Early Voting Begins in Wisconsin

Madison, Wisconsin —  The Meadowridge Library early-voting site on Madison's southwest side saw the first trickle of voters casting their ballots late this morning.

It's a sight sure to annoy Republicans here as much of the early-voting electorate held in disfavor — non-Republicans and minorities — look likely to their cast votes at variance to what the the GOP regards as proper.

Judge Frank Easterbrook, the Republicans' go-to judge on the U.S Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, penned a bizarre opinion in this appellate circuit now overrun with Republican-nominated judges.

Easterbrook writes that statutory discrimination against minorities is not discriminatory if discrete demographics vote in similar political fashion and reside prominently in urban jurisdictions, Luft v Evers; One Wisconsin Institute, Inc. v Jacobs, (Nos. 16-3003, 16-3052), (Marley, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel). 

The opinion, in part, reinstates Republican-enacted restrictions on early, in-person voting. So, early voting began today, instead of late Sept. 

No matter, the massive pro-voting campaign by private and public interests blunts any depressive effect on turn-out here, as envisioned by Easterbrook.

We've issued 106,564 absentees, of which 82,309 are returned to be counted, including 4,542 cast at our in-person absentee sites, and 2,865 returned via drop box. We have 189,244 registered voters, including 29,524 who've registered since the Aug. Primary. #MadisonVotes2020

— Madison WI Clerk (@MadisonWIClerk) October 22, 2020

The nonpartisan counteroffensive against Republicans is joined by election clerks in metro voting districts notes In These Times, pointing to public-private partnerships that have emerged in reaction against the Republican Party, (WISC-TV).

This pro-voting phenomenon is a consequence of the most comprehensive and outrageous attack on voting rights in some 50 years by the Republicans.

In-person absentee voting continues today!

Find a location & time that works for you. Options available thru Nov 1: https://t.co/G7sxxnYQ62.#MadisonVotes2020 #vote #elections2020 pic.twitter.com/6ipEsGqgQ8

— Madison WI Clerk (@MadisonWIClerk) October 21, 2020

Pandemic-Caused Mail-in Ballot Push Reduces Effect of Frank Easterbrook Opinion Against Voting Rights

Madison, Wisconsin — Wisconsin pro-voting advocates are urging citizens to act now in an effort to help voters cast their votes and have their votes counted.

Public and private initiatives protecting this foundational right come as anti-voting forces aligned with the Republican Party use the COVID 19 crisis, litigation and sabotage of the U.S. Post Office to decrease voter turnout.

Prior to the Coronavius COVID 19 pandemic, Wisconsin voting rights workers noted with concern a then-pending voting rights case, decided in June 2020, Luft v Evers; One Wisconsin Institute, Inc. v Jacobs, (Nos. 16-3003, 16-3052).

Judge Frank Easterbrook, the anti-voting forces' go-to judge on the U.S Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, penned a bizarre opinion in this appellate circuit now overrun with Republican-appointed judges thanks to Senate Democrats' and Pres Obama's political incompetence.

Easterbrook writes that statutory discrimination against minorities is not discriminatory if discrete demographics vote in a similar political fashion and reside prominently in urban jurisdictions, Luft v Evers; One Wisconsin Institute, Inc. v Jacobs, (Nos. 16-3003, 16-3052), (Marley, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel). 

So, Easterbrook reasons, the Voting Rights Act and the First Amendment lose force if people who can be measured by the same ethnicity, also vote in an identical political fashion as targeted by statute.

Easterbrook reinstated Republican-enacted restrictions against early voting.

But the pandemic makes in-person, early voting a risky proposition.

Now, a massive, pandemic-induced absentee-ballot effort seeking to overcome other Republican anti-voting efforts likely will blunt the effect of anti-early-voting efforts like Luft by promoting early, mail-in ballots.

This pandemic, second-order effect on voting rights thus can be seen in isolation this election cycle as a happy accident following Luft v Evers; One Wisconsin Institute, Inc. v Jacobs.

Though Luft v Evers; One Wisconsin Institute, Inc. v Jacobs reinstated Republican-enacted restrictions on early, in-person voting, the decision is likely to have less importance now that a massive push for mail-in absentee voting has been launched after the pandemic hit.

The nonpartisan counteroffensive against Republicans is joined by election clerks in metro voting districts notes In These Times, pointing to public-private partnerships that have emerged in reaction against the Republican Party, (WISC-TV).

