GOP Complaint Not Serious

Update: Scott Walker says he has decided voter IDs are fine, so we should "move on". Walker also says the U.S Supreme Court has "upheld the constitutionality of requiring photo IDs to vote."

No, the Court rules in Crawford v. Marion County Board of Elections (2008) the Indiana voter ID statute withstands a facial [high-hurdle] challenge, absent evidence of voters unable to vote or unduly burdened. In Wisconsin to the contrary, there is a mountain of evidence of disenfranchised voters cited by Judge Flanagan. And, in federal court, the GOP statute will be heard as an as-applied challenge, with plenty of evidence of disenfranchised and unduly-burdened voters. Walker is not being honest, assuming he has even glanced at Crawford, and to suggest that we simply move on is absurd.
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We read this morning the "state Republican Party filed a complaint Wednesday against Dane County Circuit Judge David Flanagan, claiming that Flanagan should have told the parties involved in a lawsuit against the state voter ID law that he had signed a petition to recall Gov. Scott Walker."

Not that Judge Flanagan accepted free legal services from a litigant like the GOP Justice Gableman.

No, Flangan's sin is he signed a petition to recall Scott Walker and didn't tell litigants about this publicly available information in the voter ID case.

All along the GOP has been pushing the absurd line that the voter ID law is meant to combat non-existent voter impersonation fraud [can the GOP cite even one case?] at the polls; hence the IDs are needed to preserve the integrity of the elections.

The GOP's complaint with Flanagan is not his ruling that disenfranchising 100,000s of Wisconsin voters to protect against voter impersonation fraud looks to be unconstitutional—under the Wisconsin constitution.

It's that Flanagan wants Walker recalled.

Why does Walker and GOP think that every elected state Democrat, and all the voting rights and civil liberties groups believe the GOP Voter ID law is voter obstruction of Wisconsinites to stop us from electing the representives we wish?

It's because Walker knows well the Voter ID bill is all about stopping legal voters from casting too many votes that would cost the GOP political power, the Wisconsin constitution and people be damned.

Flanagan's alleged sin, like millions of other Wisconsinites, is seeing Scott Walker as the conniving, corrupt politician who has lost the faith of the Wisconsin electorate, and who has a demonstrated contempt for our democratic processes.

It's fine and proper for a judge to hold to these views and rule on voter ID laws in a case that will affirm the fundemental rights of all of us, protected from being stripped of our constitutional qualifications that we use to go the polls and decide what we want to do with our state.

Flanagan writes that voting in Wisconsin "is vital to the very existence of our state as a democracy in which political power, whether that be executive, legislative or judicial, is derived from the free consent of the governed."

That's true. And believing that Scott Walker is hostile to this idea is fine.