A Burger with a side of Fever, Please

Wisconsin’s Primary Election Fiasco

According to the tally kept by the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, as of April 4th there are 2,112 people in Wisconsin known to be infected by the coronavirus;* 588 people have required hospitalization, and 56 have died. Yet, Republicans in the Wisconsin state legislature are deliberately endangering the lives of Wisconsinites by refusing to approve a delay of the April 7th primary. Democratic Governor Evers has also failed, so far, to use his emergency powers to postpone the election.

An emergency postponement order issued by the governor will attract a court challenge, but so what? A lot of actions by politicians generate lawsuits, especially in these hyper-partisan times. Perhaps the governor will wait until 6:30 am on Tuesday to issue an emergency decree, when an attempt to gain an injunction against it will be futile (the polls open at 7:00 am), but I suspect not. A man who signed a law banning anti-pipeline demonstrations isn’t one who is likely to risk a political and legal confrontation.

So now we’re faced with a conundrum. Polling locations have been reduced in number due to a shortage of poll workers (who tend to be older and therefore more susceptible to severe complications if infected by the coronavirus), and that means voters will wait longer in long lines in crowded rooms for an opportunity to vote.

That’s an epidemiological nightmare.

If we encourage people to go to the polls, we’re likely to see months of rolling spikes in the number of COVID-19 cases. Within 14 days after the election, people infected at the polls will begin to show up in emergency rooms, and every 14 days after that more people will go to the ER, even if they didn’t go to the polls, because voters will spread the virus before they realize they are infected. And that will be repeated over and over again, putting even more stress on our hospitals. A forecasting model developed by the Harvard Global Health Institute shows that, even for Madison, Wisconsin, which has four large hospitals, spikes in hospitalizations will quickly overwhelm capacity.

I hope the governor is considering what’s happening in New York City, because that tragedy isn’t a forecast open to interpretation.

If the governor doesn’t want to use his emergency powers to delay the election, he could announce a mandatory 14-day quarantine order for everyone who voted (he should automatically do so for civilian election judges and the National Guard personnel he intends to call up). That would, of course, drive down voter turnout, but it would also minimize the dangerous spread of the virus.

People will feel they’re being punished for voting, and they would be correct, but with infections continuing to rise even as people reduce their “outings” to a weekly trip to the grocery store, it is hardly rational to encourage additional crowds in every town in the state. Republican legislative leaders Fitzgerald and Vos dismissed the danger of voting by equating it to stopping by a restaurant for take-out food.

I’ll have a burger with a side of fever, please.

Low voter turnout, at least among Democrats, may occur even without a decree from the governor. A recent NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll found that Republicans are less worried about the virus than Democrats. Democrats, in other words, may accept the need to avoid public gatherings while Republicans may not. For Wisconsin, that means another conservative (and one who is completely unqualified) on the state Supreme Court.

But I’m not completely sold on the idea that Democrats will remain at home. I live in Madison, a Democratic Party stronghold. In the last few weeks, I’ve twice driven by two grocery stores on my way to the drive-thru lane at Walgreen’s pharmacy. On both occasions, the parking lots were chock-full of cars. I’ve heard the same is true of grocery stores in other towns — people are lined up outside of stores half an hour before they open. Granted, people must shop for food, but what happened to all the food hoarded in the first week following the remain at home order? Are people still adding to their stockpiles? Don’t they have freezers? The kids are home from school and eating more, but after the first week parents should have adjusted their buying habits.

This phenomenon of crowded grocery stores strikes me as a kind of compulsive panic shopping, of “just in case things get worse, I better stock up on salt and pepper.” If it is, then returning to the grocery store over and over again, increasing the chance of becoming infected and spreading the virus, will guarantee that “things will get worse.” It may also mean Democrats will ignore the remain at home order and go to the polls, long lines be damned.

In the time of a pandemic, is voting as important panic grocery shopping? Who is more patriotic, the woman who stays home and doesn’t spread the virus or the woman who voted, became infected, and spread the infection to five other people, one of whom dies?

Biden has taken the lead among Democrats in Wisconsin, but I’m not sure what a low voter turnout will mean in the contest between him and Sanders. Biden voters appear to be more dutiful than enthusiastic, while Sanders, with smaller numbers, has a lock on enthusiasm.

But where are Sanders’ voters? They tend to be younger, and many of them are college students; college campuses are now closed, so most students are, presumably, at home. If they were registered to vote in the city in which their campuses are located, did they remember to change their registration or to request an absentee ballot? Without peer pressure (and polling locations on campuses), will they bother to vote, especially since polls indicate that Sanders is trailing and campaigning has diminished to online fireside chats and panel discussions about Medicare for All? Will more dutiful Biden voters turn up than enthusiastic Sanders voters? No one knows for certain, especially since the pandemic wild card was tossed on the table, but so far in 2020 duty has won more contests than enthusiasm.

The governor waited too long to request a special session; there is no time for a public pressure campaign to change Republican minds, if that’s even possible. And it may not be: Republican politicians don’t want voting by mail (the governor’s suggestion) because they know, as Trump recently admitted, that making it easier to vote results in high voter participation; high voter participation, in turn, means Republicans lose elections.

The situation in Wisconsin, by the way, amply illustrates that Biden is wrong when he asserts that being nice to Republicans will encourage them to work in a more bipartisan manner for the good of the nation. Governor Evers is a nice, non-confrontational guy, but the Republicans ignore him. I suspect McConnell in the U.S. Senate will do the same to Biden (as McConnell did to Obama).

So, we’re left with the faint hope that Governor Evers will find the backbone to issue an emergency order postponing the election. Given the risk to public health, of overwhelming hospitals, it will be a dereliction of duty if he does not. No election is worth a human life, but a timid governor surrounded by ruthless opponents may yet kill people.

*Some of that number have recovered.