Justices on 7th Circuit Do Duty for Racist GOP — Slash Voting

Wisconsin voting rights workers worked to defend citizenss against
Republican-enacted voter obstruction laws. Molly McGrath (L), a
voting rights attorney with the ACLU, works with Madison residents
to get the IDs they need to vote under Wisconsin’s restrictive
voter-ID law. (Courtesy of Molly McGrath)

Madison, Wisconsin —You should have seen Wisconsin voters streaming into metro voting precincts after a voting rights victory in the Summer 2016, (One Wisconsin Institute v. Jacobs, [Thomsen] (16-3091).

With black hair and dark skin, voters sometimes teamed-up with white women just to stick it in good folks' collective face; and ole-time Wisconsin values looked frayed as Gov Scott Walker (R) was knocked out of office in 2018.

Used to be, you only had to deal with black folks at Bucks games and visits to the Milwaukee Zoo. Now, you can find black folks in Fond du Lac marching down the street like they own the place.

God-fearing racists need not have worried.

Judge Frank Easterbrook is the racists' ace in the hole, though Easterbrook, and his propensity to play with loose with facts, proved an unpunctual card to play in Luft v Evers; One Wisconsin Institute, Inc. v Jacobs, (Nos. 16-3003, 16-3052), voting rights cases decided June 29, 2020, (Marley, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel).

Easterbrook's job, as he sees it, is to diminish voting rights, and devise new ways for Republican legislators to stop minorities to vote.

Reports Rick Hasen, election law expert, on Easterbrook's I-see-no-racism-here June 2020 opinion from the Seventh Circuit: [Hasen's analysis should result in a code-red response, as 2020 will be the most comprehensive voter-obstruction project since the Civil War].

[W]ith no explanation for the 3-year delay ... overall this is a very voter-unfriendly decision (and I say that not necessarily because of the holdings but because of the dismissiveness of the panel’s approach to voting rights issues and what it means for future challenges).

Some details:

This appeal is complicated: it comes from two separate cases where various election laws were challenged as unconstitutional, a violation of the Voting Rights Act, or both. Some of the decisions of the lower court judges were inconsistent, and some of the issues, came up to the 7th Circuit in earlier challenges to the voter id aspects of the law.
Judge Easterbrook, as is his style, gives breezy and superficial treatment to many of these voting issues, making the three year delay in a unanimous case all the more inexplicable.

The opinion starts out with a very troubling discussion of Judge Adelman’s findings that some of these restrictive Wisconsin voting laws were passed with racial and partisan animus. The 7th Circuit found little direct evidence of racial discrimination and then suggested, in a very troubling way, that making it harder to vote on the basis of party is perfectly acceptable. ('If one party can make changes that it believes help its candidates, the other can restore the original rules or revise the new ones. The process does not include a constitutional ratchet.'). In support of this terrible idea, Judge Easterbrook cites the Rucho case from the Supreme Court, which held that there are no judicially manageable standards to separate permissible from impermissible consideration of party in redistricting. But that did not carry over into voting rules, like rules for early voting, and the Supreme Court has never held that partisan animus provides a legitimate basis for discriminatory voting rules.

Making matters even worse, Judge Easterbrook dismisses without analysis the argument that discriminating against Democrats when so much of the party is made up of racial minorities can in some circumstances be a form of racial discrimination. ('The record does not show that legislators made any of the changes because Democratic voters are more likely to be black (or because black voters are more likely to support Democrats). The changes were made because of politics.').

What Easterbrook's dismissive opinion does is give the green light to Republicans to stop as many black and brown people as possible from voting, as long as their party-line-enacted statutes and elected Republicans do not explicitly state 'stop black and brown voters.'

Two U.S. District judges in Wisconsin see Republican voter obstruction differently.

For example, Judge James Peterson writes in One Wisconsin Institute v. Thomsen, [Jacobs] (16-3091).:

[I] find that 2013 Wis. Act 146, restricting hours for in-person absentee voting, intentionally discriminates on the basis of race. I reach this conclusion because I am persuaded that this law was specifically targeted to curtail voting in Milwaukee without any other legitimate purpose. The legislature’s immediate goal was to achieve a partisan objective, but the means of achieving that objective was to suppress the reliably Democratic vote of Milwaukee’s African Americans. Thus, I conclude that the limits on in-person absentee voting imposed by Act 146 fail under the Fifteenth Amendment, as well as under the Anderson-Burdick analysis.

