Wisconsin Republicans Obstruct the Vote

Madison, Wisconsin — Everyone in Wisconsin, especially Republicans, know why Gov. Scott Walker and Republicans, and only Republicans, in the legislature transformed Wisconsin election law since 2011.

The corporate media and Republicans play dumb of-course.

The aim and objective of the Republican transformation of Wisconsin law is Republicans winning elections by obstructing as many non-Republican voters as possible.

But until we see headlines in the Wisconsin dailies reading: "Republicans' obstructing voters gets results," we still will have much of the political culture residing in what former Judge Richard Posner called a "fact-free cocoon."

For reference, analyses, federal court judgments note the following resources:

• Bottari, PRWatch
• United States District Judge James D. Peterson judgment of in One Wisconsin Institute v. Thomsen, (U.S. District Court of the Western District of Wisconsin (Case 15-cv-324), (updates in One Wisconsin Institute v. Thomsen), (Mal Contends) 
• Posner, Frank v. Walker, On Suggestion of Rehearing En Banc. (October 10, 2014), (Mal Contends, Brad Blog)
• Mayer, Voter ID Study Shows Turnout Effects in 2016 Wisconsin Presidential Election, UW-Madison).
  
  

Study: Republican Photo ID Law Deterred 10,000s from Voting in Wisconsin in Presidential Election

Wisconsin Republicans remain determined to stop voters
The Blind Leading the Blind - Brueghel

Poor, Ethnic Minorities Hit Hardest by GOP Obstruction Law

Madison, Wisconsin — The Republican-backed Photo Voter ID law stopped 10,000s from voting in the 2016 presidential election in Wisconsin, concludes a study conducted by Kenneth R. Mayer, Professor of Political Science.

Wisconsin Republicans and only Republicans attempted for years to pass a photo voter ID law before a bill was passed on a party-line vote in 2011, and signed by Gov. Scott Walker, a long-time backer of this voter-obstruction initiative, proposed under cover of self-consciously false claims of voter fraud, (WTMJ-Milwuakee).

In October 2014, Richard Posner of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, (1981-2017), eviscerated Wisconsin photo voter ID law as voter obstruction in a scathing dissenting opinion that has not been credibly challenged, even as Republican jurists on this federal Appellate Court defend Wisconsin's voter obstruction law.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison study supports Posner's findings.

Wisconsin's voter ID law is one of many Republican-imposed changes to Wisconsin election law that were passed on party-line votes to block as many non-Republicans from voting as possible. Numerous Republican voter obstruction laws were found to be unconstitutional in July 2016 in One Wisconsin Institute v. Thomsen, (U.S. District Court of the Western District of Wisconsin (Case 15-cv-324). In May 2016 one witness testifying for the Republicans in One Wisconsin, Waukesha County Clerk Kathleen Novack, said, there is "too much access to the voters as far as opportunities" to vote in Madison and Milwaukee, (Jake's Economic TA Funhouse), (Opoien, The Capital Times). This would be the Novack Doctrine, a guiding principle of Republican jurisprudence in voting rights law.

A reproduction of the press release for the Wisconsin voter ID study follows.
--
Voter ID Study Shows Turnout Effects in 2016 Wisconsin Presidential Election

MADISON, WISCONSIN — A survey of registered voters in Dane and Milwaukee Counties who did not vote in the 2016 presidential election found that 11.2% of eligible nonvoting registrants were deterred by the Wisconsin’s voter ID law.

This corresponds to 16,801 people in the two counties deterred from voting, and could be as high as 23,252 based on the confidence interval around the 11.2% estimate, which is between 7.8% and 15.5%. The survey further found that 6% of nonvoters were prevented from voting because they lacked ID or cited ID as the main reason they did not vote, which corresponds to 9,001 people, and could be as high as 14,101 based on the confidence interval of between 3.5% and 9.4%.

Roughly 80% of registrants who were deterred from voting by the ID law, and 77% of those prevented from voting, cast ballots in the 2012 election.

