Wisconsin Senate Republicans Ban Voter Registration Drives

Update: See GOP Still Tampering with Our Democracy by State Senator Julie Lassa.

Wisconsin Republicans really, really would like it if you would not vote. Leave voting to the Republicans.

Republicans' latest anti-voting rights bill is Senate Bill 295, passed along a party-line vote yesterday.

The bill would "(eliminate) the position and responsibilities of special registration deputies," halting voter registration drives of disfavored citizens, (Legislative Reference Bureau).

SB 295 is being fast-tracked to the state assembly for passage and eventual signing into law by Scott Walker.

Both Wisconsin legislative chambers are gerrymandered to elect Republicans.

Since gaining power in the 2010 mid-term election, Republicans have passed numerous anti-voting laws designed to obstruct minorities, the poor and younger voters from casting votes, and reshaping Wisconsin elections to benefit Republicans.

Scott Walker's Voter Obstruction Efforts Highlight Anti-democratic Sentiments

The Republican Party and Scott Walker in particular have long made voter obstruction a major policy objective.

Through cutting early voting, photo voter ID, gerrymandering, and other work on behalf of corporations funneling anti-democratic bills through ALEC, (NBC News) Walker has become a front-man in Wisconsin to stop those politically opposed to him from voting, with a particular animus for ethnic minorities. (McGillis, TNR)

The Republican Party's war against voting is a nation-wide effort, but Walker has taken the lead in Wisconsin for years using public policy and campaign appeals as a means to divide and conquer disfavored citizens.

A grotesque effort, but conquering citizens has a long and sordid history known in the 20th century as fascism.

Walker's political allies are featured in yesterday's New York Times Magazine in a cover piece on the 50-year campaign to roll back the Voting Rights Act. (Rutenberg, New York Times)

Stopping black and brown folks from voting, this is the America Scott Walker wants, where Walker with his hands out to special interest money is considered among the few proper activities.

In 2012 the stakes were high, in 2015-16 the stakes are higher and Walker remains an inadequate personality, and a pathological liar still in fear of facing the Wisconsin people, but scheming to rob them of their rights.

Scott Walker, Sen. Ron Johnson Are Amoral

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin)
Protector of rape and sexual battery

Update: See So, Just How Upset Are The Republicans With Bill Kramer? and Kramer cover-up a telling glimpse into right-wing world and Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson has a history of protecting institutions where sex assault is concerned.

Wisconsin Republicans are holding firm against launching expulsion proceedings against this serial predator, now finally facing two criminal charges of sexual assault.
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Facing Constitutional obstacles against GOP schemes obstructing Wisconsin voters, Scott Walker announced he would call lawmakers into a special session to pass another photo voter ID law before his reelection bid in November.

Walker called a photo voter ID law the most "pressing" election-related issue Wisconsin faces. (Spicuzza and DeFour. WSJ)

Walker also suggested the Constitutional guarantee of the right to vote should be conditioned on his  view of what the majority of Wisconsin citizens believe, an unusual doctrine on Wisconsin Suffrage.

Plumbing the depths of Republican politics, we learn preventing people from voting is surpassed in venality by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) who knew of and did nothing to stop or even report to police a sexual assault victim of serial perpetrator, Rep. Bill Kramer (R-Waukesha), three years ago (Stein, Marley and Bice. MJS). The woman was an aide to Johnson at the time.

Even as two other recent sexual assault victims of Kramer's have come to light in the last few weeks, Wisconsin Republicans refuse to commence expulsion proceedings to remove the former State Assembly Majority Leader.

Protecting sexual assault perpetrators and actually injuring their victims is a habit of Ron Johnson's.

Uppity Wisconsin reports "when Johnson was running for U.S. Senate (the) purportedly family-values, law-and-order Republican testified against the Wisconsin Child Victims Act, which would have eliminated the statute of limitations on lawsuits brought by victims of Catholic priest sexual abuse. The measure failed," because of Republican opposition protecting the hierarchy of the Catholic Church and its internal molestation protection outfit.

Back to Scott Walker.

Scott Walker did his worst in late March by signing a Republican bill obstructing Mesothelioma cancer victims, many of whom are veterans.

Reports Eoin Cottrell:

Advocacy groups representing over 100,000 Wisconsin veterans insisted the state Legislature amend a bill that will now affect thousands of veterans suffering from mesothelioma, according to Jason Johns, executive director of the Wisconsin Asbestos Victims Network.

Gov. Scott Walker signed the bill Thursday [March 27] that will create more hurdles for Wisconsinites seeking compensation for mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer contracted after repeated exposure to asbestos that disproportionately affects veterans.

Veterans make up 8 percent of the population but account for an estimated 30 percent of all mesothelioma deaths, according to the Wisconsin Military Order of the Purple Heart.

I guess if Scott Walker's former top aide and appointees embezzle from veterans, Walker's logic leads to the conclusion he signs legislation inflicting misery onto veterans suffering from mesothelioma cancer. That's a rule of inference I must have missed.

