On Voting

"People should not leave without casting a ballot," said Wendy Weiser, head of the democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU's School of Law. "If you are an eligible voter, you should be able to have your vote counted no matter what anyone is saying," (Cassidy, AP).

On Election Day, follow this advice: "I will be voting today," (Mal Contends).

Voter Obstruction Is Local

Wisconsin Republicans creating a hostile and obstructive voting regime at Wisconsin's 3,500 polling places is a scheme the GOP hopes bears fruit next month.

After-all, Republicans seek to turn every lever of state and municipal government into de facto sub-units of Republican government. So, screening poll workers for hostility to voting rights and in the process taking over the voting place are naturals for voting-averse Republicans.

Antagonistic-to-voters polling workers are pervasive, but compiling reports of their misconduct is difficult for non-profits. (It takes a major social-scientific investigation to quantify the phenomenon of voter obstruction.)

Instead we see warnings about election observers and voter obstruction laws omitting the misconduct of municipal and contract election officials stationed at the point of voting and working, (unlawfully), to suppress the vote.

All of this is carried out under the rubric of voter fraud, a lie, and hostility to civil liberties, a disgrace.

Concludes a New York Times editorial in September: "The scary thing is how many Americans have bought into this charade [about voter fraud]. It shouldn’t be surprising that the Republican Party’s standard-bearer, Donald Trump, has elevated the lie about voting fraud and 'rigged elections' to a centerpiece of his campaign."

It shouldn't be surprising. Alex Wagner has a compelling report out about the dangers Donald Trump poses to voting.

The rotten fruit of the now Trumped-up danger of voter fraud is right at your local polling place, abetted by observers, polling workers and municipal bureaucrats.

Stay vigilant, especially if you are brown or black.

Republicans Got What They Want in Wisc DMV Clerks Deciding Who Votes; Fight's Not Over

Thank you Ruthelle Frank and Eddie Lee Holloway Jr.
for sticking up for our rights in 2011 and beyond, (ACLU)

Wisconsin Republicans frustrated, confused and blocked voters: Mission Accomplished

Wisconsin is better than North Carolina in voting rights, but that's nothing to brag about.

For the some 300,000 registered voters without a Republican-approved voting ID, Wisconsin voting rights activists face a situation where DMV clerks, intrepid students of the Constitution, are making value decisions about who gets to vote.

The result and Republican Party objective is voter confusion, frustration and obstruction.

Writes EPWisco this weekend: "We hope DMV now following correct rules - u should be able to get ID w/whatever docs u have. Let us and @VoteRiders @votermolly know [if] u can't[.]"

From February 2015, consider the unthinkable state of affairs (also seen from 2011) we face today, we did not get here by accident:

[from 2015] If Republicans and Scott Walker get their way, [they did], DMV clerks will make the decision on whether 10,000s of Wisconsin citizens get to vote, exercising the clerks' "discretion in a constitutionally sufficient manner." [Frank v. Walker, p.36]

Election law expert, Rick Hasen [in 2015], says Wisconsin voting right activists make a persuasive case for the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the Wisconsin photo voter ID case, Ruthelle Frank v. Scott Walker and League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) of Wisconsin v. Barland.

Hasen notes the timing and disposition of the Wisconsin voting rights case facing the U.S. presidential elections next year, and the five-to-five split of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit pitting Judge Easterbrook's opinion with Judge Richard Posner's.

"This case comes to the Court with an extensive trial record, an exhaustive district court decision, and a pair of diametrically opposed Seventh Circuit opinions by Judges Easterbrook and Posner." [p.11 of 2015 Reply Brief]

If the Supreme Court does not grant cert, the GOP-passed bill signed into law by Scott Walker would become effective.

From Wisconsin voting rights activists' Reply Brief filed [in 2015]:

...The district court identified other problems with the saving construction [by the Wisconsin Supreme Court]. A voter applying for photo ID “must still provide ‘[w]hatever documentation is available which states the person’s name and date of birth,’ and then the [DMV] administrator, in his or her discretion, may accept or reject ‘such extraordinary proof of name and date of birth.’” App. 197a (quoting Wis. Admin. Code § Trans. 102.15(3)(b), (c)). To guide DMV clerks, the Wisconsin Supreme Court offered this cryptic instruction: ‘the administrator, or his or her designee, shall exercise his or her discretion in a constitutionally sufficient manner.’” Id. (quoting NAAC, 851 N.W.2d at 279). It is unthinkable that the right to vote could depend on the “constitutionally sufficient” exercise of discretion by a DMV clerk. See Louisiana v. United States, 380 U.S. 145, 153 (1965) (voting rights “cannot be obliterated by the use of laws ... which leave the voting fate of a citizen to the passing whim or impulse of an individual registrar”).  [p. 14]

Repulsive work by Republicans and bureaucrats.

