Bill Lueders, Wisconsin Examiner

“URGENT” declares the mailer sent to a resident in an independent living facility in Madison last week, and presumably to many others. “Don’t Let Your Neighbors Know You Didn’t Vote. RETURN YOUR ABSENTEE BALLOT TODAY!”

On the flip side, the mailer blares, “WHETHER YOU VOTED IS PUBLIC INFORMATION.” It continues, “BE A GOOD NEIGHBOR & RETURN YOUR ABSENTEE BALLOT TODAY! YOUR NEIGHBORS ARE COUNTING ON YOU.”

Both sides of the mailer ominously depict an aerial view of houses marked with the labels “VOTED” or “DIDN’T VOTE.”

The mailer does not instruct voters how they should vote, but it is labeled as coming from the Republican Party of Wisconsin and it does frame the issues in a telling way: “If you don’t vote in the November 2022 General Election, YOU’RE telling your neighbors YOU’RE happy with” the status quo represented by three checked boxes: “Higher cost of living,” “Bidenflation” and “Rising crime rates.”

Unlike the usual political messaging, which aims to stir up fear over what may happen if certain candidates are elected, the GOP mailer threatens the recipient directly, with the consequences that may come from being identified as a nonvoter.

“I do find it troubling because it suggests the voter receiving the mailer is being monitored and will be harassed if he or she does not return their absentee ballot,” said Jay Heck, longtime executive director of Common Cause in Wisconsin. “It is fine to encourage voting out of a general sense of civic duty or to have your voice heard at the ballot box. But this mailer suggests that the GOP is watching and if you fail to vote you will be publicized and ostracized for not doing as they say. That borders on intimidation and some voters would likely find it disturbing and threatening.”

Matthew Rothschild, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, had a similar response: “It’s a creepy mailer, trying to guilt-trip residents of a long-term care facility into voting by telling them that their neighbors will know if they don’t vote when, in actual fact, I’ve never heard of anyone ever checking up on whether their neighbor voted or not.”

Moreover, Rothschild called the mailer “bizarre,” considering its source: “The Republican Party of Wisconsin has done everything in its power to try to make it more difficult for residents of long-term care facilities to vote, and now the Wisconsin GOP is trying to get the vote out in long-term care facilities by brow-beating residents?”

The Republican Party of Wisconsin did not respond to a detailed phone message seeking comment.

Whether or not a particular person has voted, and in which elections, is public information. But obtaining aggregate voter information through the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s Badger Books site involves paying a fee of at least $25, with a maximum charge of $12,500. It is possible to find the voting record of individual people through the “MyVote Wisconsin” feature on the commission’s website. But this feature, says WEC spokesman Riley Vetterkind, is designed to be used by voters to check their own history, and it requires entering a date of birth.

A 2008 study published in the American Political Science Review found that “social-pressure” strategies were far more effective than conventional methods at getting out the vote, based on an experiment involving different kinds of appeals sent to several hundred thousand Michigan voters.

“Substantially higher turnout was observed among those who received mailings promising to publicize their turnout to their household or their neighbors,” the study found. “These findings demonstrate the profound importance of social pressure as an inducement to political participation.”

Heck suspects the GOP mailer was targeted to voters in “more Republican leaning areas,” to scare up the vote among the party faithful.

Debra Cronmiller, executive director of the Wisconsin League of Women Voters, said she cannot comment on any message issued by a political party. But, she said, “We want everyone to vote,” and there are many different strategies that are used to get people to do so. She stressed that while it’s possible to find out whether someone else has voted, “you have no idea how that person voted. The content of your ballot is always confidential.”

Barbara Beckert, director of external advocacy with Disability Rights Wisconsin, said she and other advocates for older adults with whom she shared the GOP mailer have a mixed reaction. Urging people to return their absentee ballots, she noted, “is a really important message because we know that a lot of absentee ballots don’t get returned or they don’t get returned in time.”

But the mailer’s suggestion that your neighbors will be checking to see whether or not you vote “may be confusing and feel a little bit uncomfortable to people. [It] might make people feel kind of uneasy.”

Beckert added, “I don’t think anyone felt like it was like a big show stopper or anything. There’s so many alarming messages that go out now that it’s pretty competitive, right?”

Wisconsin Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner on Facebook and Twitter.

But on June 13, the board’s Educational Services Committee, made up of three of its seven members, sent the book back to the curriculum committee, from which it is not expected to return.

At that meeting, committee and school board member Laurie Kontney complained that “When the Emperor Was Divine” was selected as a “diverse” book, according to detailed notes taken by Ann Zielke, a school district resident and parent. Corrie Prunuske, a Muskego resident and parent, confirms hearing this: “I think she said, ‘They only looked at diverse books.’ ”

“I asked why that would be an issue,” Zielke recounts in her notes. “[Kontney] said it can’t be chosen on that basis and I asked again if she had proof of that. Which they don’t. She said it can’t be all about ‘oppression.’ ” Committee member Boyer, by this account, said the selection committee needed to pick a book that was “without restriction”—that is, not intended to promote diversity.

Kontney is the board’s newest member, having been elected in April on a platform that included, “CRITICAL THINKING NOT CRITICAL RACE THEORY.”

Zielke also says she was told, in conversations with school board president Chris Buckmaster and board member Terri Boyer, who serves on the Educational Service Committee, that using the book would create a problem with “balance,” in part because the accelerated English class curriculum already includes a 10-page excerpt from a nonfiction book about the internment camps.

