This July, a courageous band of Wisconsin Green Party (WIGP) volunteers braved the risk of contracting COVID-19 to get our presidential ticket of Howie Hawkins and Milwaukee’s Angela Walker on the ballot. We turned in 3966 signatures of Wisconsinites who wanted the choice to vote Green, almost double the minimum requirement. 

On Monday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court invalidated the voices of those Wisconsinites, and the hard work of those volunteers, in favor of an expedient solution.

The Green Party has long fought for voters’ rights, including the 2016 recount effort that brought unprecedented transparency to our flawed voting system and resulted in unreliable voting machines being decertified, with a comprehensive investigation of voting machine source code still pending in the courts. The Wisconsin Green Party did not delay the printing of 2020 ballots, although the state’s dubious bureaucratic maneuvering in the face of pending ballot access lawsuits nearly did. The Democratic Party members of the Wisconsin Election Commission refused to accept the signatures of qualified, eligible voters we turned in. Why? Because Angela Walker moved in July.

WIGP Co-Chair Dave Schwab said: “When you break it down in plain English: we submitted 3966 valid signatures of people who supported Howie and Angela being on the ballot for President and VP. Why should the fact that she moved from one apartment to another in the same town in South Carolina during the campaign disqualify not just her, but Howie too, from running for national office?”

This disqualification was the last, successful barrier placed in front of the WIGP and Hawkins/Walker campaign, but the WEC made it harder than it should be, as the dissenters to this decision pointed out. The Republican and Democratic duopoly will always collaborate to keep political outsiders out. This is one reason why almost half of eligible voters in the US don’t vote.

WIGP will mount a vigorous write-in campaign for the Hawkins/Walker ticket over the next 49 days, with the goal to win at least one percent of the statewide presidential vote. Reaching this goal will ensure that Wisconsin voters will have a pro-worker, pro-climate, pro-democracy alternative to the corrupt corporate duopoly.