While some UW-Madison students will head to the polls today to cast their votes for Dane County Board District 5, others have already voted using absentee ballots.
Dane County Board candidate and UW-Madison freshman David Lapidus has mobilized voters by signing up students to receive absentee ballots in the mail. Some students mailed their votes in, while others had theirs picked up by Lapidus' campaign staff. Lapidus said he credits this convenient method of voting with helping him win the primary.
My campaign manager and I have gone around, and my campaign manager has offered to drop the ballots in the mailbox for them downstairs in the building,\ Lapidus said. ""I see this as ethical and completely reasonable because a lot of people don't end up putting it in the mail … I never personally touched them.""
While Ald. Austin King, District 8, said it is ethical to sign up citizens to vote using absentee ballots, he questioned the ethicality of a candidate or his party picking up filled-out ballots.
According to Dane County Clerk Robert Ohlsen, there is nothing ""legally wrong"" with candidates or their campaign managers picking up absentee ballots after they are properly sealed.
King said although absentee voting is a good campaign strategy, it will not be enough to help Lapidus win the election.
Lapidus received a tiny percentage of the vote physically cast at the public polls, while the majority voted for UW-Madison junior Ashok Kumar, King said.
""There's no question Lapidus is going to lose [Tuesday],"" he said. ""One of the reasons is every single person that goes to the polls is going to be voting for Kumar.""
Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4, warned against potential tampering or discarding of votes that are not in favor of the interests of the campaign who collected the ballot.
""I would be frankly very troubled if the envelopes weren't sealed, and I would hope voters would be cautious of who they gave their ballot to,"" Verveer said.
Dane County Board primary candidate and UW-Madison sophomore Adam Korn said he felt Lapidus' actions disenfranchised voters and took away their power.
""As far as I know, the people in Statesider that signed up for absentee voting didn't exactly know what they were doing,"" Korn said. ""David Lapidus walked around helping them fill it out, and that borders on voter intimidation.""\