In sum, Wisconsin has the authority to regulate its elections to preserve their integrity, and a voter ID requirement can be part of a well-conceived election system. But, as explained in the pages that follow, parts of Wisconsin’s election regime fail to comply with the constitutional requirement that its elections remain fair and equally open to all qualified electors.

No rational person in Wisconsin disputes that the intent and effect of the Republican transformation of Wisconsin election law is to obstruct voters, except Easterbrook and fellow Republican judges on the Seventh Circuit.

So, for example, Waukesha County clerk Kathleen Novack (R), commenting on increased early-voting hours, opined in May 2016, that there "too much access to the voters as far as opportunities," (The Capital Times).

Novack added, when asked about increased municipal early-voting efforts in Madison and Milwaukee: "There has to come a point where it’s just giving over-access … to particular parts of the state." Novack wanted to stop early voting opportunities for Madison and Milwaukee, where most black and brown people live here.

Wisconsin Republicans know that four new Trump-appointed judges to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit—vetted by the Federalist Society to whom Trump outsources vetting of judicial appointments—will sustain the Republican Party position against voting rights.

Stopping non-Republican voters from voting is a strategic initiative for Wisconsin Republicans.

The  grave threat to democracy is existential. See See Twenty of America's top political scientists gathered to discuss our democracy. They're scared. "If current trends continue for another 20 or 30 years, democracy will be toast."

In less than three months in late September, absentee voting begins for the November General Elections.

Republicans know their only chance for victory is to suppress the total vote of non-Republicans, a commitment about which they hold no shame, and that Frank Easterbrook supports on the bench, (Wisconsin State Journal).

And Wisconsin racists are happy.

Wisconsin Voting Rights Supporters Hit GOP Suppression Action in Madison

Madison, Wisconsin—Wisconsin Republicans have implemented an offensive against voters through the GOP-led Dept. of Transportation's planned closing of two accessible DMV centers that will be consolidated into a new complex sited on the far-west side of the city.

Many voters seeking the Republican-approved photo voter IDs would have to obtain this Republican-prescribed qualification to vote at the relatively inaccessible, new DMV building.

The City of Madison, voting rights groups, and Dane County legislators have all condemned the GOP plan, (Wisconsin State Journal).

The Republican move is part of a long Republican voter obstruction project aimed at suppressing unwanted voters.

Wrote Brook Soltvedt, president, League of Women Voters of Dane County in Madison.com:

Transit-dependent citizens must visit the Division of Motor Vehicles to obtain a Wisconsin ID card for voting.

Who are our most transit-dependent? Students, the elderly and disabled, racial minorities and economically challenged citizens.

A study from the UW–Madison Center for Elections Research showed that about 17,000 registered voters in Dane and Milwaukee counties were deterred from voting in the November 2016 election because they either did not have a valid ID, or believed that they did not have one -- even if they did.

Meanwhile, on the national Republican voter-obstruction front, a federal judge has ordered an end to the 35-year-old consent decree against the Republican National Committee's 'ballot security' activities implemented to intimidate minority citizens from casting votes.

Below is the text of the letter from Dane County legislators to Secretary Dave Ross, Wisconsin Department of Transportation.
---
Secretary Dave Ross, Wisconsin Department of Transportation
Hill Farms State Transportation Building
4802 Sheboygan Avenue
Madison, WI 53705

Dear Secretary Ross,

As you know, on January 3, 2018, the City of Madison filed a civil rights complaint against the Wisconsin Department of Transportation over the decision to cease providing Division of Motor Vehicle Services at the Sheboygan Avenue and Odana Road locations and to consolidate those offices in a new location at 8417 Excelsior Drive.  As members of the Madison area legislative delegation, we share the concerns of the City of Madison and urge you to take steps necessary to resolve the issues the city raises in its complaint.

While the Odana Road and Sheboygan Avenue locations are readily accessible by bus, public transit near the proposed Excelsior Drive location is very limited. It is not reasonable to expect a person without a car to spend over two hours for bussing and transfers and up to an hour waiting for the arrival of a bus to take them home. Additionally, most service utilizes a bus stop nearly half a mile away, posing challenges for individuals with disabilities or those traveling with children. Due to the move and consolidation of locations, a simple errand to the DMV could take substantially more time and effort to complete for people residing in neighborhoods predominantly comprised of the elderly, racial minorities, and lower income families.