“So their claim is that having two texts in this class from what they’re terming is one perspective — meaning it’s the perspective of the Japanese who were interned — creates a balance issue,” Zielke says in an interview. The feeling was that “we need to have more perspective from the American government about why they did this.”

Buckmaster, she says, explained to her that the kind of balance he has in mind would include discussion of the Rape of Nanjing, the mass killing of Chinese civilians committed by the Japanese that began on Dec. 13, 1937 and continued for six weeks. “So what he’s saying is, what you would need in this class is some sort of historical context of how horrible the Japanese were during World War II in order to understand the viewpoint of the American government in interning the Japanese.”

‘False balance’

Zielke, for her part, sees “no need for this type of false balance or both-sides-ism in telling the story of Japanese internment. The American government was wrong and has apologized for the racism that led to Japanese internment.”

David Inoue, executive director of the Japanese American Citizens League, a national nonprofit with offices in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., agrees.

“The call for a ‘balanced’ viewpoint in the context of the incarceration of Japanese Americans is deeply problematic, and racist, and plays into the same fallacies the United States Army used to justify the incarceration,” he wrote in a letter to the Muskego-Norway School Board. “We urge you to reconsider your position on the book’s use, understanding that while not every book and story can be told, to deny the use of one such as this under the pretenses you’ve given is wrong.”

Zielke says both Buckmaster and Boyer, in their conversations with her, said the district’s Curriculum Planning Committee may have been given a directive — it’s not clear from whom — to select a book by a non-white author. According to Zielke, “the board is saying that that somehow negates the process, because that is akin to some type of discrimination.”

After the June 13 committee meeting, Buckmaster got into a heated exchange with Hapeman, who works for the district as an educational assistant. She says he told her, regarding the board’s action, “This is why they were elected. This is what they ran on.” Emily Sorensen, a community member who was sitting nearby, says she heard him make this comment.

Buckmaster, Boyer, Kontney, and Tracy Blair, the third board member who serves on the Educational Resources Committee, did not respond to requests for comment. Neither did Kelly Thomspon, the district superintendent.

Absent from ‘banned books’ lists

Across the country, the MAGA crowd has gone on a rampage against educational materials deemed inappropriate for young minds.

PEN America, a nonprofit that advocates for freedom of expression, tracked 1,585 instances of books being banned from schools between July 1, 2021, and March 31, 2022, involving 1,145 unique titles.

“When the Emperor Was Divine” is not among them.

In a letter to the Muskego-Norway board, Jordan Pavlin, editor-in-chief at Alfred A. Knopf and Otsuka’s editor at the publishing house, noted that “When the Emperor Was Divine” “has been course adopted in hundreds of schools throughout the country, where it has become a staple of high school English classes.”

She added that historical fiction “has the power not only to edify but to transform and deepen our perspectives; it enables us to look outward, beyond the confines of our circumscribed lives, with greater sympathy and understanding.”

In the 2020 presidential election, the city of Muskego, which makes up the majority of the Muskego-Norway School District, voted for Donald Trump over Joe Biden by a margin of two to one. That’s even higher than the margin that voted for Trump in all of deep red Waukesha County, in which Muskego resides.

Yet all of the objections to “When the Emperor Was Divine” have come from school board members, not the community at large.

“I am not aware of any opposition to the use of the Otsuka book from any parents, students, teachers, or community members,” Hapeman says. “The only opposition to the book I am aware of is from school board members.”

Parents show support

Indeed, in advance of the June 13 meetings, more than 130 parents and community members, many of them alumni of the Muskego-Norway School District, signed a petition supporting the book’s selection. Written by Lawrence Hapeman, Allison’s son and a 2021 graduate of district schools, the 1800-word petition takes issue with the various objections to “When the Emperor Was Divine.”

These included a claim, purportedly made by more than one school board member, that the book is “too sad.” The petition calls this argument “fundamentally nonsensical,” noting that other books approved for classroom use in the district include Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” and Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried,” “in which most characters die by the end of the novel in often brutal and graphic ways.”

The petition also argues that the educational staff involved in the selection of “When the Emperor Was Divine” deserve to have their decisions supported. It cites a June 10 article in the Wisconsin Examiner about how the school district of Waukesha “has received at least 54 resignations from employees between April 1 and June 5 of this year, as compared to 28 resignations last year during that same time period—a 93% increase.”

“Many of these resignations come from teachers who have cited a lack of respect and acceptance from their school board as primary causes for their departure,” states the petition. It anonymously quotes two district teachers about a perceived lack of support.

“I’ve never felt so under attack for just doing my job or doing my duty to teach kids about others and their world,” one teacher says. “I feel like I have to defend every book that has a person of color in it.” Another teacher says, “The anti-diversity and lack of pushback against that from district leaders has left me actively seeking other positions in districts that support diversity.”

As for the argument that “this book should not be approved because the selection committee was non-negotiably set on picking a work by an author who is a woman of color,” the petition links to a district directive, issued in 2020, to seek ways “to support understanding of the history of marginalization and the positive impact we can have on a daily basis when we use an equity focused mindset that addresses disparities.”

The petition states: “As residents of the world and heirs of its history, we must be given the opportunity to reflect on the past and point out the pain and suffering caused in the past. This reflection is meant to prepare ourselves to create a stronger country and world by rejecting outright the mistakes of the past.”

Or, as Inoue put it in his letter to the school board, “The story of what happened to the Japanese American community is an American story, one that balances the challenges of injustice, but also the patriotic stories of service and resistance. If anything, these are stories that need to be told more in our schools.”

Wisconsin Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner on Facebook and Twitter.