Wisc Republicans Confuse Voter ID Path the Week Before Voting

As soon as ya free em, they'll start wanting free stuff

Voting rights activists should alert U.S. District Judge James Peterson fast about a new development in One Wisconsin Institute v. Thomsen.

If you're black or brown and don't have an ID, leave. That's the message the Scott Walker adminstration is delivering to minorities with help from local and state bureaucrats.

After being forced to provide a path, (under challenge in federal court), for citizens to obtain free IDs for voting, the Walker adminstration is trying to stop any side benefits of using the ID for identification purposes, (Marley, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel).

The new move, proposed by the Republican-led DMV, is intended to demean, frustrate and delegitimize minorities, the elderly, the disabled, and college-age adults.

'I just won't vote, too much hassle,' is the sentiment Republicans wish to induce in enough people to swing close elections. It's a tactical voter suppression scheme of a larger social engineering project.

The newly proposed Republican games come as U.S. District Judge James Peterson is hearing a major voting rights case and deciding whether this Republican-led state is sufficiently publicizing the path to obtaining new IDs and for those citizens rejected by the DMV, the ID Petition Process, (IDPP).

The case is One Wisconsin Institute v. Thomsen, (U.S. District Court of the Western District of Wisconsin (Case 15-cv-324)).

Wrote Judge Peterson: "IT IS ORDERED that, by September 22, 2016, defendants shall provide a thorough report to the court of the State’s efforts to inform the general public that receipts valid for voting are available to those who enter the IDPP, [ID Petition Process]."

Confusing Wisconsin citizens by publicizing a newly proposed scheme that would confuse the means to obtain IDs and limit the uses of IDs the week before voting begins surly is not what Peterson had in mind in his order mandating the state of Wisconsin inform the general public about the IDPP so no citizen is disenfranchised.

Voting rights activists should alert U.S. District Judge James Peterson fast about this new development in One Wisconsin Institute v. Thomsen.

Voting Fraud Lie Lives On

See Debunking the Voter Fraud Myth, (Sept 2016)
Brennan Center for Justice

Republican power-grabs continue

If you have encountered a white Wisconsin election observer or poll worker, you may have encountered a Republican fighting the holy war against voting fraud.

A New York Times editorial sets the record straight on voting fraud:

How does a lie come to be widely taken as the truth?

The answer is disturbingly simple: Repeat it over and over again. When faced with facts that contradict the lie, repeat it louder.

This, in a nutshell, is the story of claims of voting fraud in America — and particularly of voter impersonation fraud, the only kind that voter ID laws can possibly prevent. ...

Credit for this mass deception goes to Republican lawmakers, who have for years pushed a fake story about voter fraud, and thus the necessity of voter ID laws, in an effort to reduce voting among specific groups of Democratic-leaning voters. Those groups — mainly minorities, the poor and students — are less likely to have the required forms of identification.

Behind closed doors, some Republicans freely admit that stoking false fears of electoral fraud is part of their political strategy. In a recently disclosed email from 2011, a Republican lobbyist in Wisconsin wrote to colleagues about a very close election [featuring David Prosser] for a seat on the State Supreme Court. 'Do we need to start messaging ‘widespread reports of election fraud’ so we are positively set up for the recount regardless of the final number?' he wrote. 'I obviously think we should.' ...

The ploy works. 

Yes, the ploy works.

The holy warriors, the overwhelmingly white Republican grassroots extending to the Alt Right, are taking the lie to ever more absurd lengths at the point of voting: The polling place on Election Day.

The objective is to frustrate, aggravate, and obstruct as many minority, young and disabled voters as possible in an effort to suppress the total vote in favor of the Republican Party. If Republicans can demean and dehumanize X number of the wrong kind of voters, Y number of voters won't come back soon.

That municipal bureaucracies treat disfavored voters differently and with animosity is not permissible under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments is a barrier to overcome, in the rightist view. Republicans wager: We don't know what we can get away with if we don't try.

Concludes the Times: "The scary thing is how many Americans have bought into this charade. It shouldn’t be surprising that the Republican Party’s standard-bearer, Donald Trump, has elevated the lie about voting fraud and 'rigged elections' to a centerpiece of his campaign."

It should not be surprising.

In Wisconsin, from school boards to municipalities to all levers of state government in all branches and in all bureaucracies, Republicans are engaged in a concerted effort to transform Wisconsin into a red state where civil liberties such as voting rights are a defect to be overcome.