Additionally, the Excelsior Drive location is not pedestrian or bicycle friendly. Both the Odana Road and Sheboygan Avenue locations are served by a number of safe and accessible routes for pedestrians and bicyclists. However, the Beltline Highway will serve as a barrier for individuals who accessed the former locations on foot or by bicycle.

Given the current state voter ID law, reduced accessibility to the DMV is particularly alarming. In this case, those who lack transportation to get to the new location are likely to be the same individuals who are most likely to be disenfranchised.  For low-income individuals, minorities, and disabled individuals who rely on public transportation, this move will increase barriers to accessing the facility and various DMV services.

As we had similar concerns to those raised by the City of Madison, staff from Representative Subeck’s office contacted your office earlier this fall to inquire about plans for the move and to share our concern that access to services could be diminished because the new facility is underserved by public transportation. Since that time, your office has never been back in touch with us about the move until we received your January 2 press release. Perhaps if the Department had engaged legislators after we contacted your office, the problems raised by the city could have been addressed before now.

We want the Wisconsin Department of Transportation to recognize that the complaint filed by the City of Madison has merit. Corrective measures need to be taken to ensure Madison residents in need of a driver’s license or state identification card do not face unnecessary and sometimes costly barriers.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Lisa Subeck                            Terese Berceau                        Jimmy Anderson
State Representative            State Representative            State Representative
78th Assembly District          77th Assembly District          47th Assembly District

Chris Taylor                            Melissa Sargent                         Fred Risser
State Representative            State Representative            State Senator
76th Assembly District          48th Assembly District          26th Senate District

Mark Miller
State Senator
16th Senate District
#

Leading White Supremacist Pushes Voter Fraud Lie for Trump Admin

The Raft of the Medusa, Théodore Géricault (1791–1824)
The Raft depicts the real-life tragedy of the doomed 1816 journey
of the remains of the 19th-cenutry French frigate that saw the
gruesome death of some 400 human beings—doomed by
malevolence, incompetence and arrogance in a historic act
of indecency captured by an appalled and fascinated Géricault.

Trump's propaganda aimed to mobilize American whites for self-defense

Following Republican and only Republican howls of voter fraud comes voter suppression, an attack on the foundation of American democracy.

Though many Americans require no reason for the enactment of state laws obstructing the votes of blacks, browns and other latent criminals trying to pass themselves of as good Americans, the voter fraud lie is employed by every anti-voting rights activist from Donald Trump to state Republican Party hacks to local polling workers.

There simply is not enough room here for immigrants and minorities, who anyway do not enjoy a claim to living in the United States; this is a widespread sentiment which Trump seeks to exploit.

It does appear that the national mainstream press has had enough of the Republican nonsense on voter fraud. Witness the Sunday news shows last week as a senior Trump administration racist was forced to confront facts in an apparently new journalistic-political terrain, (This Week, (McGraw, ABC News)).


The Trump administration's Stephen Miller appeared on This Week was challenged in a manner not typically seen on the utter lack of evidence supporting Donald Trump's made-up claims of massive voter fraud.

For an important summary of the American political culture from Slate Magazine, see Jamelle Bouie:

Trump’s birtherism didn’t just feed anti-Obama distrust and paranoia among conservative voters. It helped feed a sense of grievance—a feeling that their country had been hijacked by nefarious forces, and they needed to take it back. And whether Trump realized it or not at the time, it also helped till ground for his eventual presidential campaign and its message of nativist anger and racist hostility. It is now important to remember all of this, as Trump and his backers stoke another conspiracy theory, aimed at delegitimizing a different set of opponents.

Since November, Trump and his allies have adopted a similarly false and conspiratorial take on the election, claiming without evidence that millions of unauthorized immigrants voted in the presidential race, handing a popular vote victory to Hillary Clinton. 'In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,' declared Trump just a few weeks after the election. He doubled down on this claim during the presidential transition, repeating it during a meeting with lawmakers and subsequently announcing a 'major investigation' into said fraud. In recent days, the president has given a new twist of specificity to his claims of voter fraud, telling a group of Senate Republicans and Democrats that illegal voters from Massachusetts were responsible for Clinton’s win in New Hampshire.