Based on these estimates, if all of the affected registrants voted the voter ID requirement reduced turnout in the two counties by 2.24 percentage points under the main measure of effect, and by 1.2 percentage points under a conservative measure. If they voted at 2012 rates, voter ID lowered turnout by 0.9 to 1.8 percentage points.

The burdens of voter ID fell disproportionately on low-income and minority populations. Among low-income registrants (household income under $25,000), 21.1% were deterred, compared to 7.2% for those over $25,000. Among high-income registrants (over $100,000 household income), 2.7% were deterred. 8.3% of white registrants were deterred, compared to 27.5% of African Americans.

The study, conducted by Principal Investigator Kenneth R. Mayer, Professor of Political Science and Affiliate Faculty of the Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs and UW Madison, with Ph.D. candidate Michael G. DeCrescenzo, was based on the statewide database of registered voters (WisVote), which records whether a registrant cast a ballot in the November presidential election. The survey was administered by the UW Survey Center, and funded by the Dane County Clerk’s Office. The data are based on a sample of 288 nonvoting registrants who were on the rolls on or before election day, November 8, 2016.

The survey asked registrants about their reasons for not voting, the types of ID they possess, interest in the election, confidence in the accuracy of the vote count, and demographics. The survey did not ask voters about who they would have voted for or their party identification.

The survey found considerable confusion about the law. Most of the people who said they did not vote because they lacked ID actually possessed a qualifying form of ID. This confusion may be the result of a lack of effective efforts educating eligible voters of the requirements of the law, and it is consistent with other studies that show many otherwise eligible voters are confused about ID laws. There were no significant differences between people who had seen information about the voter ID law and those who had not.

"This study provides better data than previous efforts to measure the effects of ID laws, which have largely been based on aggregate turnout, matching registered voters to state driver’s license and ID databases, or looking at the number of rejected provisional ballots cast by voters without an ID," said Principal Investigator Mayer. "By asking nonvoters their reasons for not voting, and about what forms of ID they actually possess, we get a better understanding of how voter ID laws affect individuals, and what types of people are most deterred by the laws. The data show that poor and minority populations are affected the most."

"The main conclusion of the study is that thousands, and perhaps tens of thousands, of otherwise eligible people were deterred from voting by the ID law," said Mayer. "The 11.2% figure is actually a lower bound since it does not include people who don’t even register because they lack an ID. And while the total number affected in Milwaukee and Dane Counties is smaller than the margin of victory in the 2016 presidential election, that is the wrong measure. An eligible voter who cannot vote because of the ID law is disenfranchised, and that in itself is a serious harm to the integrity to the electoral process."

Supporting information available at https://elections.wisc.edu/news/voter-id-study
###

Iowa Republicans Want Signature Match as New Qualification to Vote

State Republican parties now backed by Donald Trump are
giddy about possibilities of voter suppression. See NYT:
"In a reality-based world, people bringing wild claims
of widespread lawbreaking should carry
the burden of proof. With voter fraud, it’s
the opposite — fact-averse Republicans have for years been
hawking the idea of large-scale voter fraud and then daring
others to do the real work of proving them wrong."

Republicans in Iowa do not want you at the polls.

Comes a report by William Petroski of the Des Moines Register on an innovative way to suppress the vote of the black and brown, disabled and young, introduced last week in the Iowa legislature, (House Study Bill 93, the "Election Integrity Act").

Iowa Republicans and only Republicans want a signature match as a condition to cast a vote.

The idea is this layer of qualification to vote will help weed out undesirables from the polls.

Iowa currently has a strong, affirmative Constitutional right to vote, (Article II - Suffrage, Iowa Constitution).

Iowa's neighbor, Wisconsin' may be looking to its neighbor to its southwest as Scott Walker and Wisconsin Republicans do not think of voter suppression ideas themselves.

Coming to Wisconsin?

From Petroski:

House Study Bill 93, labeled the 'Election Integrity Act,' has been proposed by Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate, a Republican.

Pate said his plan will modernize Iowa’s elections technology by establishing electronic poll books in every Iowa precinct.  In addition, the bill calls for establishing a voter ID system with signature verification, absentee ballot verification and post-election audits.

