'Voter suppression at its finest': Wisconsin citizens say missing ballots kept them from being coun [View all]

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'Voter suppression at its finest': Wisconsin citizens say missing ballots kept them from being counted in election



https://www.postcrescent.com/news/
Daphne Chen, Marcia Robiou, Elizabeth Mulvey, Kacey Cherry and June Cross Published 8:56 p.m. CT April 12, 2020 | Updated 8:17 a.m. CT April 13, 2020


With just hours before election results are released, many Wisconsin citizens say they never got the chance to cast their votes.

After a chaotic week culminating in a last-minute U.S. Supreme Court order, questions remain about the validity of the process for people who never received their absentee ballots.

Over the past several days, reporters interviewed 32 would-be voters who said they were forced to choose between going to the polls during a pandemic and not having their votes counted.

This story is produced in partnership with the PBS series FRONTLINE and Columbia Journalism Investigations, an investigative reporting unit at the Columbia Journalism School.

More than 500 people, responding to the Journal Sentinel in an online form, said they requested their ballots in advance but did not receive them in time.

A picture emerged of voters disappointed, angry and confused about how the election played out in a state that has long prided itself on taking voting seriously.

Roseann Schmidt, an 80-year-old disabled breast cancer survivor who lives in Milwaukee, said she applied twice for an absentee ballot.