On Sunday, Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to the president, offered his own support for Trump's claims. 'This issue of busing voters in New Hampshire is widely known by anyone who’s worked in New Hampshire politics,' said Miller in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. 'It’s very real. It’s very serious.' Despite being repeatedly pressed for evidence on this claim, Miller said, 'This morning, on this show, is not the venue to lay out all the evidence.' This is what someone says when he doesn’t have the goods. 

No, Miller, Trump and the rest of the Republican Party do not have the goods.

What they do possess is bad intentions that is a grave threat to the American people.

Do not be surprised if you see contemporary brown shirts such as the Milwaukee cops who had recently set a special unit to drive around black neighborhoods, (replete with a command center), until the unit was later disbanded.

Trump Civil Rights Division Expected to Target Voting

Update: State and municipal corruption now have a free hand in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Ethics Commission, a titular election watchdog, member, Robert Kinney has resigned in disgust.

Reports Jason Stein: "Kinney said that in a private session the commission has already declined to take action on a complaint that he believed merited it."

"If financial or ethical improprieties are leveled, or allegations of quid pro quo corruption are made, they must be thoroughly and timely investigated, and, if warranted, aggressively prosecuted. Sadly, it appears we have created a system which almost guarantees that this will not occur," Kinney said in a statement Monday (Stein, MJS), (Capitol Newspapers).
 ---
Too many in American political culture fail to recognize that President-elect Donald Trump does not believe in the foundational liberty of voting rights.

We can expect a devastating assault on the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice in the Trump adminstration.

As noted at the United State Department of Justice, the Civil Rights Division was enacted in to uphold civil rights against municipal and state incursions on individual liberty:

The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, created in 1957 by the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, works to uphold the civil and constitutional rights of all Americans, particularly some of the most vulnerable members of our society. The Division enforces federal statutes prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, disability, religion, familial status and national origin.

Time to get to rid of that liberal know-it-all stuff.

Via the Election Law site:

Sam Bagenstos for The American Prospect:

Voting Rights. After the Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby County decision cutting the heart from the Voting Rights Act, states formerly covered by the statute’s preclearance requirement initiated a wave of new vote-suppression measures. Other states also adopted voting restrictions in advance of the 2016 election. The Civil Rights Division responded with an aggressive program of lawsuits that limited the worst abuses, even if these lawsuits were not always successful.
I expect the efforts to attack voter suppression to end in the Trump administration and the division instead to bring new lawsuits that will themselves be designed to suppress the vote. A provision of the National Voter Registration Act (commonly known as the Motor Voter law) requires states to maintain up-to-date voting rolls. Many conservative commentators—including leading right-wing voices on voting issues like Adams and von Spakovsky—believe that the voting rolls in many jurisdictions fail to comply with that provision because they contain people who died, moved out of the jurisdiction, or otherwise are not eligible voters. I expect the Trump Civil Rights Division to bring suits under that provision in places with large minority, youth, or other Democratic-leaning populations. The goal of these lawsuits will be to trim the voting rolls.

Trimming the voting rolls, an achievable objective when democracy is weak.

Republicans Got What They Want in Wisc DMV Clerks Deciding Who Votes; Fight's Not Over

Thank you Ruthelle Frank and Eddie Lee Holloway Jr.
for sticking up for our rights in 2011 and beyond, (ACLU)

Wisconsin Republicans frustrated, confused and blocked voters: Mission Accomplished

Wisconsin is better than North Carolina in voting rights, but that's nothing to brag about.

For the some 300,000 registered voters without a Republican-approved voting ID, Wisconsin voting rights activists face a situation where DMV clerks, intrepid students of the Constitution, are making value decisions about who gets to vote.

The result and Republican Party objective is voter confusion, frustration and obstruction.

Writes EPWisco this weekend: "We hope DMV now following correct rules - u should be able to get ID w/whatever docs u have. Let us and @VoteRiders @votermolly know [if] u can't[.]"

From February 2015, consider the unthinkable state of affairs (also seen from 2011) we face today, we did not get here by accident:

[from 2015] If Republicans and Scott Walker get their way, [they did], DMV clerks will make the decision on whether 10,000s of Wisconsin citizens get to vote, exercising the clerks' "discretion in a constitutionally sufficient manner." [Frank v. Walker, p.36]

Election law expert, Rick Hasen [in 2015], says Wisconsin voting right activists make a persuasive case for the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the Wisconsin photo voter ID case, Ruthelle Frank v. Scott Walker and League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) of Wisconsin v. Barland.

