Thoughts on Ward 176

I posted about a concern of mine over at the Badger Blog Alliance today.

It's about (at least in part) Ward 176 in Milwaukee, where 99% of the voters chose John Kerry for President. (Scroll to the ante-penultimate paragraph of this article.)

That's 573 votes for Kerry, 6 for Bush. Oh, and 1 for Nader.

Now, let's just assume that not a single one of those votes was fraudulent, and that there was no ballot-box stuffing going on.

Then the issue becomes, where's the diversity of thought? Can all those people truly have been well-informed on the issues, and they all really believed John Kerry was the best choice for President?

Only dictators regularly get 99% of the vote. Saddam Hussein got 99% of the "vote" in Iraq.

But that's not how free people in democracies usually behave.
So why did the people in Ward 176 behave that way? They're free people; they live in a democracy.

Do they know that?

I live in a very Republican area, where a lot of people (including myself) worked very hard on a volunteer basis to turn out the vote for George W. Bush. But even in this very conservative suburban area, Kerry probably pulled at least a third of the vote. I haven't done more than eyeball the results so far (and I could barely do that because the font is so small) but I think it's safe to say that Bush never got even 90% in a single ward, much less 99%.

Yet, in ward after ward in Milwaukee, Kerry pulled 90% or better of the vote.

One last thing about Ward 176: who are those six souls, those individualists, who managed to brave what must have been significant pressure in the neighborhood, in order to vote for Bush?

I bet they're a force to reckon with. I'd love to meet them.

Even that one person who voted for Nader.

God bless 'em.