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Join Jim and Greg as they welcome far lower COVID-19 death projections than we were seeing just days ago but hope they still go much lower. They also wonder why Wisconsin is still holding elections in the midst of a stay-at-home order and fear Republicans will get blamed for any rise in cases linked to voting lines. And they hammer NBC for reporting China’s bogus numbers on COVID cases and deaths as if they are accepted facts.
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Let’s see if I’ve got this right. We had tens of thousands of Continental Army soldiers pay in blood to create this county and give us the right to vote. Since then we have had millions of other American citizens put their lives at hazard to allow us to vote.
And in 2020 we have people advocating we cancel elections because voting is too dangerous?
If there are people unwilling to put their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to risk in order to vote, I say let those people stay home. Their votes are worthless anyway.
As are those who advocate we should cancel elections because it might be risky.
On the other hand, the people most at risk for the virus (and stay home) are also less likely to vote for Ol’ Confused & Sleepy.
Freedom isn’t free. Don’t want to take the risk? Don’t vote. That simple.
Again, I get it, but who do you expect to stay home from the polls, when there’s a virus out there that’s far more deadly to the elderly? And for which party are younger people more likely to vote? I’m just saying there’s a downside.
Don’t know why we’re talking about this, though. I just clicked on the link because it promised good-looking models.
Ditto.
Well, I always listen every day anyway. But still disappointed.
Agreed. We have absentee ballots that can solve part of the problem, and worst case the lines are longer – just because there will be more “physical distancing”* between the aspiring voters. Should not take much longer though.
*Note – “social distancing” is a ridiculously stupid term, perfect in an age where we no longer remember what gender means, where we try to establish “free speech zones” when I thought that was what the USA was already. I could go on…
And of course if it was “the right” telling “the left” where THEY could have “free speech,” well…
Projected deaths in the same model is down again… to 60k (as of the day after the podcast)
https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america
As @taras says, Jim Geraghty is always wrong. In this case, he couldn’t be more wrong and doesn’t have a clue as to what he’s talking about in regard to the Wisconsin primary.
The videos people were seeing on the Wisconsin primary election day were from the city of Milwaukee where the mayor, Tom Barrett, reduced the number of polling places from the usual 180 to fewer than 12, despite the Wisconsin National Guard being deployed by the governor for the very purpose of making up poll worker shortfalls. So in an incredibly cynical move in the city with the highest number of coronavirus cases in the state, the mayor of Milwaukee purposely crammed his own constituency closer together to create the images of lines of people stretching blocks and blocks to vote on the 7th. Notably, the other liberal city in Wisconsin, Madison, did not close most of its polling places. What pictures/video did the national media focus on? Milwaukee, of course. In the suburbs all around Milwaukee there were no such problems, and voting location interiors were modified to include plexiglass shields between voters and poll workers, hand sanitizer, PPE gear for poll workers, spaced out voting booths, and thousands of pens. This post by Dan O’Donnell, a Newstalk 1130 WISN morning show host, sums it up well:
“Milwaukee has a population of 592,000 and 5 polling locations open today. New Berlin, one of its suburbs, has a population of 39,000 and 7 polling locations open today. One of these cities has been controlled by Democrats since 1908. I’ll let you guess which one.” (6:20pm April 7th, 2020 on Facebook)
Barrett, along with other Democrat mayors in Wisconsin, sent a letter to Wisconsin health services secretary Andrea Palm on Sunday, April 5th, that included this sentence:
“We believe it would be irresponsible and contrary to public health to conduct in-person voting throughout the state at the very time this disease is spreading rapidly.”
Apparently he wasn’t too worried about it the day before on Saturday, April 4th, when he in-person voted in Milwaukee with his wife while wearing no protective gear, as seen in these several photos.
Despite the (purposeful) impression left by news reports/videos shown on April 7th, most people in Wisconsin, including Milwaukee, had voted early – either in person or by absentee ballot (which people could request from their city clerk for any reason up until early April). In fact, absentee ballot requests for this election broke state records. Early in-person voting began on March 16th for Milwaukee and expanded to include drive up (stay in your car) voting on March 28th. Early in-person voting began in most of the rest of the state on March 23rd.
Geraghty’s summary of the actions (or lack thereof) by the governor and state legislature leading up to April 7th are factually wrong. I recently posted about the political wrangling, shenanigans, and lawsuits leading up to the Wisconsin primary on the Ricochet member feed. It is a complex story and takes time to research and understand how this all played out. This article (or audio version) goes through the several month timeline. The events that took place after that article was written are updated here. The single statement that summarizes the linked update is:
For weeks (March 16th – April 2nd), Governor Evers steadfastly refused to work with the legislature to delay the election, even when others asked for it and even sued over it, until it became a national news story on April 2nd.
April 3rd: Governor Evers calls the legislature into session for April 4th to act on his suggested plan to cancel the in-person April 7th election, send a mail-in ballot to every resident of Wisconsin (while at the same time not invalidating the 550,000+ absentee ballots that have already been sent out), and extend the mail in voting until June.
April 4th: The legislature gavels in and gavels out without taking up the Governor’s suggested plan.
April 6th: Governor Evers issues an executive order to change the election to June 9th, 2020 despite admitting (accurately) in an April 1st tweet that he had no constitutional authority to do so. Within hours the Wisconsin State Supreme Court enjoined the executive order. Later that same day the US Supreme Court stayed the order of a Federal District Judge (in Madison, WI) issued “five days before the scheduled election, …that absentee ballots mailed and postmarked after election day, April 7, still be counted so long as they are received by April 13. Extending the date by which ballots may be cast by voters—not just received by the municipal clerks but cast by voters—for an additional six days after the scheduled election day fundamentally alters the nature of the election.” (emphasis added)
As Milwaukee talk show host Mark Belling predicted back in early March, Democrats will not want to change the date of the election until the absentee ballot sent/returned counts start to indicate that they may lose the statewide Wisconsin Supreme Court election. This became apparent in late March when conservative strongholds like Waukesha County started outpacing Milwaukee and Madison in returned absentee ballot counts. That’s when state democrats started pressuring Governor Evers. When he still didn’t act, national democrats got involved and shamed him into trying to change the election date at the last minute.
Spare me the condescending lecture Geraghty and shame on you for your lack of research. It might be a good idea to cultivate some conservative sources you can contact in Wisconsin to ask about issues here before you comment on them. Who knows, you might learn something.
If only Jim and Greg actually read these comments…
Greg does sometimes and even comments. At the very least, I hope my comments/links are useful for Ricochet members to better understand a Wisconsin news story from a local perspective, rather than just some flippant remarks from some guy in Virginia.