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Radio Atlantic

Voter Suppression By Pandemic

Radio Atlantic

The Atlantic

Politics, News, Society & Culture

4.41.9K Ratings

🗓️ 11 April 2020

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sherrilyn Ifill of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund discusses Wisconsin’s election debacle and how the coronavirus has become a new tool of voter suppression. Ifill says Wisconsin legislators “created a perfect storm where it didn't have to exist” and that the Supreme Court’s “terrible decision” allowing the election to proceed “consigned people to have to choose between their health and their right as citizens to participate and vote.” She describes how the current partisan debate around voter suppression obscures its roots as a tool of white supremacy, and she talks about what worries her (and what makes her hopeful) as we look to the election in November. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

lines here in Milwaukee have been going on for hours.

0:07.0

Look at that line.

0:09.0

Blocks and blocks and blocks and blocks long.

0:11.0

This morning people in Wisconsin have a tough choice to make.

0:13.7

Protect their health by following the state's stay-at-home order or exercise their right to vote.

0:28.8

Welcome to the ticket. I'm Isaac Dauver. This week, Wisconsin held an election. It's hard to believe people were asked to show up and went on lines in central locations amid the pandemic and all the measures were all taken to keep people healthy.

0:36.2

It's so hard to believe of course that Wisconsin's governor issued a last-minute order to delay the election.

0:41.6

But the Republican-controlled state legislature

0:44.1

appealed to the courts where it won on the state level and then on Monday at

0:47.4

the Supreme Court. The justices voted in a 5-4 party line decision to not

0:52.3

extend absentee voting.

0:53.6

Fears of the coronavirus have fallen more heavily on cities, on minority

0:57.7

populations, and that's why observers expect the pandemic to have an effect that

1:01.9

will be clear in the turnout and the results.

1:04.9

Here's how Mandela Barnes, Wisconsin's lieutenant governor put it as voters waited in line on

1:09.5

Tuesday.

1:10.5

Unfortunately, they saw an opportunity, our speaker speaker our majority leader are our conservative or you can just say

1:17.2

Republican controlled Supreme Court in the state of Wisconsin and they saw an opportunity to suppress the vote here with coronavirus fears so that a low turnout would benefit the Donald Trump endorsed Supreme Court candidate Dan Kelly.

1:30.4

So maybe the big question of the 2020 election is not anymore who will face

1:34.8

Donald Trump but now how will the coronavirus affect the vote. Turnout was expected

1:40.8

to be the biggest in history now could be severely depressed by the pandemic.

1:44.7

And if Wisconsin is any guide,

...

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