Hasen notes the timing and disposition of the Wisconsin voting rights case facing the U.S. presidential elections next year, and the five-to-five split of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit pitting Judge Easterbrook's opinion with Judge Richard Posner's.

"This case comes to the Court with an extensive trial record, an exhaustive district court decision, and a pair of diametrically opposed Seventh Circuit opinions by Judges Easterbrook and Posner." [p.11 of 2015 Reply Brief]

If the Supreme Court does not grant cert, the GOP-passed bill signed into law by Scott Walker would become effective.

From Wisconsin voting rights activists' Reply Brief filed [in 2015]:

...The district court identified other problems with the saving construction [by the Wisconsin Supreme Court]. A voter applying for photo ID “must still provide ‘[w]hatever documentation is available which states the person’s name and date of birth,’ and then the [DMV] administrator, in his or her discretion, may accept or reject ‘such extraordinary proof of name and date of birth.’” App. 197a (quoting Wis. Admin. Code § Trans. 102.15(3)(b), (c)). To guide DMV clerks, the Wisconsin Supreme Court offered this cryptic instruction: ‘the administrator, or his or her designee, shall exercise his or her discretion in a constitutionally sufficient manner.’” Id. (quoting NAAC, 851 N.W.2d at 279). It is unthinkable that the right to vote could depend on the “constitutionally sufficient” exercise of discretion by a DMV clerk. See Louisiana v. United States, 380 U.S. 145, 153 (1965) (voting rights “cannot be obliterated by the use of laws ... which leave the voting fate of a citizen to the passing whim or impulse of an individual registrar”).  [p. 14]

Repulsive work by Republicans and bureaucrats.

Ari Berman's Strange Infatuation with James Sensenbrenner

Updated - Ari Berman's persistent pretend games that Wisconsin Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-White People) is a voting rights champion long ago passed the point of absurdity.

Today, Berman continues his descent, following a host of progressive writers who are working to enshrine mandatory photo voter ID as the cost of passing the Voting Rights Act amendment bill.

Why doesn't Berman just be straight with readers and make plain Berman's end-game strategy, a strategy that includes pretending Sensenbrenner is anything but a racist clown?

Writes Berman in The Nation:

More recently, GOP Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner led the effort to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act in 2006; he’s one of the few Republicans working to restore the law after the Supreme Court gutted it in 2013. 'I would rather lose my job than suppress votes to keep it,' Sensenbrenner wrote in The New York Times in March.

Only 14 congressional Republicans have cosponsored Sensenbrenner’s Voting Rights Amendment Act.

Berman will say and ignore any and everything to see this piece of trash legislation get a vote in the judicial committees.

Berman cites Sensenbrenner’s 'I would rather lose my job than suppress votes to keep it,' without comment. Some facts:

Sensenbrenner's effort to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in 2006 began after George W. Bush and Karl Rove decided the reeling Bush needed the VRA passed.

As described in Gary May's Bending Toward Justice - The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy (Gary May, Basic Books, 2013) Rove and Bush did one hell of a job of conjuring LBJ in the White House, and as noted by May and Joseph Morgan Kousser cajoled Congress into passing a 25-year reauthorization in the Republican-controlled Congress.

Writes May:

(D)uring his second term Bush found it necessary to court black voters. The president's slow response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, which hurt blacks disproportionally and revealed again the presence of widespread poverty in the South, damaged Bush's standing. In an attempt to recoup his political fortunes as congressional elections approached in 2006, Bush turned to the black community. On a trip to Memphis visited the Loraine Motel and stood on the balcony where Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968. He also agreed to address the NAACP's annual convention, which he had ignored for six years. There Bush was received coolly but won a standing ovation when he expressed his support for the Voting Rights Act, urging congress to enact it then, one year before it was due to expire. This was not simply rhetoric. Behind the scenes Bush's staff encouraged Republicans, who now controlled both houses of Congress, to extend the Act. And this time the Republican congressional leadership in both the House and Senate were receptive to such appeals because if you weren't a southerner, there was no political payoff for attacking the now-iconic Voting Right Act. (pp 273-274)

So, then House Judiciary Committee Chair Sensenbrenner was going to defy Bush and Rove on the Voting Rights Act reauthorization of 2006?

