Fave 5: K-12 Education reporter Elizabeth Beyer picks her top stories from 2020

Eight months before a presidential election in which Wisconsin will be a pivotal state, Democrats and community organizers are searching for ways to eradicate barriers faced by low-income, mostly minority voters in Milwaukee.

Wisconsin’s largest city had record-breaking turnout during the 2016 presidential primary, with nearly 24,000 more ballots cast than the 2008 primary.

Community organizers in Milwaukee have shifted their voter outreach programs to focus on mail-in absentee ballot education amid the COVID-19 pandemic, ahead of August and November elections.

The push follows a record-breaking number of absentee votes cast across the state during the April primary, and a decision by the Wisconsin Elections Commission in June to mail absentee ballot request forms to more than 2.7 million registered voters before the general election.

The state’s two most powerful Republican lawmakers sent a cease-and-desist letter to the Madison City Clerk’s Office on Friday ahead of a ballot collection event to be held in city parks Saturday, calling the effort “illegal” and warning the ballots would be challenged in court and potentially invalidated.

“The threat that this procedure poses to ballot integrity is manifestly obvious,” Misha Tseytlin, former state solicitor general, wrote on behalf of Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester.

Madison poll workers were dispatched to more than 200 parks across the city Saturday in a non-partisan ballot collection effort launched by the City Clerk’s Office, despite an attempt to halt the event by Wisconsin Republicans.

A cease-and-desist letter, issued Friday on behalf of two of Wisconsin’s most powerful Republicans — Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester — to Madison City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl called the Democracy in the Park effort “illegal” and warned the ballots collected Saturday would be challenged in court and potentially invalidated.

Both presidential campaigns see Wisconsin’s growing Hispanic population as an important voting bloc in the upcoming election, but they are not a monolithic group, and young voters are divided and disheartened by their choices.

President Donald Trump has long antagonized the Mexican immigrant community, labeling those crossing the border illegally as drug dealers, rapists and “some … good people” when he launched his 2016 campaign. During his presidency his administration separated families and imprisoned children as part of a crackdown on illegal border crossings.