How voter suppression threw Wisconsin to Trump and changed the election.
You can’t say Andrea Anthony didn’t try. A 37-year old African American woman with an infectious smile, Anthony had voted in every major election since she was 18. On November 8, 2016, she went to the Clinton Rose Senior Center, her polling site on the predominantly black north side of Milwaukee, to cast a ballot for Hillary Clinton. “Voting is important to me because I know I have a little, teeny, tiny voice, but that is a way for it to be heard,” she said. “Even though it’s one vote, I feel it needs to count.”
She’d lost her driver’s license a few days earlier, but she came prepared with an expired Wisconsin state ID and proof of residency. A poll worker confirmed she was registered to vote at her current address. But this was Wiscon sin’s first major election that required voters— even those who were already registered—to present a current driver’s license, passport, or state or military ID to cast a ballot. Anthony couldn’t, and so she wasn’t able to vote.
The poll worker gave her a provisional ballot instead. It would be counted only if she went to the Department of Motor Vehicles to get a new ID and then to the city clerk’s office to confirm her vote, all within 72 hours of Election Day. But Anthony couldn’t take time off from her job as an administrative assistant at a housing management company, and she had five kids and two grandkids to look after. For the first time in her life, her vote wasn’t counted.
This story is from the November/December 2017 edition of Mother Jones.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the November/December 2017 edition of Mother Jones.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Let Them Eat Kelp
Is seaweed farming the wave of the future?
To Match a Predator
Dating apps promise to hook you up with romance. But they can deliver con artists, rapists, and murderers.
A Pennsylvania Prophet
Meet the Christian nationalists who want to assert dominion-starting with the Keystone State.
"I'm Not Turming the Other Cheek Any More"
Radicals took over the Michigan GOP. Now they can't stop losing.
"Absolutely Do Not Send Them There"
Foster kids have few advocates and little agency. That makes them the perfect cash cow for the country's biggest psychiatric hospital chain.
RICH DOC, POOR DOC
Why do the most important kinds of doctors earn the least money?
FREEDOM READERS
Authors of banned books-like me-are battling right-wing censorship daily. But we can't do it alone.
VAPOR TRAIL
After a cannabis product turned up at my kid's school, I rode into the Wild West of unregulated pot.
MEDICAL RESTRAINTS
How health care companies use debt to trap nurses on the job
Bad Neighbors
Tightly packed poultry and pig farms could be incubating the next deadly flu.