Oct 2, 2014

Emergency Petition to US Supreme Court Filed to Block Wisconsin Voter ID Law

Update: ACLU site: The following is a statement from Dale Ho, director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project:
"Thousands of Wisconsin voters stand to be disenfranchised by this law going into effect so close to the election. Hundreds of absentee ballots have already been cast, and the appeals court's order is fueling voter confusion and election chaos. Eleventh-hour changes in election rules have traditionally been disfavored precisely because the risk of disruption is simply too high."
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"[T]here is an overwhelming public interest in not disenfranchising large numbers of registered voters." (p. 19, Emergency Application to Vacate Stay RE Wisconsin Act 23) (emphasis added)

Via Rick Hasen, here's the text of the petition.

Emergency Application to Vacate Stay

To the Honorable Elena Kagan, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court and Circuit Justice for the Seventh Circuit:

... Unless this Court vacates the order below, the panel’s stay will sow confusion at the polls and discourage voting in the November 4 general election in Wisconsin. Voting is the foundational element of a free society. Chaos in an election— especially when entirely preventable—is undemocratic. Yet weeks before a major election, the panel’s stay order dramatically changed the status quo for voters— i.e. , the continuation of Wisconsin’s traditional voting practices and suspension of Act 23’s stringent new photo ID requirements. (p.2)

Correct.

In fact one in five Wisconsin citizens do not know they need a photo voter ID to cast a vote. (Jessie Opoien, The Capital Times)

As for the Big Lie of in-person voter fraud:

[T]he court found that, after two years of litigation, “[t]he defendants could not point to a single instance of known voter impersonation occurring in Wisconsin at any time in the recent past.” App.49. Even taking unresolved reports of voting fraud into account, “[t]he rate of potential voter-impersonation fraud is . . . exceedingly tiny”; “virtually no voter impersonation occurs in Wisconsin”; and “it is exceedingly unlikely that voter impersonation will become a problem in Wisconsin in the foreseeable future.” App.48, 50, 53. Thereafter, the court denied the State’s motion to stay the injunction pending appeal, concluding “that it is absolutely clear that Act 23 will prevent more legitimate votes from being cast than fraudulent votes.” App.75. (p.7)

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