Every registered voter who does not already own a driver’s license, non-driver’s ID, military ID, veterans ID, or passport, will receive a Voter ID card in the mail, automatically, Pate said. This will apply to newly registered voters as well.

Republicans will use any tool to keep non-Republicans from voting, all for the purported objectives of electoral integrity and defense against voter fraud.

Voting Rights Are Foundation of Democracy; Not "Partisan Advantage' Game

The "Genius of Wisconsin" by Helen Farnsworth Mears,
displayed in the third Wisconsin State Capitol rotunda

Disregarding history; avoiding facts; ignoring the law and the Constitution; and heedless of the deeds of Republican officials, three years ago Professor Mordecai Lee tried peddling the false equivalence analysis on the Republican war on voters after Scott Walker signed the unconstitutional voter ID into law.

Since the civil rights movement era, "every argument about enfranchisement or disenfranchisement has really been about partisan advantage," said Lee on the Rachel Maddow Show.

Lee's is a ludicrous position and is one that is taken up editorially in dailies across Wisconsin (ostensibly against Act 23), emphatically so in the Wisconsin State Journal (May 4).

In-person voter fraud doesn't exist—as opposed to what Republicans endlessly assert, or in Paul Ryan's oily racist-dog-whistle style voices surprise about high "urban" turn-out in elections—but let's not call this propaganda, is the State Journal's editorial position.

Stop wasting money defending the in-person voter ID law, the State Journal says, but recognize as well that "(w)ithout a doubt, partisan advantage in the looming fall election and beyond is the main motivator on both sides of the political divide."

No, partisan advantage is not the main motivator on both (whatever that means) sides of the political divide.

It comes as apparent news to the editors of the Wisconsin State Journal, but the civil rights movement is not about securing partisan advantage. The Voting Rights Act is not about partisan advantage.

The right to vote in the United States is a human and civil right through which all Americans work to secure their conception of a better world, that the heart of the civil rights movement means defending fellow Americans in their effort through any political party or association to live their lives and work to change society as they see fit.

The logical inheritor (the civil rights movement and the right to work in pursuit of individual objectives) of the classical liberal roots of America are under attack by the Republican Party, and too few acknowledge this total war on the very fabric of American democracy.

That the perpetrators of this war against the civil rights movement are the Republican and Tea Party does not imply that all must be guilty of seeking partisan or factional advantage.

This is a fundamental, if not intentional, misunderstanding of the civil rights movement.

Wisconsin, and Madison in particular, have an intimate connection with the civil rights movement, dating back to the Civil War, so one would expect a greater appreciation of voting rights from the editors of our state's second largest daily newspaper.

I would respectfully recommend that every Wisconsinite read Desegregation and Civil Rights (Wisconsin State Historical Society) and Historical Society's work on the 1964 Freedom Summer Project. Those who seek to discuss the voting ID issue in a civil rights context, in print or otherwise, should understand this history.

Or, if reading history is too much to ask today, here's a video clip that captures what the civil rights movement worked to accomplish. And it is not a "partisan advantage."

Andrew Goodman standing at the foot of a staircase, age 19, wearing a dark shirt. Andrew Goodman
was a civil rights activist and volunteer for the Freedom Summer project. He, along with
James Chaney and Michael Schwerner, was murdered in the summer of 1964.

Wisconsin State Journal Hits GOP for Voter Obstruction Efforts

The editorial page editor of the Wisconsin State Journal came out with an editorial hitting the Wisconsin GOP initiatives in which "Republicans keep pushing for partisan advantage."

Firstly, good job, Scott Milfred.

Defending the Wisconsin Constitution, Article III, Section 1 ought not to be a partisan exercise as the news and editorial editors of the leading GOP dailies apparently believe.

Still, a few omissions from the State Journal's news and editorial coverage of GOP voter obstruction efforts deserve mention.

1. With respect to the voter GOP's photo identification card legislation, it's misleading to state the legislation is "tied up in the courts."

