Civil Rights Activists Petition High Court to Halt Wisconsin Photo Voter ID Law

Ruthelle Frank of Brokaw, Wisconsin
fights for her right to vote against Scott Walker
and Republican efforts to obstruct non-GOP
voting Wisconsin citizens in Frank v. Walker

It's 2015 and the major white-dominated political party—the Republican Party—continues its voter obstruction efforts against blacks and Latinos and other voters likely to cast votes for non-GOP candidates.

Civil rights activists are fighting back.

After successfully halting Wisconsin's photo voter ID law intended to stop non-Republican voters from voting, Wisconsin's Voter ID law remains unenforceable to the chagrin of the Republicans who passed it on a party-line vote in 2011.

So corrupt are the Republican Party of Wisconsin's purposes, even after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Voter ID law halted on October 9 in Ruthelle Frank, et al., Applicants v. Scott Walker et al, the Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen told the Wisconsin press Voter ID would become the law anyway for the November 2014 election.

"We will be exploring alternatives to address the court’s concern and have voter ID on election day," Van Hollen said the day after the Supreme Court's order that contained no "concerns" or reasoning but was a terse order of what Wisconsin was ordered to do. (Hall, Wisconsin State Journal)

Van Hollen lied in asserting the Court had issued concerns when Van Hollen knew perfectly well the 107-word Supreme Court order was an order (with Justices Thomas, Alito and Scalia dissenting) lacking concerns or conditions other than the timely filing of a Petition for Writ of Certiorari as was done yesterday by litigants for voting rights in this case.

Van Hollen did successfully confuse some voters on whether they needed voter IDs to vote, and then backed down in the face of the ludicrous spectacle of a state attorney general defying the U.S. Supreme Court.

So nonsensical in the Republican Party's legal position that Judge Richard Posner of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit took the extraordinary step of requesting a rehearing on behalf of the five judges dissenting from Judge Frank Easterbrook’s [a member of the radical right wing Robert Bork-founded, Koch Brothers-funded "Federalist Society"] opinion in September that had temporarily reinstated Wisconsin's Voter ID law in September 2014, after absentee voting had already begun. [See also Canning, Freidman's Posner's Penance: Revered Reagan-Appointed Jurist's Plea to SCOTUS to Overturn His Own Landmark Ruling on Photo ID Voting Laws.]

As the more GOP jurists become entrenched in the judiciary, the rule of law and rights of citizens begin to dissipate and nonsensical rulings from the GOP justices become routine.

If the U.S. Supreme Court denies the petition to hear this case, Wisconsin's Voter ID law will be reinstated. If the Court hears the case, the law remains enjoined pending the judgement of the Court.

Numerous other challenges to state Photo Voter ID laws enacted by Republicans could also be heard before the Court singly or in consolidation.

The ACLU's press release on its and other litigants' petition before the Supreme Court is reproduced below:

WASHINGTON – The American Civil Liberties Union today filed a petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review a federal appeals court ruling upholding Wisconsin's voter ID law. The ACLU is challenging the law, which a federal judge struck down as unconstitutional and in violation of the Voting Rights Act last April. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that decision, but in October the Supreme Court placed the law on hold as the case winds its way through the courts.

Dale Ho, director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project, said:

"Efforts to restrict access to the ballot demand a full and thorough hearing, which is why we are asking the Supreme Court to review this case and ultimately strike down Wisconsin's voter ID law. Throughout years of litigation, Wisconsin has failed to identify a single instance of the type of fraud this law purportedly seeks to prevent. At the same time, it is absolutely clear this law would prevent thousands of voters from exercising the most fundamental right in our democracy. The Supreme Court has an opportunity now to help protect the right of all Americans to vote free from undue burdens."

Karyn Rotker, Senior Staff Attorney for the ACLU of Wisconsin, said:

"We will continue to take all possible steps to ensure that all Wisconsin voters can exercise the right to vote - even if they are poor or homeless or disabled or for whatever other reason lack ID."

The ACLU challenged the law on behalf of numerous Wisconsin voters, charging the measure violated the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

The ACLU, the ACLU of Wisconsin, the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty and Dechert LLP are co-counsel in this case, Frank v. Walker. The Supreme Court petition was jointly filed with the League of United Latin American Citizens, represented by Arnold & Porter and the Advancement Project.

Bottom Line: Republicans Are Against Democracy

Update II: Civil Rights icon Lewis' backed bill would automatically register most to vote

Update: Wisconsin's Scott Walker is not repulsed by the GOP notion -- proposed to be enshrined in law -- that a minority of voters ought to legally defeat a majority of voters for president. Walker says he’s open to considering the GOP electoral college vote rigging scheme

The voter obstruction programs of the Republican Party across the nation in the last election ought to have made clear Republican Party's hostility to the democratic foundation of the our republic.

The Republican Party has tried to prevent as many undesirable people from voting, as it could for years.

The Democratic Party has no such voter disenfranchisement program.

For the Democrats, a citizen's right to vote is sacred.

Now, Republicans in Virginia and other battleground states are pursuing an effort to rig the election for GOP presidential nominees by dismantling the majority-of-citizens'-votes-prevails practice in states' electoral college votes.

