Obama Calls Out WI Election ‘Debacle,’ Warns US Can’t Allow ‘Tragedy of a Pandemic to Compromise Our Democracy’

Reed RichardsonApr 10th, 2020, 6:57 pm
 
Barack Obama

Photo credit: Scott Olson, Getty Images

In a rare Twitter thread, former President Barack Obama called out the fight over holding the Wisconsin election this past week amid the coronavirus outbreak, warning that citizens shouldn’t have to choose between their health and participation in democracy.

Obama was weighing in on the “absolute disaster” that some critics labeled the Wisconsin primary election on Tuesday. That’s when thousands of that state’s citizens were forced to brave possible infection from COVID-19 to vote in person after the conservative-majority Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that the election must go forward despite the governor’s public health objections.

The scenes of thousands of Wisconsin voters having to break shelter-in-place guidelines to vote also kicked off a call for widespread mail-in voting, which is the statewide standard in several Western states and used overwhelmingly in other states for absentee voting. It even prompted President Donald Trump to comment on the process, where he baselessly claimed mail-in voting is ripe for fraud, even though he himself used a mail-in ballot in the 2018 midterms. After decades of mail-in voting, actual, verified instances of voting fraud vis mail are infinitesimal.

“No one should be forced to choose between their right to vote and their right to stay healthy like the debacle in Wisconsin this week,” Obama wrote. “Everyone should have the right to vote safely, and we have the power to make that happen. This shouldn’t be a partisan issue.”

“Let’s not use the tragedy of a pandemic to compromise our democracy,” he added. “Check the facts of vote by mail.”

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