COVID-19

Jay Heck, the executive director of Common Cause of Wisconsin, said he is “terrified” by the idea of the state holding the election on Tuesday given the mounting health risks. For the first time in nearly 25 years in his role, he is not encouraging people to vote in person, which “flies in the face of everything I believe in.” “It’s insanity. It’s just insanity,” an emotional Heck said midday Monday, before the governor’s order, describing the ways people could contract coronavirus at a polling place. “It makes me cry thinking about what is going to happen tomorrow. It really does.”

Jay Heck, director of Common Cause Wisconsin, a voting-rights group, likened the spring election to a cosmic calamity. "The upcoming election is hurtling toward the state of Wisconsin like some unstoppable meteor," said Heck. "It is terrifying, because nobody knows what's going to happen."

Some communities, such as those on Native American tribal lands, aren't as well-served by the U.S. postal system, and mail-in ballots should include pre-paid postage so citizens don't have to pay for the right to cast a ballot, says Karen Hobert-Flynn, president of Common Cause. But she's for any idea that "makes sure there's fair and safe voting for all." "Even as we are worried about this public health threat, we need to remember that it can't distract us from the ways we can fight it," Hobert-Flynn says. "That means we have to come together locally, nationally and internationally to stop the spread (of the virus) and part of that is ensuring our democracy continues to function."

Democrats and voting activists have accused GOP lawmakers of trying to suppress voter turnout intentionally to help an incumbent candidate for the state Supreme Court, conservative Justice Daniel Kelly, win reelection. “They have cynically calculated that lower turnout will help the conservative candidate,” said Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause in Wisconsin.

Government watchdog group Common Cause has called on all states to "expand vote-by-mail programs and absentee voting wherever possible." "This is a time for our country to be united to protect each other as we face COVID-19, and that includes rethinking the way we manage our elections in many states," Karen Hobert Flynn, the nonprofit's president, said in a press release.

Common Cause New York, a voting rights group, had called on Gov. Cuomo and state officials to consolidate the primary, contending that officials have made it clear that they won’t have the bandwidth to conduct an entirely absentee election by late April. “We don't have the infrastructure in place to do it quite frankly, so that's anything from having enough paper to print all the ballots, to making sure that we have prepaid postage, to make sure folks can return their ballot. It's a lot of smaller logistical decisions and preparations that would need to have started weeks ago,” Sarah Goff, the deputy director of Common Cause New York had previously said.