The League of Women Voters is a nonpartisan grassroots organization working to protect and expand voting rights. Dane County’s League of Women Voters is one of 21 leagues in Wisconsin with over 500 members and is headed by president Sue Jennik.
Jennik grew up in Milwaukee before moving to New York City, where she worked for 40 years as an attorney representing unions before moving back to Wisconsin. Since July, she’s served as president of Dane County’s League of Women Voters, and prior to that she served as the program director for the League’s educational arm.
Jennik told The Daily Cardinal she is passionate about the League because it focuses on voter rights and issues that are important to the public.
On the Nov. 5th ballot, a constitutional amendment would forbid city governments from allowing non-citizens to vote in local elections.
Jennik sat down with the Cardinal to explain how this amendment could impact Wisconsin residents and what the League of Women Voters is doing to inform voters of this change.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
What does the amendment entail, and why may it have a disproportionate impact on women’s voting rights?
The constitutional amendment on the ballot that would change the current constitution, which says “every” citizen may vote to the limitation that “only” a citizen may vote. The concern is that that will lead to requirements that voters now have to produce documentation and proof that they are a citizen. For women, this is especially onerous because women have a birth certificate showing that they were born in this country, and then often they change their names when they get married, or they get divorced and they may get remarried. All of that documentation would have to be provided, and it may be difficult for women to produce all of them.
I talked to one woman who said she would never be able to get sufficient documentation because she doesn't have her birth certificate. She has tried repeatedly to get an accurate birth certificate, and for whatever reason hasn't been able to do that, so she wouldn't be able to produce the documentation needed.
It wouldn't affect non-citizens because they don't vote anyway. It would affect citizens who are not able to produce sufficient documentation to prove their citizenship. In general, this would be people who are native-born citizens who aren't able to get the documentation that they would need to show that they're entitled to vote, which could be as many as 30,000 citizens who would be denied the right to vote in Wisconsin.
What was the process to pass the amendment, and why do you think they decided to pass the amendment now?
In order to get a proposed amendment on the ballot, it can only be done by the state Legislature — it can't be done by a citizen petition. Unlike some other states, only the state Legislature can do it, and it has to pass two consecutive sessions of the legislature. Legislative sessions are two years long, so in 2023 they passed a proposed amendment, this one and several others. In 2024 they announced they passed it for the second time, so they announced that it would be on the ballot.
There's an unfair perception that non-citizens, people who are not citizens, who work here, pay taxes and their kids may go to school, shouldn't be involved at all in our political life, and some localities think that they should have a say on those things. The other fear is that this would unfairly impact people of color, especially those who are perceived to be Hispanic or coming from Mexico or another South American country. It goes along with this idea that somehow immigrants are taking over.
There's this anti-immigrant feeling, which, in Wisconsin, is not our tradition. There have always been migrant farm workers working in Wisconsin. Immigrants are needed to work on farms, particularly in the dairy industry where the estimate is that 75% of the workers are immigrants. Many of the people who have those farms or live in areas near those farms don't support the idea that there's a problem with having immigrants because they are an important part of the economy. They're also important in the hospitality, construction and landscaping industries, and with the low employment in Wisconsin, there really is not a danger that people are taking over jobs that others might do. The fact is, we need more workers here.
What are the top concerns you’ve heard from women voters in this election, and how will these concerns affect women voters’ turnout in this election?
A very big concern, of course, is reproductive rights, including abortion, access to birth control, access to IVF or anything that women need to protect their health care. Basically, women can't get the health care they need to save their lives and protect their health. Women should be able to make their own decisions about their bodies along with their doctor's advice.
Another big issue that people don't talk about very much are wages. Wages are higher than they were, but in Wisconsin and federally, the minimum wage is still $7.25. The state could raise it or the federal government could raise it, but they haven't done that. Even though a lot of people get paid more than that, there's no requirement that they get paid more than that, and a lot of people are trying to survive on those minimum wage jobs, and it's very difficult to do.
Do you think women in Dane County will be more motivated in this election than prior elections?
The issue of reproductive rights is new for a presidential year because we didn't face that in 2020, and I think it motivates a lot of women to pay attention to the election more than they did in the past.
In Dane County, there is a lot of interest in this election, and the turnout will be high. We even had the highest turnout in the state in the August election, which was 45%. I think traditionally, in the last several presidential elections, the Dane County turnout has been 80% or higher, so people are definitely motivated to vote.
The League of Women Voters of Dane County does voter registration events all over the county. We've had over 100 events since the beginning of September, and a lot of them were at the DMV offices. The DMV offices have voter registration kiosks, and we have volunteers there who assist people and make sure they're registered and get them registered, or update their registration if they’ve moved –– all that kind of stuff. We have registered or helped register 1,300 people in the last couple of months and that's up from prior years, so there definitely is interest in voting.
What actions are the League of Women Voters and other organizations around the state taking to raise awareness among women voters about the potential consequences of this amendment and ensuring women’s voices are heard in the face of such challenges?
We have flyers about the amendment every time we do an event, every time we do any tabling, which we also do at the farmers’ markets and at community events, and we were also at the Black Women's Wellness Foundation meeting. We're always including information about that amendment at our tabling, and we do a lot of social media about that and other issues. Actually, one of the most popular of our postings is our information about the amendment, because people aren't seeing it very much otherwise.
In addition to general tabling, we also have candidates' answers both online and in print, and we're distributing those now. Generally this is for local offices, and we ask them certain questions, and whatever they say, we publish their answers. It's a way to educate voters about who the candidates are and what they stand for. We also held a forum in September on the referenda that are on the ballot for the school board increases that are being sought. We educate people about why it's being proposed and why people think it's important or oppose it.
We also work with a lot of different organizations. We're a central part of the voter ID coalition, a group of about at least 10 or 15 organizations, including, most prominently the NAACP. We also do work with people who are working with immigrants who want to become citizens. We've had an immigrant town hall so that when people are either preparing to become citizens or at the event right when they are sworn in as citizens, we have a table there so that they can immediately register to vote. So we work with organizations that do that, like the Literacy Network and Central Hispanic To Go.
Does the League of Women Voters of Dane County participate in advocacy work outside of the election?
Yes, we do. The league has long taken positions on issues and on the way that's been done. One of the impressive things about the work of the league is that before any position is taken, there's a study by a group of members. Over the years, groups of members would get together and study an issue in detail, and then it would be debated in the organization. It would normally start at the local level and then go to the state, and then it might be moved up to the national organization as well, so there's positions on many, many, many issues.
