Brandon Bauer

The votes are in from the Nuclear Weapons Referenda restaged for the DEMOCRACY exhibition at the Overture Center for the Arts. The installation was a reenactment of the 1982 Nuclear Freeze Referenda, in which Wisconsin was the first state to put nuclear disarmament policy to a popular vote. The final vote was 210 YES to 42 NO with 3 MAYBE ballots cast. There was evidence of ballot stuffing on the NO side, but it did not effect the final outcome. The YES wins!

Read the full report HERE.

Comments on the proposal from the YES side spoke about the need to eliminate the danger of nuclear weapons to maintain a world for future generations, to eliminate these weapons and then focus on combating the climate crisis, and some offering policy solutions like restating the START treaty and adding China to it. One comment questioned why F-35 fighter planes were stationed in Madison when the city was designated as a “Nuclear Free Zone.” Beyond this, there were many general calls for peace and calls for eliminating nuclear weapons in the YES comments.

In the NO comments, several MAGA troll comments were expressing the desire for nuclear weapons to “kill them all” or took cynical jabs at the “live, laugh, love” mentality along with comments about how “other countries don’t care about being woke or politically correct.” There were also some sincere comments questioning if Russia can be trusted and asserting that we need to maintain our defensive capabilities.

The 3 MAYBE votes were all comments. One stated, “perhaps”, one questioned how people would vote on this proposal in Ukraine, and one just stated, “God please help us!”