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Green Bay City Clerk Opposed UW Early-Voting Because ‘Students Lean More Toward the Democrats’ PDF Print E-mail
News - Articles for State & Local
Written by GBP Staff   
Tuesday, 25 October 2016 15:57

univ-student-voteUW-Green Bay student's story goes national as new e-mails released to 'The Nation' reveal ongoing GOP attempts to suppress the student vote.


GREEN BAY - Just hours ago, The Nation, one of the country's premier news sites, ran a stunning story about our community. It provides more evidence of how Republicans in the state are saying one thing publicly about their new voter suppression laws while pursuing a different agenda privately.

The Nation recounts the story of one Carly Stumpner, a junior biology major at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay, who had an hour between classes to vote during Wisconsin’s April 5 presidential primary. But when she arrived at her polling place on campus, the line stretched for two hours across the student union. She returned to the polls a second time after her classes, but the line had only grown, and Stumpner had to get to a meeting for work. She wasn’t able to vote because of the long wait times, a frustrating experience for her and many students at UWGB that day.

When polls closed at 8 pm, there were still 150 students waiting to vote. “Some people described it as chaos,” reported Ellery McCardle of the local ABC affiliate. “People were standing shoulder to shoulder, there was absolutely no room to move around in here.”

After the primary, leaders of eight different student groups, including the Republican, Democratic, and Libertarian parties and the Black Student Union, asked the city to put an early-voting location on campus to alleviate long lines and solve the problem.

But city officials ignored the request and opened only one early-voting site on September 26 for the entire city—the third-largest in Wisconsin—at the clerk’s office, a 15-minute drive from campus, which is open only during business hours. City Clerk Kris Teske, an appointee of Republican Mayor Jim Schmitt, a close ally of Governor Scott Walker, said the city didn’t have the money, time, or security to open an early-voting location on campus or anywhere else.

But privately Teske gave a different reason for opposing an early-voting site at UW–Green Bay, writing that student voting would benefit the Democratic Party. “UWGB is a polling location for students and residents on Election Day but I feel by asking for this to be the site for early voting is encouraging the students to vote more than benefiting the city as a whole,” she wrote on August 26 in an e-mail to David Buerger, counsel at the Wisconsin Ethics Commission. “I have heard it said that students lean more toward the democrats…. I have spoken with our Chief of Staff and others at City Hall and they agree that budget wise this isn’t going to happen. Do I have an argument about it being more of a benefit to the democrats?”

The e-mails were provided to The Nation following an open-records request by the One Wisconsin Institute, which has successfully challenged early-voting cutbacks in the state.

In 2014, Wisconsin’s Republican legislature eliminated early-voting hours on nights and weekends and restricted early-voting sites to one location per city. GOP State Senator Glenn Grothman, who’s now a member of Congress, cited extended early-voting hours in heavily Democratic cities like Madison and Milwaukee and said, “I want to nip this in the bud before too many other cities get on board.”

According to The Nation, Green Bay’s refusal to put a polling place at the campus is indicative of the Wisconsin GOP’s broader attack on student voting. Under Wisconsin’s strict voter-ID law, student IDs from most public and private universities and colleges are not accepted because they don’t feature signatures or a two-year expiration date, compared to a ten-year expiration for driver’s licenses. Only three of twenty-six schools in the University of Wisconsin system offer compliant IDs, according to Common Cause Wisconsin.

Nikolas Austin, the student-government president at UWGB, led the charge for an early-voting site on campus. He’s a Libertarian and says it shouldn’t matter which party students align with. “It’s not about who people vote for, it’s about them having the ability to vote,” he said. “If I have an exam on Election Day, I can vote early or vice versa. It allows students the flexibility they need.” He’s concerned about what’s going to happen at the polls on Election Day, when more people are likely to show up.

But that does not appear to be the goal of Scott Walker and local Republican leaders.

Last Updated on Tuesday, 25 October 2016 16:49
 
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