U.S. News & World Report: Access Denied? Coronavirus Complicates Voter Access

05.12.2020 / By Susan Milligan
U.S. News & World Report: Access Denied? Coronavirus Complicates Voter Access

"Every vote is going to matter here, as it's excruciatingly close here, as it always is," says Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause in Wisconsin, one of the most critical of battleground states this fall. If presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden wins every electoral vote Hillary Clinton did in 2016 – and picks up Pennsylvania and Michigan – he'd still lose by two electoral votes without also capturing Wisconsin. Heck contends that Republicans are trying to suppress the vote to keep battleground Wisconsin in the GOP column this fall. "This is a dog-eat-dog state. The Republicans in this state have shown they will do anything and everything – they will manipulate (the process) and do whatever they need to do to help Trump," Heck says. Democrats believe their voters are more affected, since young, low-income and minority voters tend to move more often, making them more likely to have their residency questioned.

A LITTLE-KNOWN Wisconsin judge who recently lost his race to stay in the state Supreme Court has decided not to recuse himself in a case expected to come before the court before he departs his position in August.

That single, personal decision could conceivably decide who wins the presidential election this fall. And it underscores a coronavirus-era theme this election year: the next president may be determined not by which candidate has more support, but by which voters cast a ballot.

In the Badger State, the decision by departing judge Daniel Kelly to participate in a case involving voter rolls means as many as 200,000 Wisconsinites might be scrubbed from the rolls — a dramatic development in a state that was decided by fewer than 23,000 votes in 2016. …

“Every vote is going to matter here, as it’s excruciatingly close here, as it always is,” says Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause in Wisconsin, one of the most critical of battleground states this fall. If presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden wins every electoral vote Hillary Clinton did in 2016 – and picks up Pennsylvania and Michigan – he’d still lose by two electoral votes without also capturing Wisconsin.

Heck contends that Republicans are trying to suppress the vote to keep battleground Wisconsin in the GOP column this fall.

“This is a dog-eat-dog state. The Republicans in this state have shown they will do anything and everything – they will manipulate (the process) and do whatever they need to do to help Trump,” Heck says. Democrats believe their voters are more affected, since young, low-income and minority voters tend to move more often, making them more likely to have their residency questioned. …

The coronavirus, however, might make that fix harder to achieve, Heck and others say. Voters may be skittish about voting in person this fall (at least 67 people who voted in person during the state’s April 7 primary have been infected with COVID-19, the state Department of Health services reported Thursday, though a direct connection to being in public on that day has not been established).

Further, registering requires ID, and people who have no idea they have been temporarily disqualified from voting may not have the proper documentation with them when they go vote, Heck says. That means more people may request an absentee ballot instead – and may find out too late that they had been scrubbed from the rolls, and be unable to register, receive an absentee ballot and return it in time.

“I think people’s concerns about the pandemic and the uncertainty about how long it’s going to last will continue through November for the population at large,” Heck says. “What that means is that there have got to be far more people voting absentee than any time in the past.”

See More: Voting RightsVoting & ElectionsCOVID-19