Ex-surgeon general to look at vote
MADISON - Former U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders will help track the health of Wisconsin voters who cast ballots in person on April 7 as part of a new project launched by a liberal group seeking to change the makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Elders, who served as surgeon general under President Bill Clinton in the early 1990s, will lead the project with Milwaukee County Supervisor Sheldon Wasserman, a doctor and former Democratic lawmaker, and Julie Fagan, former president of the Dane County Medical Society.
“When voting is unsafe, democracy suffers,” Elders, 86, said in a statement.
Some Wisconsin voters were forced to cast ballots in person during the April spring election after a failed, lastminute attempt by Gov. Tony Evers to postpone the election, after absentee ballots were delayed in many cases and after the U.S. Supreme Court the day before the election overturned a lower judge’s ruling extending the absentee voting deadline.
The court battle just before the April 7 election came after a late reversal by Evers to delay the election and a lawsuit by GOP lawmakers to stop him.
Republicans who control the Legislature said keeping the state’s election laws in place preserves democracy and ensures government at all levels continues to function.
The election was held at a time during the coronavirus outbreak before infections showed any sign of slowing in the state, resulting in warnings from public health officials that voters and poll workers might be at a higher risk of becoming infected.
Voting went smoothly in many municipalities, but voters in Milwaukee and Green Bay waited hours in line to vote after the cities’ election officials reduced polling sites amid a shortage of poll workers.
Researchers have said no spike in COVID-19 cases is apparent from the election, but that the effect from the election may be hidden and difficult to detect.
The state Department of Health Services told the Wisconsin State Journal this week at least 67 Wisconsin residents got the virus after voting in person or working at the polls April 7, but health officials can’t tie those infections to the election directly because some could have been exposed elsewhere.
Also this week, the Milwaukee County COVID-19 Epidemiology Intel Team said 26 county residents may have been infected during in-person voting but also said a definitive determination would likely be impossible to determine.
The project Elders will help lead, sponsored by the group Take Back The Court, will seek to shed light on how public health was affected by the election through an online survey of voters and poll workers.
The survey asks whether the respondents complied with the state’s restrictions except on Election Day and became ill afterward, or whether the respondents already believed or knew they had the virus, or learned they had the virus on Election Day, and voted in person anyway because there was not another available option.