This article is made possible through Votebeat, a nonpartisan reporting project covering local election integrity and voting access. When Angela Lang reflects on the thousands of conversations she and other members of her community organization, BLOC, have had with Milwaukee residents, one floats to the top of her mind. It was with a 54-year-old Milwaukee resident who explained to Lang’s colleague that she wasn’t voting because she was a convicted felon. Unbeknownst to her, she had been eligible for about 12 years — since she completed her probation. A BLOC staffer was the first to tell her she could, in fact, vote. “It’s bittersweet,” Lang said. “I think it’s incredibly powerful that we’re the ones to tell people when their voting rights have been restored. It’s also very frustrating that it took that long and people didn’t know until we had to talk to them.” Do you have feedback on Milwaukee NNS's reporting? Take our survey to let us know how we're doing! There are a variety of reasons people don’t vote, including criminal convictions, antipathy about politics and government, confusion about which candidate is best, or not liking any of them. Regardless of their rationale, people who don’t vote are potentially as powerful, or even more so, than any other bloc in the electorate. Although the November general election saw high turnout in Wisconsin and broke a record nationwide, 1.2 million eligible voters in the state and 79.6 million across the nation didn’t cast ballots. In a state where 20,682 votes propelled President-elect Joe Biden to a win, a small fraction of those nonvoters could have shifted the outcome. Organizers fight to raise turnout In Milwaukee, organizers said the already tough task of convincing people to vote was even more difficult this year because of the pandemic and concerns about potential voter intimidation or acts of violence at polling places. While Wisconsin had the second highest statewide turnout on record, Milwaukee’s vote totals were nearly identical in 2020 to the 2016 election. The city, which was under a microscope during the partial recount instituted by President Donald Trump’s campaign, is where nearly 70 percent of Wisconsin’s Black residents live. Jennifer Epps-Addison, network president of the progressive Center for Popular Democracy, considers it a victory that turnout in the city did not decrease in 2020. She credits community organizations that “filled in the gap.” “Immense” barriers keep many people from voting, she said, especially people of color, who are disproportionately affected by strict voter ID laws. Even during the pandemic, when voters widely viewed absentee voting as a safer option than voting in person, Black people had reason to distrust this method. Their absentee ballots have historically been rejected at a higher rate than those of white voters. Another barrier: Some groups, such as BLOC, transitioned to digital canvassing in light of a surge of coronavirus cases in the city. This meant face-to-face conversations weren’t happening. Forgoing door-to-door canvassing was a difficult decision for Lang, but she felt it was necessary to protect her team members and those they serve. “Everyone at our organization is Black; we’re targeting the North Side of Milwaukee. And we know that the Black, brown and indigenous communities are the most disproportionately impacted by COVID,” she said. The city of Milwaukee has had 54,037 coronavirus cases and 488 deaths.. Nationwide, Black people are dying from COVID-19 at nearly two times the rate of white people. Disillusionment leads to low turnout The pandemic is not the only reason for depressed turnout, organizers say. One of the most common complaints that Lang and her team hear Milwaukee’s infrequent voters express is that politicians don’t stick to their promises. “I think a lot of times, people just don’t feel that some elected officials are working in their interests, or we’ve seen sometimes that candidates will say whatever they need to say in order to get elected,” Lang said. Epps-Addison said many voters in Milwaukee “just didn’t believe either of the candidates had their best interests at heart.” She cited Biden’s authorship of the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act — which is blamed for the current high incarceration rate of Black people in the United States — as a major deterrent for some Milwaukee residents of color, a city that votes overwhelmingly Democratic. Convincing voters to choose a particular candidate is not her group’s goal, she added.