Vote

Voting is Key to Democracy

Stop Voter Suppression

There is no better way to participate in our democracy than exercising your right to cast a ballot for the candidate of your choice. After casting my ballot this past Tuesday, I also had the privilege of assisting others to do the same by working as a poll worker in the Village of Kewaskum. 

Poll workers play an important role in ensuring that the votes cast are properly recorded and counted. We registered new voters as well as re-registering those new to our communities who have voted elsewhere. We are trained by our municipal clerk who is in charge of the polling place. Our training brings us up to speed on voter eligibility and how to maintain the integrity of the voting process up to the point where our vote totals are transmitted to the county clerk to be added to the votes cast in the other municipal voting locations.

In the seven hours I worked while the poll was open, I saw all manner of my neighbors exercise the franchise. There were young, first time, voters and those who have voted for years. There were working folks who came straight from work. There were educators and other professionals, retired hippies and local farmers. All took time from their busy lives to make sure their voices were heard. 

Polls in small towns and villages are social places too. Some of those working in our polling place seemed to know many of those who came to vote and they stopped to chat. We thanked every voter who took a ballot and put it in the machine to be counted. 

After the poll closed, we noted the count on our machine that took each ballot. We then took out the ballots and counted how many there were. That number had to agree with the total number of ballots handed out during the day and received from absentee voters. We did not count the number of votes cast for each candidate on the ballot. The results were transmitted electronically to the county clerk and the machine tapes and all of the ballots were transported by the village clerk to the county clerk’s office where they will be maintained in case of a recount. 

I believe that there was nothing done at our polling location that would alter the results. My only concern is with the integrity of the voting machines and the digital transmission of the results up the chain. We are told that the Election Commission has tested the machines for accuracy in how votes are recorded and that they all pass before being put in service. We are also assured that the digital transmission of vote totals is secure and not vulnerable to manipulation. Short of independent testing of the machines and transmission protocols, we have no way of making sure the process is completely free from tampering.

Of even greater concern is voter turnout. Our Village has 2,478 registered voters. Of those, only 466 voted in this past election, roughly 18 percent. The county turnout was a bit better at 22 percent. Statewide, the voter turnout was about 16 percent which is an improvement over previous spring primaries. Some believe this improvement was driven by the contested primary in northern Wisconsin for the Seventh Congressional District. In any event, I find it troubling that so few took part in an important election that set the stage for the April general election where we will elect a Justice for the Wisconsin Supreme Court for a ten-year term.

Even with low voter turnout, we are also seeing increased attempts to suppress voter participation. We all know about voter ID laws that help prevent those who live on society’s edges from being able to vote. A conservative law firm has brought suit to purge over 200,000 voters statewide from the list of registered voters solely based on the failure to return a card mailed to them to make sure that they did not move. Those who did not return cards tended to live in more Democratic voting districts like Madison and Milwaukee and a recent analysis of those voters shows that a majority of them are recent voters, having voted in the 2016 election. Conservative republicans seem to believe that lower voter participation favors their candidates. 

Voter suppression has a long and sordid history in this country dating back to laws only allowing white, land owning males the privilege of selecting their representatives. After the Civil War, newly emancipated slaves were prevented from voting by Jim Crow laws, poll taxes and other schemes. Federal courts recently struck down a provision that prohibited felons from voting if they had unpaid fines or court obligations. Women only gained the right to vote when a constitutional amendment was passed giving them the franchise. 

The only way we can keep our democracy strong is to make sure that everyone old enough to vote can actually cast a ballot that is accurately processed and counted. You can verify your status as a registered voter and find other valuable information by going to https://myvote.wi.gov/en-us/ Your vote is important.

Funding Public Education

Don’t Ignore This One
Public school funding needs fixing

Nothing shows the difference between Republicans in control of the Wisconsin Legislature and Democrats in control of the Governor’s office and the Department of Public Instruction than what they propose to do with a projected state surplus. 

The state’s non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau announced last month that the state is projected to take in $818.2 million more in tax collections through mid-2021 than previously calculated. After deposits to the state’s rainy-day fund, that state is projected to have $451.9 million in the general fund for the rest of the 2019-21 budget. 

Making good on a campaign promise to fix public school funding, Gov. Tony Evers just announced a special legislative session on February 11th to consider his proposal to take $250 million of the projected surplus to “recommit to two-thirds state funding for K-12 education including investments in school-based mental health services and special education aid, $10 million in sparsity aid and $130 million in property tax relief through equalization aid.”

Evers coupled his announcement with a plea to legislators to stop choosing between tax relief and education funding. “I’ve always said that what’s best for our kids is what’s best for our state, and every kid deserves access to high-quality, public education regardless of their age, identity, background, economic status or zip code,” Evers said. “We don’t have to choose between investing in our kids and reducing property taxes-we can do both,” he noted. 

To support claim to bi-partisan support, Evers indicated that since 2011, nearly one million Wisconsin voters voted to raise their own property taxes for local public schools. In 2018, voters approved more than $2 billion in debt and revenue increases for their schools. In addition, Evers reminds us that the Republican’s own Blue Ribbon Commission on School Funding recommended renewal of the state’s obligation to fund two-thirds of the cost of public education. 

State Superintendent Carolyn Stanford Taylor issued a statement supporting Gov. Evers proposal. “I am grateful for the governor’s plan to provide additional resources for our schools. As I travel across the state, I continuously hear from our educators and parents, and I see the need for the state to provide more support, especially in the areas of special education and mental health resources in our schools. Additional resources are essential to achieving the DPI’s mission of ensuring all of our students receive what they need, when they need it, to be successful.”
Evers’ proposal would mean that local school districts would receive estimated payments for special education costs: Kewaskum - $118, 819, Slinger - $181,951, Hartford JT 1 - $150, 940, Hartford Union High - $93, 882 and West Bend - $537,799 In addition, Hartford Union High would receive an estimated $151,930 in sparsity aid. 
The Wisconsin Association of School Boards quickly issued a statement supporting the Governor’s proposal and the special session to consider it.

WisPolitics came out with a story on Republican legislative leaders’ views about the projected surplus before Evers special session call. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos told the Wisconsin Counties Association event that his members plan to pay off debts, cut property taxes and offer “robust” aid to struggling farmers. Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald is plugging property tax cuts and an income tax cut. 

Almost immediately after Gov. Evers’ announcement, both Cos and Fitzgerald rejected spending any more money on public schools and reiterating their calls for more tax cuts. 

Ever since the early days of Scott Walker’s administration, public education funding has been on the Republican chopping block. Even with more recent additions to state education funding, we are barely approaching the funding levels we saw in 2009. When you add the cost of inflation, we are still far away from proper funding for public schools. When you add in the hit to local districts caused by school choice vouchers taking money out of local schools to fund private school costs, the damage is even worse. 

Governor Evers is right to call the legislature back into session to address education funding shortfalls, especially those in special education and student mental health areas and to offer a sensible path to some property tax relief. Special education shortfalls are critical, especially since the elimination of school based social workers. In West Bend, for example, the only mental health counseling provided in the schools is provided by not fully trained graduate students on field placements.

Our legislative leaders would do well to actually take up Evers’ proposals next week and not ignore them as they have his past two special session calls to address urgent statewide concerns on the minds of a majority of Wisconsin voters.