GOP-crafted photo ID is permanently enjoined from taking effect because it is unconstitutional, and has been found to be unconstitutional by two different judges. No one, who is objective, seriously disputes that the GOP's voter ID is unconstitutional under Wisconsin's expansive right to vote.

Ask any constitutional law professor, besides the GOP's Rick Essenberg.

Nowhere in the editorial is the word Constitution found.

2. Yes, the Republican Party is pushing for partisan advantage. But that's a sterile description for violating the constitutional rights of Wisconsin citizens. This attack on voting is an attack on fundamental rights, the very foundation of the state of Wisconsin. No need for the State Journal's Milfred to let the GOP off so easily. Nowhere in the editorial are the words civil rights found either.

3. Finally, the Republican Party has lied about its mission, objectives, and aims of the voter obstruction program. The editorial again lets off the Republican Party by omitting the fact the GOP's elected officials routinely lie to the Wisconsin people. When someone lies over and over, it follows that the person is a liar. Seems a compelling syllogism. Nowhere in the editorial are the words lie, mislead or misrepresent found either. Corrupt is also strangely omitted.

Nice job. But as the GOP attacks Wisconsin's foundation, and the moment is gravely serious because the four GOP justices on the Wisconsin Supreme Court still could render an outrageous ruling upholding the photo ID-obstruction legislation [voted in by the GOP in a straight, party-line vote], I have to give the editorial an B-minus.

GOP Con Game Goes on

“Over 70,000 people voted yesterday in a historic election. We know that there are a number of outstanding absentee ballots, voting irregularities, and that there were problems across the county in the unofficial tally of ballots,” said Van Wanggaard on June 6.

"Accusations of voter fraud," reads the WISC TV broadcast Friday morning news banner.

"The Racine County Sheriff's Office is investigating possible voting irregularities in the June 5 recall election," reads the WISC website, echoing reports across the state.

No evidence presented. No problem for Wisconsin media which run GOP propaganda for free.

Need to cast doubt on an election with no evidence? Need to delay a democrat assuming office? Dumbed-down Wisconsin media is there for you, the Republican party.

Hours later on Friday and losing GOP state senate candidate, incumbent Republican Van Wanggaard, says he wants a recount, citing voting irregularities.

Corrupt Atty General Van Hollen Repeats 2004 GOP Lies

Wisconsin's Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen says he "is very concerned about voter fraud as six recall elections near, including one targeting fellow Republican, Gov. Scott Walker." (AP)

The corrupt Van Hollen is doing the same work as his fellow GOP partisans, pushing the same lie about alleged concerns of voter fraud that were expressed by State Rep. Jeff Stone (R-Greendale) and former State Sen. Ted Kanavas (R-Brookfield).

The GOP hacks in 2004 sent letters to former U.S. Atty Stephen Biskupic (2001-08) to "investigate possible wrongdoing in the registration of certain voters in Southeastern Wisconsin" (Stone) and to express Kanavas' concern that "fraud may play a large role in the outcome of the (the-upcoming 2004) election." (Brew City Brawler)

For years before elections Van Hollen and his GOP voter-control partisans have claimed to know fraud is happening and will happen in whatever election is next.

Well then, could Van Hollen point to one case, one case, of voter impersonation in Wisconsin prosecuted, say, in the last 10 years, 20 years? Proclaimed 100-percent certainty that voter impersonation is happening, zero-percent knowledge of where, when and by whom.

Of course not, Van Hollen is repeating the lie of voter impersonation [the voter fraud that so-called voter ID would prevent] in the valid belief that AP will run his statement with no facts or evidence.

Media outlets then pick up the story and run a summary of attorney-general-worried-about-voter-fraud pieces across the state.

Some facts:

Van Hollen previously lied in 2008, claiming the same nonsense about voter fraud as he tried to use a federal law to stop Wisconsin citizens from voting in the presidential election.

Current national GOP chair Reince Priebus "had multiple conversations with Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen's top aide before Van Hollen filed the lawsuit against the state election agency to compel expanded voter registration checks," perfect matches among bureaucracies (Pitsch. Wisconsin State Journal, Sep 25, 2008).

