This article contains news and liberal commentary.
Andrew Hitt, Wisconsin GOP state chair, filed a protest with the Milwaukee Election Commission on Tuesday, September 29, 2020, against the presence of racing sausages at early voting locations in Milwaukee’s basketball and baseball venues.
Bratwurst, as you surely know, is a big deal in Wisconsin. Nobody there eats anything besides bratwurst, sauerkraut, and cheese. So, naturally, the city’s sports mascots are racing sausages.
Hitt’s beef, a Texas delicacy, is that the sausages will attract people who might go inside and (shudder) vote. He claims it’s illegal to encourage people to vote. Seriously, he does. That, he says, is “electioneering.”
Wisconsin’s statute, which you can read here, defines electioneering as “any activity which is intended to influence voting at an election,” except for bumper stickers on cars. (You don’t have to remove them to park at a voting location.) Now granted that’s arguably ambiguous, but everyone in the world except Hitt interprets that means campaigning for a candidate or party.
Hitt has another problem: Electioneering is only prohibited less than 100 feet from a building entrance where a polling place is located. If the sausage races are held in the parking lot more than 100 feet from the door, he’s dead in the water, even if the sausages wear Biden t-shirts, caps, and campaign buttons. Of course he knows this, so he has a Plan B: He also asserts the sausage races are bribery.
Yes, that’s right, bribery. He says, “All of the Bucks’ and Brewers’ athletes and mascots are, of course, beloved of their fans, so their presence at a venue is undoubtedly something of significant value,” and giving people something of value to vote is illegal, ergo, the sausages aren’t kosher pork, just plain pork.
But if Hitt takes off his clothes and streaks naked through the parking lot, that’s not bribery, because no one wants to watch that so bare ass has no value. You could call that a Trojan horse, a gift horse, or at least a horse’s ass, but it’s worthless and therefore you can’t bribe someone to vote with it.
Given that anyone can wear Biden or Trump t-shirts and hats in the parking lot more than 100 feet from the door, Hitt’s problem is that in Milwaukee nobody wears Trump t-shirts or MAGA hats. It’s not like his party is popular. If they were, they wouldn’t be trying so hard to make it against the law to encourage people to vote.
And while Hitt’s clownish antics may be amusing, the Republican Party’s determined efforts to sabotage America’s democratic processes are anything but funny; they are an existential threat to our freedom.
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