Nearly four years later and after tens of thousands of dollars spent on lawsuits and recounts that prove Donald Trump lost the 2020 election in Wisconsin, he is still campaigning on having the WI election stolen from him. And a number of Wisconsin Republicans, when asked if they will accept the results of the 2024 election, only reply that if it is a free and fair election.
Now when they make accusations about a stolen election, they are NOT accusing a great gray horde rising up out of Dante’s Inferno and hijacking the election apparatus. When you break it down, they are blaming your friends, neighbors, family members, folks you see at a church, folks who check you out at the local grocery, and the underpaid and overworked village, town, and county clerks who actually run the elections in your area. Real people. Ordinary people. Many of them volunteers who take civic pride in their community and elections.
And what have we seen so far from the GOP dominated legislature in Madison? Attacks on the administrator (administrator, not a voting board member) of the state election commission for doing her job. An election commission put together by the very people dissing it. And then any number of febrile laws, rules, and motions to inhibit and restrict the rights of their constituents to vote.
Has any of this worked to assure you and me that our elections are free and fair? Well no…but they can do something that is very easy, very inexpensive, and can be done right in their home districts.
Every single state senator and state assemblyperson should take a day off each week and visit one of the clerks in their district and interview them on what they do on election day and how they run the local election cycle. Step by Step, Inch by Inch (boomer reference alert). Until that elected understands the work involved and can clearly explain it to each and everyone of us. And then they should do exactly that. On their Capitol web page, in social media, at a press conference(s), to the local and state and national media. Show us!!! If every state senator and assemblyperson made ONE visit, there would be 132 visits on record.
It will be a lot harder for electeds to misrepresent the process after they’ve explained how it works. It will be less likely that voters will be fearful of the process when they’ve clearly been shown how it works. And that the elections are NOT run by some mysterious ‘them’, but Sally who also accepts their water bill payment, or Joe who sends them their receipt for their property tax bill in January. The media reports elections on the accumulated grand scale…but it’s a home town thing first and foremost.
It won’t happen because it is not in the best interest of the conspiracy dissembling GOP. But now would be a great time since everyone is back home in their district running for re-election!