The Van Hollen-Priebus suit was subsequently tossed out of court by Dane County (Wisconsin) Judge Maryann Sumi, never to see the inside of a courtroom again.

GOP allegations of organized voter fraud has been shown to be a fiction by the Brennan Center for Justice and by a Wisconsin-federal committee looking into past GOP allegations of voter fraud in the 2004 election.

After the GOP retook the Wisconsin legislature in 2010, one of the GOP's first bills introduced in 2011 is a photo ID bill that would "mean folks without driver's licenses - disproportionately poor, minority, or elderly, would not be able to vote." (Neil Heinen. WISC TV) The GOP's photo ID bill is unconstitutional on its face, and has been so found.

A 2004-05 joint investigation by former GOP U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic and former Milwaukee County District Attorney E. Michael McCann found there was no widespread fraud, though Biskupic  "indicted 14 individuals [with five convictions] for either being a felon on probation or parole who voted in November 2004 or for voting twice in that contest. All but one of those charged with felonies were African-American, and all were Milwaukee residents." (Bice. MJS, April 12, 2007) Voter ID would address none of these cases, as voter impersonation did not happen even as Karl Rove pushed Biskupic to pursue voter fraud cases, however contrived.

Biskupic is now defending the Scott Walker campaign in the John Doe corruption investigation.

Van Hollen, Biskupic, Priebus, Walker and literally every Wisconsin GOP elected official have defended the voter fraud-voter obstruction-voter ID project.

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.
---
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.

GOP Fake Outrage Is SOP

President Obama and the First Lady plot to enslave

white America and attack religious freedom

The GOP bubble is full of demons who emerge to wreak havok and threaten America with their evil might.

In 2008, one such monster was ACORN, committing a massive crime against our country's political health, we were told.

In October 2008 in the third presidential debate, John McCain said, ACORN was "on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy," repeating the GOP talking point.

That the GOP charge and political talking point lacked any factual basis was not the point; exclusionary voter ID legislation came to the rescue.

And President Obama, beneficiary of that great fraud that destroyed the fabric of democracy, was illegitimate.

Just knew there was something about that guy.

Worth noting is that McCain, the crusading reformist, dropped his heroic pursuit of the massive fraud conspiracy after he lost the 2008 election.

Religion

This season in the GOP bubble, President Obama is attacking religious freedom.

"I don't think we've seen in the history of this country the kind of attack on religious conscience, religious freedom, religious tolerance that we've seen under Barack Obama," said Mitt Romney in the Arizona debate last night, in an attempt to match Rick Santorum and virtually every GOP politician.

That the GOP charge and political talking point lacks any factual basis is not the point of course.

Rick Santorum - Image composed of gay porn
Stephen and Vanessa/Unicorn Booty

Sex

Now the GOP has gone off the deep end, repeating an inartful lie about an activity—sex and contraception—that most Americans enjoy, [and wish for the GOP to deescalate its interventions.]

The last time the GOP went this bat-crazy about sex was 1998, a crusade resulting in President Clinton's highest approval numbers and demands from the American people for the GOP to move on.

The Other Man

• So, President Obama is blaæƏǒack
• Spawned by a Muslim father [Franklin Graham told us again]
• Has gay friends
• Wants to weaken America generally, and the military specifically
• Hates our allies; loves our enemies
• Is in league with forces working to impose the caliphate upon Western civilization

The problem for the GOP is that most Americans like President Obama and are growing tired of the GOP fake outrage game that now just looks very sad.

A Voter ID Reality Overlooked

No, you don't

Update: So strong is the franchise to vote in Wisconsin that attorney Lester Pines noted in orals before the Wisconsin Supreme Court that even mandating registration of voters had to be accomplished through a state Constitutional amendment first enacted in 1882. League of Wisconsin Women Voters v. Scott Walker.

