Trump winning Wisconsin could hinge on an insidious voting practice
Where Republicans famously rig the election process.
Democrats are understandably excited by the upcoming death of the Republican gerrymander in Wisconsin.
Since the heavily GOP-skewed maps were signed into law in 2011, the conservative legislature has been ballot-proof, free to ignore the views of most Wisconsinites.
As a result, a purple state which has voted Democratic in eight of the last nine presidential races maintains far-right, outlier positions on some major issues.
Wisconsin is one of only 10 states not to sign on to Medicaid expansion. It’s only one of only 12 with 1980s-era, zero-tolerance marijuana laws. And Wisconsin bans abortion after 20 weeks — Republicans are trying to lower that to 14 weeks.
Democrats will have a chance to retake the state Assembly in 2024 and the state Senate in 2026 — if the new maps aren’t overturned in federal court.
Nationally, the implications could be even greater: Republicans likely won’t be able to impose any new voter suppression measures on the 2024 presidential race in Wisconsin.
This is significant because no Democratic candidate has won a presidential race without Wisconsin since John F. Kennedy in 1960.
But Democrats shouldn’t get too excited.
Ninety-seven percent of Wisconsin’s land mass is considered rural. Other than a handful of scattered clusters, large portions of the state’s Democratic vote are concentrated in two high-density areas (minority-majority Milwaukee and cobalt-blue Madison).
By contrast, Republicans outnumber Democrats in larger, less-populated swaths of the state where whites make up 90-plus percent of the population.
Even before the 2011 gerrymander, Republicans tended to dominate the state Assembly because of geographic advantages, which continue under the new maps.
According to an analysis by Marquette University, even if the new maps had been in place for the 2022 midterm, Republicans would currently have majorities in both chambers of the state legislature.
In addition, Wisconsin is rife with voter suppression, which disproportionately harms Democratic constituencies.
Urban Wisconsinites are more likely to face precinct closures or changes, which have been found to lower turnout from one to two percent.
Countrywide, Black and Latino voters wait 46 percent longer to vote on average, according to a Brennan Center for Justice study. Milwaukee residents experienced this in 2020, when Republicans rejected universal mail balloting then sued to force a primary election during a COVID breakout.
Passed into law by a Republican legislature and governor in 1998, Wisconsin’s “truth in sentencing” law forces citizens released from prison to remain on extended supervision, under strict rules, often for years at a time.
While on supervision, offenders can’t vote, which disenfranchises 63,000 Wisconsinites. Black Wisconsin residents, the Democratic Party’s most loyal constituency, are incarcerated at 12 times’ the rate of white residents, according to the Prison Policy Initiative.
In 2010, Republicans won control of the governor’s mansion and state legislature in a low-turnout, off-year election. The following year, they passed one of the strictest and most racially-discriminatory voter ID laws in the country on a party-line vote. The law also disenfranchises women and college students in inordinate numbers.
Gerrymandered Republicans limited early voting after record turnout in the 2018 midterm election (anchored by an ambitious early vote campaign) helped Democrats sweep statewide races. Previously, Wisconsinites had six weeks of early voting. They now have just two weeks.
After Joe Biden won Wisconsin with the help of a sizable mail ballot vote, a 4-3 Republican majority on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court banned absentee ballot drop boxes, a ruling which narrows voting options for hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites.
In addition to creating an undue burden for disabled voters, the ban disproportionately harms city residents. Citizens without a personal vehicle – much more common in urban areas – have to travel greater distances to drop off ballots than voters in less-diverse small towns. Many voters in Madison and Milwaukee have to take multiple buses just to drop off their ballots at a designated elections office before election day.
The law is currently on appeal, but there’s no guarantee that it will be ruled on (let alone overturned and implemented) in time for the November presidential election.
Regardless of what happens with the drop box court case, 2024 is likely to be another nailbiter in the Badger State, a tipping-point state in both the 2016 and 2020 elections.
The last two quality polls show Biden and Donald Trump tied in Wisconsin.
Spoiler candidates Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Jill Stein (who was essential to Trump’s Wisconsin win in 2016) will likely siphon tens of thousands of votes from Biden.
Given these realities, it’s possible that systematic racial voter suppression could decide the 2024 presidential election.
Sixty years after passage of the Voting Rights Act, access to the ballot remains separate and unequal in Wisconsin.
Dan Benbow has been an online political features writer since 2003. His work has appeared at Raw Story, the Miami Herald, the New York Daily News, Salon, Truthout and the Progressive.
