Beth Hengst said all she wanted to do was help her neighbors at the senior and disability housing complex where she lives register to vote.
She and others living at the River Park Apartments in Shorewood partnered with the nonprofit organization Souls to the Polls Wisconsin , printed hundreds of flyers and reached out to building management multiple times in advance of what Hengst called an “explicitly nonpartisan voter registration event.”
But on Wednesday morning, the day they hoped to hold the event, the building’s community programming room was empty.
On a sign outside the door, someone had crossed out the event details and written “canceled” and “unauthorized.”
A staff member in a nearby office told a Journal Sentinel reporter to leave and that she “didn’t want people to register and vote for Democrats.”
The previous evening, property management sent an email to Hengst that said the building does not permit “political groups to conduct registration within our premise,” according to email communications between Hengst and property management forwarded to the Journal Sentinel.