As challenges to Wisconsin's voter suppression law [polling place ID] proceed, one startling aspect of the debate is not from the GOP spin machine, rather the lack of examination on how the law would operate in our system that most certainly does preserve the integrity of elections in scrutinizing voters.

Register to vote

This is because before you vote, you have to register to vote; see  Wisconsin Voter Registration Application.

To register to vote you need to establish who you are, and where you are (residency) with government and employee IDs, leases, utility bills, bank statements, etc; and if you have a driver's license you need to register with your driver's licence.

In addition, you need to sign the voter reg. form stating that you are aware that falsification of any information is a Class 1 felony in Wisconsin.

That's before you can vote.

Photo ID

Now, in addition to these residency and registration requirements, the GOP voter-id-at-polling-place law then adds a layer of obstruction for voters, mandating only GOP-proscribed photo IDs must also be presented when voting. [see bottom]

Not a problem for most of us.

But those not fitting the GOP proper-voter bill such as disaffected veterans, low-income, mobile students, and the homeless, and significantly many black folks in Milwaukee County, would be refused at the polls; their franchise is not enough.

Rick Esenberg, the GOP's go-to guy on voter suppression, even says as much about the current registration requirements [which many registrants find invasive] telling "the Journal Sentinel he believes the courts would consider the ID law an extension of residency and registration requirements." [Crockett]

An "extension" that has been carefully worded when the GOP rejected input from the League of Women Voters and civil rights groups in hatching its voter scheme passed with no Democratic support.

The GOP objectives are modest: Suppress the total vote; make the voting experience insulting to the casual voter. This way, real Americans, white, single home-owning Americans, can cast their ballot and have their votes counted.

You can't get around the Twenty-fourth Amendment outlawing poll taxes, but you can keep this fact of no polling taxes very quiet, as Chis Larson, Wisconsin state employee fired for blowing the whistle on the Voter ID Poll Tax, will tell you.

As John Nichols writes, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation head directs DMV employees "to refrain from actively informing the public about the ability to receive a free identification card for the purposes of voting."

Going to the polls, Wisconsin "[c]itizens face a higher burden. They must either pay for their ID or they must work their way through a bureaucratic maze expressly designed to deny them information about the fact that they have a right to a free ID."

This is a classic poll tax structure. While the law on the books may suggest flexibility, the implementation of the law has been designed to erect barriers to voting by those who cannot afford the fee."

Ernest Canning writes, "The coordinated, nationwide GOP voter suppression effort was aptly described by Judith Browne Dianis, a civil rights litigator at The Advancement Project, ... as 'the largest legislative effort to roll back voting rights since the post-Reconstruction era.'"
---
Wisconsin Government Accountability Board - Acceptable Photo IDS
•A Wisconsin DoT-issued driver license

•A Wisconsin DoT-issued identification card

•An identification card issued by a U.S. uniformed service

• A U.S. passport

(Identifications above must be unexpired, or if expired, have expired after the date of the most recent general election.)

•A certificate of naturalization that was issued not earlier than two years before the date of an election at which it is presented

•An unexpired driving receipt issued by Wisconsin DoT.

•An unexpired identification card receipt issued by Wisconsin DoT.

•An identification card issued by a federally recognized Indian tribe in Wisconsin

•An unexpired identification card issued by a Wisconsin-accredited university or college that contains the following:

-- Date of Issuance

-- Signature of Student

-- Expiration date not later than two years after Date of Issuance

Challenge to GOP Voter Suppression in Wisconsin

"The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin Education Fund is preparing to challenge Wisconsin's new Voter ID law based on the state constitution. As a nonpartisan organization that encourages participation in government, the League is concerned about the many eligible citizens who will be disenfranchised by the new law. The League is working with Attorney Lester Pines of Cullen, Weston, Pines, and Bach to challenge the legislature's authority to enact the law."
- Press Announcement, August 23, 2011

See also:

• U.S. DoJ Challenge to Wisconsin Voter Suppression Law Possible
• Wisconsin Voter ID Legal Challenge Likely

Mordecai Lee—A descent into hollow reasoning

Mordecai Lee, Prof of Gov Affairs
UW-Milwaukee

'That 's sort of what this fight in Wisconsin is all about.'

