A grassroots pro-democracy group led by a Republican former state senator is trying to build trust in elections by hosting forums in small towns throughout Wisconsin
Kim Pytleski could barely sleep the night before. She replayed the PowerPoint slides in her head, packed her notebook and took a deep breath.
The clerk from a rural Wisconsin county north of Green Bay was preparing for a public meeting to explain the election process to residents. She didn’t know who she would encounter. Would some deny the results of the last presidential election? Would the conversation get combative? Most importantly, would she get through to anyone?
They were questions Pytleski never expected to ask herself when she started the job in Oconto County more than 14 years ago. But since then, election conspiracy theories have taken root in the rural, heavily Republican county in northeastern Wisconsin. It’s among large swaths of the country where distrust of voting and ballot-counting, fanned by former President Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election, maintains a stubborn grasp.
Republicans don’t have any good policy ideas. They just run on hate of the “others” and tax cuts for the wealthy.
They can’t win on that. They don’t want a democracy if they can’t win. So they want to rule us from a minority of people.
They are working hard to put laws and people into place to stop certain people from voting. Hope young people vote these Republican out before voting doesn’t matter anymore.
I am old and vote every election for progressive and democratic people. We have already seen women’s rights rolled back and the rights of the LGBTQ community. But I will be dead in 10 or 20 years. Hope I don’t die in a Christian Nation.