “witch hunts”.
New district lines go into effect with these elections–and yet no one has questioned the “fairness” of them. Are the new lines meant to consolidate power amongst one political bloc in our cities? Is there an equal chance of two candidates with separate ideologies winning every race? Are the lines drawn in such a way that minority populations have less chance of having one of their own elected in a race on a regular basis? We don’t know because nobody around here asked such questions before the maps were approved. And no one is taking the municipalities to court to have a judge redraw the lines.
The truly amazing thing is that after next Tuesday, the same process will be repeated again on the first Tuesday in April–and again (largely because there are not races for state Supreme Court or Superintendent of Public Instruction) there will be no accusations of misconduct or questions about the results. And the same is likely going to hold true for the August primary as well. Three elections this year that everyone will agree were fair and accurate.
But then will come November, and suddenly the processes we all agreed worked perfectly for the first 10-months of the year will all become “tainted”–and many of us will refuse to accept the results. Well, only if our candidate loses. But I want you to ask yourself: “Why don’t you believe elections are fair and that vote counts are accurate only when there is a “D” or an “R” next to a candidate’s name–and not when there are no formal party affiliations?” Do you tell your neighbors and Facebook friends that the City Council or the School Board is illegitimate because the election was flawed? Do you call your Mayor “Brandon”? Have you ever demanded that your voting ward lines be changed because none of your candidates ever win?
When the Town of Winchester sees a “shadow” Sanitary District Board start holding meetings claiming to be the “legitimate” Sanitary District Board–I’ll start believing that we have a problem with election administration in this country–and not just a problem with our political parties in this country.
