It's finally happened. The national disease of voter suppression has officially struck the campus of UW-Madison.
Last Friday, the Dave Magnum for Congress campaign dropped a flyer in all dorm mailboxes telling students they can vote at their choice of any of five polling places on campus. That is a lie. In reality, students may only vote at the polling place in their precinct. These flyers constitute a blatant, sickening attempt to suppress student votes. Quite frankly, if the Republican operatives who implemented this gross violation of voting rights are students, they ought to be expelled from UW-Madison, and if they are adult campaign employees, they ought to be jailed.
The cynical political strategy behind these flyers is obvious. Many students are first-time voters who may not know their proper polling location. Students tend to vote in the evening after classes have finished. Since the polls close at 8:00 p.m., if a student comes to the wrong polling location at 7:55 and does not have time to get to the correct poll, that student will not be able to vote. The Republican Party of Wisconsin knows that Madison's overwhelming support for John Kerry will likely swing the state to the senator's column. They also know that turnout will be at a record high, let's conservatively estimate 65 percent. So if 65 percent of UW-Madison students turn out to vote-that's roughly 27,000 votes. Now even if a tiny minority, let's say 2 percent, go to the wrong polling locations, that's 540 potential non-votes. In 2000, Florida was decided by 537 votes, and New Mexico was decided by 366 votes. Five hundred forty suppressed votes in Madison, coupled with Republicans' ongoing efforts to disenfranchise minority voters in Democratic stronghold Milwaukee, is more than enough for President Bush to steal Wisconsin.
What do the perpetrators of this flyer incident have to say for themselves? Magnum campaign manager Adam Peer is practically falling on a grenade taking responsibility for what he called an \oversight"" that he should have caught. He also said it was a mistake for the flyer to read ""Authorized and paid for by College Republicans"" because it was paid for by the Magnum campaign. Another unidentified Magnum campaign worker called the flyer's headline a ""typo."" UW-Madison College Republicans Chair Nicole Marklein says that she simply reserved the dorm mail drop date for the Magnum campaign and that no one in College Republicans knew anything about the content of the flyer. Strangely, she made no mention of Peer's assertion that College Republicans did not actually authorize and pay for it.
While there isn't enough evidence to file charges against either organization, even an amateur wordsmith knows that a typo is a misspelled word, and an oversight is a misquoted remark. This flyer reads very clearly: ""Vote at the polling place of your choice"" and lists the Pyle Center, the Memorial Union, Gordon Commons, Holt Commons, the First Congregational Church and the addresses of each of these places. This was no typo, and this was no oversight.
At this point, I won't waste your time by making the same tired arguments about who you should vote for. I would simply state, though, that I consider the violation of voting rights to be one of the most egregious civil crimes imaginable. When an individual or political party suppresses votes, it cannot argue insanity, self-defense, ignorance of the law, ""my medication made me do it,"" ""my chemical imbalance made me do it,"" or ""it's my accountant's fault.""
Voter suppression requires cold, willful disregard for the Constitution, for civil rights, and for basic morality. The fact is that Republicans are doing things similar to what they did last Friday in battleground states all over the country. Sometimes they're more subtle and sometimes more blatant. They rarely leave enough evidence to sustain a lawsuit, but the anecdotal reports have grown far too numerous (in the thousands) for them all to be false. I submit that any party that professes to be the party of moral values yet displays such contempt for voting rights on a national scale does not deserve my vote.
For the record, you can find out where you vote below or by typing in your address and zip code at www.mypollingplace.com. Remember, if you are a U.S. citizen, if you have lived in Wisconsin for 10 days, and if you are not a convicted felon still on probation (once again, alcohol citations are not felonies), you have the right to vote in Wisconsin. If you meet these qualifications but are prevented from voting, call the Election Protection Hotline at 1-866-OUR-VOTE.
Nick Barbash is a sophomore majoring in political science and international studies.
