Masked and trying to respect the safety distances, Wisconsin voters voted Tuesday in the middle of a coronavirus pandemic, for local elections and the Democratic primary between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. The latter denounced the holding of an election which could prove to be "fatal" . After an intense showdown between Democrats, who wanted to postpone the polls, and Republicans, the polling stations finally welcomed voters in this Midwestern state of nearly six million inhabitants.
By advising them to stay at home, the Trump administration nevertheless warned the Americans on Sunday that they were going to live one of the "saddest weeks of their lives" , worthy of a "moment like Pearl Harbor" , because of the pandemic which has already killed more than 12,000 people in the United States, including nearly a hundred in Wisconsin. But in Milwaukee, where only five polling stations were able to be opened for nearly 600,000 inhabitants, voters, masked or their faces covered with scarves, often had to wait more than an hour behind each other to vote. Others were able to avoid these queues by voting from their car, in front of a city high school.
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In Kenosha, further south, the director of a polling station had put on a total protection suit, glasses and a mask to welcome voters. Other employees, more simply masked, were protected by plexiglass walls while members of the Wisconsin National Guard regularly disinfected the tables and voting machine. Some 2,500 have been deployed across the state. Due to the lack of election workers, some being sick and others fearing contagion, more than a hundred municipalities were unable to open a polling station.
The challenge behind these original scenes? The Democratic primary but above all the crucial local elections for the balance of power in Wisconsin. This explains the fierce political battle around the ballot in this state called to play a key role in the presidential election of November 3. And that Donald Trump has taken the trouble to tweet repeatedly to support a conservative judge of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin, Daniel Kelly, who is playing for his re-election on Tuesday. "Vote today," notably tweeted the American president, provoking criticism from Democrats.
A potentially "deadly" decision
After days of fruitless negotiations with the Republicans, the majority in the Assembly and the Senate of Wisconsin, Democratic Governor Tony Evers signed a decree Monday to postpone the poll to June 9, in order to "protect" the population. But the Republicans immediately appealed to the state’s Supreme Court, which, with the votes of four conservative magistrates against two progressive ones, ordered the vote on Tuesday. Daniel Kelly abstained.
Candidate for the Democratic nomination for the presidential, Bernie Sanders judged "scandalous" that the republicans push to vote "for their political benefit" . This decision is "dangerous" and "may well prove to be fatal" . Ultra-favorite of the Democratic primary, the former vice-president Joe Biden, 77 years, is given winner in this State by the polls, but a big uncertainty hangs over this poll.
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Because of the coronavirus pandemic, no other Democratic primary has been organized since March 17. Already fifteen states, as well as the territory of Puerto Rico, have announced the postponement of their polls. And the vote will be done only by correspondence for the other polls planned for April (Alaska on the 10th, Wyoming on the 17th). This virtual suspension of the campaign increases the pressure on Bernie Sanders, 78, to throw in the towel. His delay on the former right-hand man of Barack Obama in the race for the democratic nomination is very difficult to catch up with. Wisconsin results may not be released until April 13, the deadline for receiving newsletters by mail.
If he said he was "still very worried about the public health consequences" of this vote, Governor Evers said on Twitter that he was "overwhelmed by the courage, perseverance and heroism of those who defend our democracy in coming to vote (and) to work in the polling stations ” .
