Where healthcare could sway voters, organizers ramp up an old tactic: talking to people

In Wisconsin, voters weigh candidates who backed cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, and those who want to expand it

Going door to door in western Wisconsin , Bill Hogseth tells strangers about the seizures he has multiple times a week.

Hogseth, the co-executive director and lead organizer of the nonpartisan group GrassRoots Organizing Western Wisconsin (Groww), tells them about waking up in an ambulance, and the impact of the seizures on his ability to drive and work. Usually standing on their doorsteps, he asks to hear their stories too – about ambulance rides, hospital bills, broken bones.

Hogseth’s vulnerability encourages others to share. It’s a concept called “deep canvassing”, a long discussion, usually about 15-20 minutes, with a neighbor at their door about a political issue not tied to a specific candidate. It’s designed to assess a person’s support for a policy at the start of the conversation, then see if it changes by the end of it.

Open minds are key to Hogseth’s work in western Wisconsin’s third congressional district, where a heated season is ramping up as Democrats are trying to unseat Republican representative Derrick Van Orden. A host of national Republican figures have visited the area in recent months, including Trump himself, who came to Chippewa Falls in June to talk about farming, a sign of the area’s prominence on the electoral map.

Healthcare has become a critical issue in the state, and system failures have become a political liability. Democrats are reminding voters that Van Orden voted for Trump’s so-called big beautiful bill, which will deliver $1tn in healthcare cuts over the next decade, starting in January. Two hospitals in western Wisconsin closed permanently in 2024, and researchers have identified others at risk of closure or service reductions.

Rebecca Cooke, who won the Democratic primary to face Van Orden in November, lists “healing our healthcare system” first on her website’s priorities list. Cooke told the Guardian earlier this summer that she not only frequently heard about healthcare concerns from voters, but shared them herself.

“I’ve actually canceled my own insurance through the ACA because it’s increased so much and I can’t afford it,” Cooke said in June. “There’s a lot of people that I know that are doing the same.”

The people who open their doors to Hogseth and his colleagues often share stories of how the US healthcare system has failed them.

There’s the man who drove himself to the hospital while passing a kidney stone to avoid a costly ambulance ride and the mom who wants to stay home with her kids but needs her job to cover health insurance. There’s the cancer care, the surgeries, the peculiarities of medical billing, the lapses in insurance coverage, the people who see the state’s Medicaid program as a lifeline for their family members.

Groww is conducting these deep canvasses throughout western Wisconsin on healthcare, specifically on potentially expanding access to BadgerCare. That’s the state’s Medicaid program, which provides insurance for low-income families.