If you want to know to know how Democratic candidate for governor Mary Burke feels about all this, Burke spokesman Joe Zepecki is sticking to his innovative communications strategy of going dark in the apparent hope the campaign's silence will somehow obliterate Scott Walker's reelection bid.

Republicans Still Trying to Rig Elections in Wisconsin, Citizens Be Damned

Republicans say: Not qualified to vote

Update: Authoring Judge in Landmark Case Disavows His Former Support for Voter ID (Schwartz. NYT)

Doug Chapin, Rick Hasen and the Washington Post note new Republican efforts to micromanage Wisconsin elections right down to the poll worker, and continuing efforts to obstruct voters.

Republican legislative efforts to manage which voters get to vote were deemed unconstitutional in ongoing legal, civil rights fights that will likely continue for years across the nation.

Civil actions continue in Wisconsin state and federal courts, including two consolidated federal cases slated for trial on November 4.

Republicans will of course stick to the James Sensenbrenner-Scott Walker-GOP BS line that photo voter IDs are "common sense" measures to prevent voter impersonation fraud, though the GOP is fully aware no that virtually no voter fraud exists out of the 100s of millions of votes cast.

And potentially 100,000s of Wisconsin citizens could be disenfranchised were Wisconsin's voter ID law made operative in a high-turnout election like that in November 2014. That's in Wisconsin alone.

Chaos, confusion, voter frustration, long lines and anger are the predictable results, with voter disenfranchisement as the objective.

A voter presents a GOP-approved ID, two election inspectors (poll workers) check it for photo resemblance, date and signature and these new qualifications to vote are met.

Oh, sorry Carol, longtime neighbor, you left your license at work: No vote for you!

The One Day Voter ID Was Used in Wisconsin

Let's take a look at the one day, February 14, 2012, in Wisconsin when registered, constitutionally qualified voters were forced to present photo voter IDs when walking up to the poll books before casting their vote.

On February 14, 2012, primary day in Wisconsin, there were no statewide elections; the Wisconsin Government Accountability Office did not estimate voter turn-out because of this fact and the related fact of very low voter-turnout that informed observers guessed was about four percent statewide.

Republicans present this four percent February 2012 primary election is having proceeded swimmingly, and therefore high turnout elections (say 60 percent) will by GOP logic be just fine.

Wrong and wrong.

Reposted from February 2012:

Update III: Madison voters turned away at polls for lacking photo ID. "She was fairly recently in a car accident and couldn't make it to the DOT to get a Wisconsin ID," said Melanie Sax, the chief elections inspector at the polling location at Trinity United Methodist Church on Vilas Avenue. The woman, who does not drive, has neither a driver's license nor a state ID.

That woman is Marge Curtin—disenfranchised.

Update II: 69-year old veteran Gil Paar was shocked when poll workers told him his photo I.D. from the V.A. wasn’t on the accepted list. ... “There’s a possibility that a veteran could have only this type of I.D., because he’s had a stroke, let’s say, up at the V.A. hospital. And because of that, he had his driver’s license taken away. So case in point, he would have only this Veterans Administration I.D. through the hospital.

“And they’re telling me I can’t use it, I couldn’t use it. this is not right. you’ve got a guy who serves, does his time in the Air Force, or Army or the Navy, and then he comes home and can’t vote? What the f—- did I go in for?” (Racine Jounral-Times)

Update: U.S. senators on Tuesday asked the Government Accountability Office to study what they called an "alarming number" of new state laws that will make it "significantly harder" for millions of eligible voters to cast ballots this November.

As an observer from the NAACP looked on, the 200-plus voters in one Fitchburg, Wisconsin voting district yesterday presented an electorate irritated with the GOP's new voter ID requirements.

Wisconsin's voter ID law was passed without any Democratic votes, and no dissenting Republican votes.

Rejected, per the new statute (Act 23), yesterday was an Army Reserve ID that did not include an expiration date.

Many comments from voters were made to election workers: Including "What's next, retina scans?" and "Here to pay my poll tax."

One woman who was inexplicably purged from the polls and tried to re-register objected to the voter registration process as too invasive.

Though the voter ID law, Republicans say, is intended to stop rampant voter impersonation at the polls, not one case of voter impersonation in Wisconsin has been prosecuted going back decades.

But Republicans remain optimistic they can stop enough Democratic-leaning citizens from voting to sway a close election, concentrating on suppressing college and tech students, the elderly and black voters in Milwaukee.

A research report by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Employment and Training Institute shows that over 177,000 elderly persons in Wisconsin aged 65 and older do not possess a driver's license or state photo identification.

Scott Walker Is in Kentucky

For anyone wondering where Scott Walker is as Wisconsin Republican legislators launch another war on voting, Scott Wartman reports, "Northern Kentucky Republicans brought in Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to help raise funds for state House and Senate races in 2014."

"Gov. Walker is very tuned in to what’s happening to Kentucky," Sen. Damon Thayer, R-Georgetown said. "He has a Republican House and Senate in Wisconsin. He knows the importance of that."

No idea where Walker is now.