The Rachel Maddow Show featured a superb guest host in Melissa Harris-Perry Tuesday night. 

Unfortunately, no one warned the host or her producers about Mordecai Lee, professor of Government Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Lee was a guest on a segment about Scott Walker's voter suppression-voter ID-close-the-DMV-offices. [Walker has now reversed himself on DMV closures, after facing political backlash for disenfranchising Voters]

Lee is notorious for, and let's be honest, acting like he is a dolt.

He's not. But Lee's commitment to veering into nihilism should the rational method indict the Republican Party is infamous.

A la the Washington Post editorial page, Lee pretends to believe that facts, logic and data show that all political parties are the same; and holding any one party accountable for its lies is missing the insight Lee has on the American political process.

Enlightening the viewers of the Rachel Maddow Show, Lee offers that in Wisconsin, 'Partisan politics is a contact sport.'

Brilliant.

An indignant Melissa Harris-Perry asked Lee about Scott Walker's closing down DMV offices right after signing the Voter ID law in an effort to make voting more difficult.

Lee said of Walker's DMV scheme: That's a "smooth move."

Asked if Republicans stand a chance in Wisconsin unless they make these draconian Voter ID laws, Lee responds with blather.

So, Harris-Perry presses him, asking Lee for comment on the lower-d, democratic value of obstructing rather than facilitating voters.

Here was Lee's great chance to tell the world that both major political parties are equally guilty of betraying democracy, national and Wisconsin Republican voter suppression programs aside.

Lee did not disappoint.

Said Lee: Since the civil rights movement era, "Every argument about enfranchisement or disenfranchisement has really been about partisan advantage. I don't necessarily think the Democrats have just, purely clean hands. Every party wants to gain an advantage. Democrats want lower-income and younger people to be able to vote. That 's sort of what this fight in Wisconsin is all about."

Got that? Republicans are engaged in a massive voter disenfranchisement scheme; but Democrats do not have "clean hands" because they want to enfranchise voters. Both parties are mere analogues of each other in the strange logic employed by Mordecai Lee.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

On Voting—Wisconsin Constitution, Article III, Section 1

Wisconsin Constitution, Article III, Section 1:

"Every United States citizen age 18 or older who is a resident of an election district in this state is a qualified elector of that district."

Ultimately, the Wisconsin Supreme Court will weigh this fundamental right of citizens to vote against the stated policy rationale of the "Photo ID" bill (AB 7)— protecting the "integrity of our election process," as Gov. Walker alleges in a blatant lie repeated endlessly by Republicans nationwide.

The judicial process of protecting the rights of Wisconsin citizens against the temporary majority of Republicans controlling the legislature and the governor's office will offer an object lesson in how the Courts protect the fundamental rights in this state's representative democracy.

To paraphrase David Boies arguing another civil rights case on the federal level:

There are certain rights in Wisconsin that are so fundamental, so valued, that the Wisconsin Constitution guarantees them to every Wisconsin citizen regardless of what a temporary majority of Republican pukes are willing to spend $millions on to keep their party in power, irrespective of what a majority of Wisconsinites may want.

Walker to Sign Voter ID-Suppression Law, Challenge Certain

Republicans do not look at voting and democracy the way most Wisconsin citizens do. For most of us, if you are legally a citizen, you have the right to vote.

Republicans, on the other hand, see voting as impeding their political power, a right that must be altered to favor its regime.

Wisconsin, more so than the U.S. Constitution and federal statutes, makes obstructing voters very difficult. The fight to protect our right to vote is on. A legal challenge is certain.

Scott Walker and the Republicans want to obstruct voting, Wisconsin wants to keep this right.

From One Wisconsin Now:

First of all, the right to vote is guaranteed to citizens of Wisconsin in our state constitution. The right to rent a movie, open a checking account, go to the bar, get on an airplane or any other similar activity is not, and requiring an ID for these types of activities is not a barrier to exercising a constitutionally-protected right. Voter ID is fundamentally different.

