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.

Mitt Romney Committed Voter Fraud—Looks Likely

Brad Friedman breaks another story about Mitt Romney apparently committing voter fraud in the 2010 Massachusetts election that catapulted Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) into office.

Multi-millionaire Romney claims his residence was his son Tag's unfinished basement. See also Forbes and Mother Jones.

This story bears repeating—Friedman first broke it months ago [June 2011 in fact]—as were Romney's 2010 Massachusetts tax records to indicate Romney residency as his son Tag's basement, Romney would be in violation of  Massachusetts' requirements for residency.

Writes Friedman:

To date, there has been no legitimate explanation for Mitt Romney having cast a vote in the January 2010 Special Election for the U.S. Senate between Scott Brown and Martha Coakley. At the time of his vote (which he has admitted doing) he owned no house in Massachusetts, and yet he was registered to vote from the address of his son’s unfinished basement in Belmont, Massachusetts.

While Romney owned houses in both California (purchased in May of 2008 for $12.5m) and New Hampshire (April of 2009 for $3.5m) at the time, it wouldn’t be until July of 2010 — a full six months after the Special Election to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy — that the state’s former Governor would once again own a house there, after purchasing an $895,000 townhouse in Belmont.

The state’s requirements for residency for the purposes of voting are quite clear in Massachusetts. One's residence must be “where a person dwells and which is the center of his domestic, social, and civil life,” according to state law. Yet, the evidence demonstrating that Romney ran afoul of those requirements in order to vote in that election are similarly clear, at least as fairly meticulously compiled by a former Republican Presidential candidate last year.

Romney’s 2010 state tax return, which he still refuses to release, even though he finally released his federal return from that same year, likely shows that he did not pay state income tax in Massachusetts, but rather declared himself to be a New Hampshire resident for its more friendly tax purposes.

Such a declaration, if revealed via his 2010 state tax return, would underscore the apparent fact that Mitt Romney himself is actually a voter fraud felon.

Esenberg, Another GOP Flack, Lies and Lies

Marquette University Law Professor Rick Esenberg is pretending to be upset by a second judge holding the GOP voter suppression scheme to be unconstitutional.

"Why should a court tell the legislature and the governor that this is a law they can't have? That places upon a court the burden of explanation, and I didn't see it in either of these cases," Esenberg groans on WTMJ.

Listening to Esenberg, one wonders if this guy bothered to read the opinions, extolling the primacy of individual rights over government interference.

"[A]s a matter of law under the Wisconsin Constitution, sacrificing a qualified elector's right to vote is not a reasonable exercise of the government's prerogative to regulate elections," writes Judge Richard Niess in his decision that directly addresses the issue Esenberg questions and cites case law going back to the 19th century.

Esenberg should try reading pp 3-10.

The right to vote is extremely well protected in Wisconsin from any legislative and executive intrusion. But this legal fact seems to have escaped the notice of Esenberg.

WTMJ tries to pawn off Esenberg as a neutral "legal expert," knowing fully well Esenberg will spout the GOP line, no matter how disingenuous. In this case, Esenberg seems to have forgotten Article III of the Wisconsin Constitution entitled SUFFRAGE. Oops 

There's a name for a guy who does what Esenberg does; and it's not legal expert: It's hack.

Biskupic Leaving in Disgrace

Stephen Biskupic, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin (2002 - present) has announced that he is resigning in January before the new administration takes office.

Good riddance, though Biskupic allowed that he has amassed a good "track record."

Many Wisconsin Democrats and allies would agree with that positive performance assessment.

But I doubt that Biskupic is sending a Christmas card to the proven-innocent Georgia Thompson this year [see also Biskupic tried to 'squeeze' Georgia Thompson, and Investigate Biskupic].

As Biskupic has played the partisan prosecutor for the Republican "voter fraud" myth during his tenure, one wonders how seriously Biskupic reflects on the several overturned voter fraud cases [see also Voter-Fraud Complaints by GOP Drove Dismissals].

Or how about that Vietnam-era veteran, Wisconsin Navy Airman Keith Roberts, [see also U.S. Attorneys Scandal–Milwaukee] who was convicted for receiving VA benefits after the national VA office launched a vendetta against Roberts for being a pain in their bureaucratic butt, as the VA followed the policy advice of the benefits-hostile American Enterprise Institute scholar, Dr. Sally Satel on benefits for Vietnam-era vets who as a group were not always enthusiastic about that particular bullshit war?

Some parting words for Biskupic from the late US Attorney General and Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson:

"Any prosecutor who risks his day-to-day professional name for fair dealing to build up statistics of success has a perverted sense of practical values, as well as defects of character. ... he can have no better asset than to have his profession recognize that his attitude toward those who feel his power has been dispassionate, reasonable and just."
- Attorney General Robert H. Jackson, April 1, 1940.

Biskupic fails miserably on that score of being reasonable and just.

Let's hope the next US Atty for the Eastern District amasses a better track record.

And if the US Dept of Justice ever again becomes as politicized and corrupt as it has under the Bush administration, the US Attys should leave the DOJ en masse with their integrity in tact and no judicial victims from corrupt prosecutions.

Friedman Rips Apart ACORN Voter Fraud Hoax

Update: See A Dose of Reality on the ACORN Hysteria.

Brad Friedman eviscerates the GOP voter fraud lie aimed at the group ACORN, the Association for Community Organisations for Reform Now.

The crimes of ACORN are as Friedman writes in The Guardian:

... that Acorn managed to register some 1.3 (million) low-income (read: Democratic-leaning) voters over the past two years. The rest is, pretty much, just made up. ... Despite the screaming wall-to-wall coverage of 'Democratic voter fraud in 11 swing states' as seen on Fox News and even the once-respectable CNN, none of it's true

The fact that the GOP is simply engaging in another political lie (that shouted loudly and often enough may get to be heard) is known, but the media feels obligated to repeat GOP propaganda. Writes Friedman:

Acorn verifies the legitimacy of every registration its canvassers collect. If they can't authenticate the registration, or it's incomplete or questionable in other ways, they flag that form as problematic('fraudulent', 'incomplete', et cetera). They then hand in all registration forms, even the problematic ones, to elections officials, as they are required to do by law. In almost every case where you've heard about fraud by Acorn, it's because Acorn itself notified officials about the fraud that's been perpetrated on them by rogue canvassers. Most officials who run to the media screaming 'Acorn is committing fraud' know all of the above but don't bother to share those facts with the media they've run to. None of this is about voter fraud. None of it. Where any fraud has occurred, it's voter registration fraud and has resulted in exactly zero fraudulent votes.

The GOP has its marching orders and that is to scream fraud. Well, fraud is what we expect from that Muslim-city-slicking-Arab-black man's people.

Concludes Friedman:

And where (the GOP) can, they'll parlay it all into new photo ID restrictions at the polls (knowing full well that some 20 million, largely Democratic-leaning voters don't own the type of ID they'd need to jump over that next Republican hurdle.)

Wisconsin has seen this effort up close and personal.

Fortunately, Republican REAL ID legislative attempts have been knocked down by Gov. Doyle who vetoed REAL ID legislation, J.B. Van Hollen's suppression suit looks doomed, so all the GOP can do now is scream and try to smear Obama as $trillions in Americans' retirement savings go up in smoke.

For a comprehensive knockdowns of the voter fraud lie see the Brennan Center.