Republicans gerrymand the congressional districts and then allocate electoral votes based on gerrymandered maps. Statewide popular votes total would no longer matter.

So, Obama winning the popular vote in Republican-rigged states would nevertheless result in Obama gaining a substantially less electoral vote total, throwing the election to the Republicans.

This is unAmerican; and one hope for a backlash against this shameful and unAmerican effort.

WA Gov Signs Voting Rights Restoration Act

Giving more people the right to vote. Wonder what the GOP will say about the idea nationally.

From the Brennan Center, WA Governor Signs Voting Rights Restoration Act

Gov. Gregoire signed a bill restoring the right to vote to people living with criminal records, and eliminated the requirement that people pay all fees and fines, plus hefty surcharges and interest, before becoming eligible to vote. 'Simply put, the right to vote should never hinge on one's wealth or economic status,' says Erika Wood, Director of the Center's Right to Vote Project. 'The Voting Rights Restoration Act now eliminates this modern-day poll tax in Washington.'

Voting Rights Argued Today

Update: Jon Greenbaum, legal director, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights: "As Congress found just a few years ago when it underwent a searching inquiry into the continuing need for key provisions of the VRA, Section 5 continues to be a critical element in preventing discrimination in voting across the country. While Section 5 has done a tremendous job at empowering all eligible voters to participate in the democratic process, its work is not complete."
And from SCOTUSblog:

Early on in the discussion of the 'bailout' option, Justice Kennedy commented that the Court has 'some latitude' in interpreting the law, and hinted that the Court might use that discretion to find a way to make it more practical for a government unit subject to the law to conduct its elections. He also suggested, later, that if the 'bailout' provision were found to be 'an illusion,' the Court might make 'a construction of the Act' that would make it work.

A focus on Kennedy’s reaction was evident, after other Justices clearly seemed to be lining up — perhaps in equal but opposing blocs — on Congress’ power to keep Section 5 on the books for another generation.

If, in fact, it turns out that there are four votes to strike down the extension of Section 5, the question would remain whether Justice Kennedy would be willing to put himself in the position of providing a majority to invalidate a statute that even he conceded had been 'very effective.' He provided some reasons to doubt that he would — if there were an acceptable alternative . And, in the past, he had said that racial bias is a continuing problem in American society.

Suddenly, I feel less optimistic on this case than at the beginning of the day.

---The U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments in a potentially landmark case challenging Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and its 2006 congressional reauthorization.

Most Republicans hope for a Court decision that would declare certain voting districts free of the mandates of Section 5 helping to fight racial discrimination.

The plaintiffs challenge the Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006) (reauthorizing Section 5) in Northwest Austin (Texas) Municipal Utility District Number One v. Gonzales (08-322)).

Many argue more broadly that since we just elected a black president, we don't need voting rights protection.

Those taking this position [Not Rep. James Sensenbrenner. See Voting Rights Act has passionate, strong advocate in Sensenbrenner (Marrero, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel).] take it without any sense of history, like the last presidential election.

GOP voter suppression

The GOP used every voter suppression trick in the book to obstruct voters, like blacks, who looked likely to cast their lot against the GOP.

And the GOP tried to cover the suppression program with outlandish cries of "(perpetrat(ion) of) one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy," as John McCain ludicrously asserted. See Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast's Drinking the Kool-Aid: How Cries of Voter Fraud Cover Up GOP Election Theft.

In Wisconsin, we had Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen's (John McCain 2008 co-chair) voter obstruction program.

Van Hollen's obstruction suit was tossed out of court, with the judge noting (p. 13) that federal election law still recognizes the force of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, much to the chagrin of Republicans. That judge also ruled that voting was not conditional on bureaucrats' lists matching perfectly, as the Republicans argued here.

Some 50 percent of blacks in Milwaukee County would fail that GOP-desired mandate, forcing them to cast provisional ballots.

From Andrew Hacker's piece in the New York Review of Books (September 25, 2008).

A Wisconsin survey published in 2005 was more precise (in the GOP effort to prevent Democratically-voting blacks from voting). No fewer than 53 percent of black adults in Milwaukee County were not licensed to drive, compared with 15 percent of white adults in the remainder of the state. According to its author, similar disparities will be found across the nation. [1] [[1] John Pawasarat, The Driver License Status of the Voting Age Population in Wisconsin (University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Employment and Training Institute, June2005), p. 1.]

Voting Rights Act

When Congress reauthorized the Voting Rights Act in 2006, it found an array of obstacles to minority voting nationwide.

As a New York Times editorial notes today:

The election of the first African-American president last year was an undeniable sign of racial progress. But even that breakthrough cannot ensure that legislative districts will not be gerrymandered, voting rolls purged or election procedures modified at the state and local levels in ways that diminish the rights of minorities. For that, as Congress wisely recognized, we still need the Voting Rights Act.

The GOP knows it cannot win without obstructing the American people from voting. That its attempts are failing will not stop their shameful assault on Americans.

The case before the Court today may be decided on a more abstract question of congressional authority (and not on a Test of History v. Progress), or a Justice Roberts-imposed changed standard of judicial scrutiny that would weaken civil rights protection. but it looks likely that the latest foolish endeavor to weaken civil rights legislation will fail.

See SCOTUSBlog for updates.