Toon: Oh, Come On, Wisconsin

Considering that the presidential candidates are nowhere to be found this year, this is turning into a hotly contested election here in Wisconsin today.

Among the highlighted items on the ballot are a state Supreme Court Justice, a ballot measure to enshrine crime victim's rights in the state constitution, and mayoral and county executive positions around the state.

Over the weekend, Democratic Governor Tony Evers summoned the Republican-run legislature into emergency session, calling them to extend Tuesday's election. With over 1,000 diagnosed cases of COVID-19 in Milwaukee County alone and rapidly rising numbers elsewhere around the state, especially in all urban counties, everyone concerned feared for the health and safety of voters and poll workers.

Everyone concerned, that is, except for the Republican majority in the state legislature.

They gavelled Saturday's emergency session to order and adjourned it in one second flat — a repeat of their emergency session last year on gun control measures. Another emergency session on Monday was just as abruptly cut off, adjourned until the day after the election.

So Monday afternoon, Evers issued an executive order postponing the election until June 9, and extending the terms of incumbent local politicians until after that election would have taken place. It was a move he had previously said he was powerless to make.

Within hours, the state Supreme Court — whose seven members are nominally non-partisan, but five of whom are bought and paid-for shills for the state Republican party — told Evers he was right: he is powerless to make that move. (They met virtually, by the way. I'll bet that's not in the constitution!) The U.S. Supreme Court was even speedier in quashing Evers' order to extend the date by which absentee ballots are due.

Robin Vos and Scott Fitzgerald, leaders of the Assembly and Senate respectively, are following Mitch McConnell's playbook from the Obama administration: block anything and everything; deny Evers even the most necessary legislation. No matter who gets hurt.

Many people will either put themselves at great risk or be disenfranchised by the Republicans' power play. Campaigns have been exhorting people for weeks to vote absentee or by mail. Our household has, but that leaves out voters who can't just up and get down to city hall whenever they want.

Demand for mail-in ballots quickly exceeded supply, and there are thousands of reports that ballots that were mailed to voters in mid-March never got delivered. Those ballots must be witnessed, but who is there to witness the ballots of older voters (exactly the ones most at risk of exposure to the virus) who live alone?

Others may have believed the President's promises that the crisis would have blown over around now. Voters who waited to cast their ballots in person may find their regular polling place closed because there aren't nearly enough poll workers, even with the National Guard called in. Milwaukee, with a population of over 600,000, will have a total of five polling locations open.

FIVE.

How many voters will be able to find their alternate poll location in time? Since many polling sites are limiting the number of persons allowed inside the building at a time, how many will bother to wait outside? (Stormy weather is predicted.)

I foresaw Republican mischief in this spring's election. I vastly underestimated how deadly serious it would be.