There is absolutely no evidence of a widespread conspiracy to commit voter fraud. Wisconsin's Republican Attorney General JB Van Hollen has made prosecuting so-called voter fraud one of his top priorities. However, after a two year investigation into the 2008 election, Van Hollen has found a scant 11 potentially improper ballots out of nearly 3 million total votes cast. Of those, eight involved felons who voted while out in the community on probation or parole, a situation that voter ID would not remedy. That leaves 3 potentially bad votes out of 3,000,000 votes, or about 0.000001% of all votes cast. Voter ID is a solution in search of a problem.

The bill's authors, Republican Rep. Jeff Stone and Sen. Joe Leibham, have modeled their bill after Indiana's Voter ID law, which was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. According to the Supreme Court case upholding Indiana’s Voter ID bill, the lower court found “99 percent of Indiana’s voting age population already possesses the necessary photo identification to vote under the requirements.”

Wisconsin’s population is substantially less likely to have a state-issued identification. Those without state-issued photo identification and who would need to obtain one under the Wisconsin Voter ID bill include:

• 23 percent of all elderly Wisconsinites over the age of 65
• 17 percent of white men and women
• 55 percent of all African American males and 49 percent of African American women
• 46 percent of Hispanic men and 59% of Hispanic women
• 78 percent of African American males age 18-24 and 66 percent of African American women age 18-24

[Driver License Status of the Voting Age Population in Wisconsin, 6/05]

Yes, the bill as written does have a provision to provide free identification for some Wisconsinites. Each and every one of these people would have to take the time off (in many cases unpaid) from work or family obligations to flock to Wisconsin DMVs. However, access to the DMV is a problem in Wisconsin; Indiana provides its residents exponentially more access to its Department of Motor Vehicles offices to obtain identification.

Wisconsin and Indiana have similar voting age populations (4.35 million vs. 4,8 million), but Wisconsin is 50 percent larger geographically than Indiana (54,314 sq. miles vs. 35,870 sq. miles). Indiana not only provides its residents 50 percent more DMV offices than Wisconsin (140 to 91), but also nearly three times the total hours these facilities are open.

Also consider:

Twenty-six percent of Wisconsin’s 91 DMVs are open one day a month or less, while none of Indiana’s are open less than 100 days a year and nearly all are open over 250 days a year.

Wisconsin has only one DMV with weekend hours, while Indiana has 124 offices with weekend hours.

Three Wisconsin counties have no DMVs, no Indiana county is without a DMV.

Over half of Wisconsin’s 91 DMVs are open on a part-time basis, while Indiana provides full-time DMVs in every county. ...

The need to expand the numbers and operational hours of Wisconsin DMVs to provide appropriate access could increase the $70 million biennial Wisconsin DMV budget by as much as 50 percent on top of the current $5 million price tag to provide free identifications.

Requiring eligible voters to produce ID at the polls is an unnecessary hurdle to exercising our right to vote which will prevent many people from voting. The "widespread voter fraud" that this bill is aimed at "fixing" does not exist, and the microscopic number of double votes will be FAR outpaced by the number of people who will be prevented from voting by the voter ID requirement. In a time when Wisconsin faces a $3 billion budget deficit, we simply cannot afford to double the DMV budget. Voter ID is a big-government, budget-busting solution in search of a problem; a solution that will make it more difficult to practice our most fundamental right.

That is why we oppose voter ID.

Brad Blog: GOP Voter Fraud Found in Wisconsin

Waukesha, Wisconsin Follies: 97.63 percent turnout in 2004?

20,000 More Votes Than ‘Ballots Cast’ in 2006?

Trying to get to the bottom of new anomalies discovered in County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus’ bizarre election results requires a federal DoJ investigation needed.

Waukesha County, Wisconsin’s County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus was already known, for some time, to be among the nation’s worst elections official. And that’s saying quite a bit. But new information being discovered over the past several days suggests she may be even worse than previously known — which is also saying quite a bit.
- Via Veterans Today