Milwaukee Election Protection

Last week several of us in the Women for Peace group went to Milwaukee to serve as Election Protection Volunteers. In the context of the historical and consistent voter oppression faced in predominately African American neighborhoods, we were grateful not to witness overt challenging and aggressive attempts at voter suppression. However, we witnessed a number of troubles that highlight the inherent problems we have here in the U.S. regarding ease of voting, and more importantly, education about our candidates.

I think it would be fair to say that at least half of the voters in the ward we served were voting for the first time. One elderly gentleman shared that he had been voting in that polling place his entire life and stated that at the end of the day of the last election he was the 34th voter. At 4:30 this year there were 540 votes cast in that same ward. This is, of course, good news. However, the obvious consequence of this is that a couple hundred individuals had never seen a ballot before. But, that alone didn’t seem to explain the difficulties folks had with the ballot. A great deal of people (including myself) found the ballot confusing and had questions ranging from how to select the candidate (i.e., what do you do with the arrows?!) to uncertainty about straight party voting. Many people could not read well. The most common problems we saw were that folks were double voting for a presidential candidate because the “write-in” slot for president did not actually say “write-in” and people thought if there were voting for president they had to also fill in that arrow. Some people thought that since “democrat” was listed first in the straight party that all the names in the left hand column were democrat (and selected all of them) and all the names in the right hand side were republican. Unfortunately, the poll watchers were not well trained and when voters asked for assistance they were brushed off and referred to the “SAMPLE” ballot. The sample ballot was the actual ballot xeroxed on yellow paper with the word sample on it. On its own it offered no additional assistance. It was clear that at the very least one person needed to be available at all times at the voting booths to field the high volume of questions. Our responsibility was supposed to be to observe, but we were welcomed to assist. In the absence of that extra assistance I would seriously question whether voters were able to cast the vote they intended.

A skeptic might point out that the voting machines are intended to catch errors in the ballot. However, the voting machine delivered to this polling site broke when the first vote was cast and remained broken for an hour. Over 100 votes were cast during that time. For the remainder of the day we had to ensure that ballots were entered in upside down to increase the likelihood the machine would read them correctly.

The most challenging thing I witnessed, however, was the blind faith put into the Democratic Party. Mind you, I wanted Bush out of office more than anybody, but I voted for Kerry because of the forced 2-party system and vowed to work hard for change if he was elected. So, while it was very heart-opening to see an entire community united and passionate about social change, I felt sad. I wanted to say, “What have the democrats done for you lately?” Bush’s cabinet was more diverse than Clinton’s, token gestures like MLK day have been delivered by Republicans, and Welfare to Work – Clinton. This isn’t a pro-Republican argument, but it’s questioning the hallo effect that Democrats sport. So, here’s why I felt sad – if the constituents in this neighborhood (or the rest of the country, honestly) had access to campaign information on ALL of the candidates I do not believe they would have voted for the democratic candidate. This obviously speaks to campaign reform and a need to influence the higher-ups who can create change. But, it should also speak to progressives. There are large sections of our population who need information and, I believe, would join us in solidarity. Shame on us for not making a larger effort to be inclusive and have the progressive voice also be represented by people of color.