Update: Scott Ross:
Memo to Gov. Scott Walker and GOP legislators: Voters are not the enemy
A research report by the
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Employment and Training Institute (Pawasarat. June 2005) shows many racial minorities would be obstructed by a 2011 Wisconsin GOP-passed law "requiring
(a photo ID) as a condition for voting."
Good, says the GOP.
In the
Wisconsin Voting Rights trial slated to begin November 4, the Republican Party is attempting to legitimize its years-long project to
disfranchise voters who vote the wrong way.
Lots of pre-trial motions over who will get to testify, including a racist ex-Milwaukee cop who really hates black folks casting votes against the Republican Party.
The nerve of those people in the most segregated metropolitan area in the United States.
Wisconsin GOP political operative, retired Milwaukee police detective Michael Sandvick, has been fighting a crime that never happened: Massive voter fraud that can only be stopped by the GOP's Photo Voter ID law, he says.
Sandvick has been chasing black voters in Milwaukee for years.
In fact, the Milwaukee cops set a
special unit to drive around black neighborhoods (replete with a command center) until the unit was later disbanded.
Sandvick and his GOP colleagues are the frauds, and their crusade against non-GOP-voting Wisconsin citizens continues.
In 2004, the GOP made "allegations" of voter fraud, none of which (though proven false) could have been
prevented by a photo voter ID anyway.
Facts are mere barriers to be overcome by Sandvick and GOP voter obstruction operatives in Wisconsin as they attempt to obstruct the African-American community in Milwaukee County, screaming 'voter fraud.'
Stopping Milwaukee County
(urban types) is a project the GOP and Sandvick have no intention of giving up as they seek to introduce into evidence at the
Wisconsin Voter ID trial a discredited, disavowed, unofficial, and partisan "Special Investigations Unit, Milwaukee Police Dept., Report of the
Investigation into the November 2, 2004 General Election in the City of
Milwaukee (2008)."
Writes Justin Levitt,
counsel for the Brennen Center for Justice in trashing the unsanctioned
report:
On February 26, 2008, the Milwaukee Police Department released a report
on that election, with what appears to be a painstaking investigation
of the facts, and policy recommendations offered with less care and
disavowed by the Milwaukee Police Chief.[41] The department's careful factual investigation primarily revealed administrative mistakes and, occasionally, negligence.[42] It showed that much of what had originally been identified as potential fraud was in fact due to clerical error.[43]
It also uncovered several votes by potentially ineligible individuals,
including some who were allegedly nonresidents, and some who had
allegedly been rendered ineligible due to convictions.[44] The report revealed only one potential vote that might have involved in-person impersonation fraud, with no documentation verifying that the vote in question was actually cast.[45]
So, according the 2008 report, there were
zero in-person voter fraud cases prosecuted. But there were lots of innuendo and allegations, playing on racial prejudice that the GOP appeals to in its base.
Sandvick and the GOP should spend their time persuading people to vote Republican and not trying to obstruct people who have the right to vote in America any way they please.
The two cases to be heard in a federal court trial November 4 are:
The two cases have been consolidated for trial in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin.
The two federal civil rights cases—
Frank et al. v. Walker, and
League of United Latin American Citizens of Wisconsin v. Deininger—will challenge the Scott Walker administration and the Republican Party's Wisconsin photo voter ID law under
Section Two of the Voting Rights Act, in the
League case.
In the
Frank case, plaintiff argue: "The photo ID law imposes a severe and undue burden on the fundamental right to vote under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution; violates the Twenty-Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution as an unconstitutional poll tax; and violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in arbitrarily refusing to accept certain identification documents."
