When Halah Ahmad received her absentee ballot before the 2024 presidential election, she struggled with voting for either President-elect Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris.
“I didn't know what to fill in — regardless of my choice, me as a person, as a Palestinian, I'm not given the choice to vote against the continuation of genocide,”Ahmad told The Daily Cardinal.
Ahmad is the lead organizer of Listen to Wisconsin, the organization that led the “uninstructed” protest vote against the Biden administration’s military support for Israel’s war in Gaza during the Democratic primary last spring.
Over 48,000 people voted uninstructed in Wisconsin — including many University of Wisconsin-Madison students — exceeding Trump’s 29,000 vote margin of victory in the 2024 election.
“The Democratic Party had a lot of people who were trying to say, ‘Palestine is important, but it's going to be less than 2% less than 1.5% of the population that will consider this a voting issue,’” Ahmad said. “But the reality is, at least in Wisconsin and in other swing states, that was a significant number — definitely not a number to shrug off.”
During last week's election, roughly 1.8% of voters on campus wards voted third party, similar to the 2020 election. While the third-party vote wouldn’t have been able to swing Wisconsin for Harris, it doesn’t account for the students who abstained from voting because of Palestine.
Political science professor and director of the Elections Research Center Barry Burden told the Cardinal Harris may have fallen short of Biden’s performance due to discontent among young progressive voters regarding the Biden-Harris administration's Middle East policies.
“I was looking for a reason to be able to vote against Donald Trump, but unfortunately, the Democrats ran a campaign that supported the genocide,” Students for Justice in Palestine organizer Dahlia Saba told the Cardinal. “For me, that was a red line I couldn't cross.”
While Saba expressed fear of the domestic realities of a Trump presidency, she doubted Trump would “change where we already are” toward Gaza. She said she ultimately chose to vote for a third party in the 2024 election.
Harris could have secured pro-Palestine voters if she committed to an arms embargo with Israel, activists said. Listen to Wisconsin ran a “Ceasefire First, Votes Next,” pledge campaign prior to the election demanding “action from VP Harris and Democratic Leadership to end the genocide before we promise our votes.” The group didn’t endorse any candidate.
Democrats failed to mobilize the progressive groups which helped them win the 2020 election, Saba said, adding that “Democrats didn't have a good reason for people to go out or to vote for Kamala Harris.”
Harris failed to distance herself from Biden, who Saba said was a “genocidal president.”
“There was a lot of disingenuous appeals to the campaign that they're working for a ceasefire while doing nothing to actually change the fact that they're materially funding this genocide,” Saba said. “There was also a lack of respect — we can see through the difference between words and actions.”
The Wisconsin Democratic Party and Harris-Walz campaign were aware of pro-Palestine voter’s significance but had hard limits on policy change, according to Ahmad.
Activists also pointed out Harris’ inability to sway conservatives who dislike Trump — Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s share of the Wisconsin vote was higher than any other third-party candidate.
“The Democratic Party, broadly speaking, has not been offering a campaign that speaks to what people care about, that speaks to people’s material realities,” Saba said. “My material reality is that my family has been ethnically cleansed from their homes in the past year because of the actions of the Biden administration.”
Pro-Palestine protests and calls for divestment have continued on the UW-Madison campus, with a “week of rage” centered around the anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas’ terrorist attack and pro-Palestine chants disrupting Harris’ final Madison rally.
Listen to Wisconsin plans to continue protest by focusing on boycotting consumer goods made by companies complicit in genocide, supporting university divestment campaigns and pressuring private companies supporting as well as local governments to cut all engagement with Israel, according to Ahmad
Mary Bosch is the photo editor for The Daily Cardinal and a first year journalism student. She has covered multiple stories about university sustainability efforts, and has written for state and city news. Follow her on twitter: @Mary_Bosch6