Sensenbrenner's contemporary bill to restore the VRA explicitly protects photo voter ID from scrutiny under his proposed VRA amendment.

Some comments previously noted in these pages about the 2015-16 Voting Rights Amendment Act authored by Sensenbrenner:

The Voting Rights Amendment Act specifically protects the Republican Party's most important voter obstruction weapon—the restrictive photo voter ID law used by Republican-led states to obstruct the wrong kind of voters from casting their preference at the ballot bin/machine.

Reads Sensenbrenner's 2015-16 bill in the Congressional summary:

Excludes from the list of violations triggering jurisdiction retention authority any voting qualification or prerequisite which results in a denial or abridgement of the right to vote that is based on the imposition of a requirement that an individual provide a photo identification as a condition of receiving a ballot for voting in a federal, state, or local election. (emphasis added)

Photo Voter ID has been exposed for what it is, a scheme to obstruct people from the polls who are likely to not vote Republican. See Judge Richard Posner's extraordinary 2014 "On Suggestion of Rehearing En Banc" in the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit on Wisconsin photo voter ID bill; (Posner, Frank v. Walker), (Mal Contends), (Brad Friedman) ( Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times).

Judge Richard Posner's extraordinary
2014 On Suggestion of Rehearing En Banc, (p. 17).
Suggestion failed five to five, green-lighting
Wisconsin's photo voter ID law after the U.S.
Supreme Court failed to grant cert. Since 2014,
strict photo ID laws have spread even more.

So why would a Congressman who says he cares about voting rights protect state voter obstruction? Because that congressman, James Sensenbrenner, is a liar.

Civil rights activists, including the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, have supported iterations of Sensenbrenner's bill in the past, hoping, I am told by a civil rights activist, the photo voter ID language would be amended out.

Sure, that's going to happen under Republican House leadership.

Said Sensenbrenner in 2014 in a townhall meeting in Rubicon, Wisconsin in his district: "The good part about the Voting Rights Act modernization is that I got a provision in there that basically gets Eric Holder out of going after photo ID laws," the 18-term Badger State congressman claims on the undercover video, (National Review), (James O'Keefe).

Sensenbrenner's posturing in the New York Times that he is risking his his lilly-white and segregated congressional seat is ludicrous. As is Berman's using Sensenbrenner's posturing without comment.

Sensenbrenner's also said in 2104, "I hope the president vetoes the bill. ...If the president vetoes—well, let me rephrase that – if the president vetoes this bill, he will lose an awful lot of the African-American support that he has," (Roth, MSNBC), (James O'Keefe).

Why would a champion of the Voting Rights Act want the U.S. DoJ to not retain any jurisdiction over states' voter obstruction?

Sensenbrenner Defends Texas and Wisconsin's Voter Obstruction

If Sensenbrenner's duplicity were not sufficiently clear, consider as well Sensenbrenner's outspoken support for two of the nation's most restrictive photo voter ID laws in Texas and Wisconsin.

Sensenbrenner, one of the few serving in Congress who opposed the federal holiday for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, had this to say about Texas' vile photo voter ID law in 2103:

"I regret that the Department of Justice announced its intent to file a lawsuit against Texas’ Voter ID law citing Section 2 to the Voting Rights Act. The Texas legislature passed Voter ID, and Governor Perry signed this legislation into law in 2011. Voter ID laws are an essential element in protecting the integrity of our electoral process and do not have a discriminatory intent or effect," (Mal Contends).

More Sensenbrenner Mendacity

As noted in these pages, there are of course serious efforts to protect voting: The Pocan-Ellison Right to Vote Amendment. Sensenbrenner supporting this mega-voting rights guarantee, and going against his Party's voter obstruction project is as likely as Sarah Palin winning a Nobel Prize in physics.

Sensenbrenner said Republican voter obstruction efforts such as Wisconsin's, are "common-sense efforts to ensure the identity and citizenship of voters," (July 2012) (Mal Contends).

There's more Sensenbrenner lies and hypocrisies of course, too many to list.

For example as noted here, Sensenbrenner's Wisconsin colleague in the House, Mark Pocan (D-Madison), specifically called out Republicans in Wisconsin and other states for obstructing voters in 2103.

Sensenbrenner should join Pocan.

Pocan has introduced a Constitutional amendment that would guarantee citizens' right to vote, protecting Americans against the ever-changing voter obstruction efforts now plaguing our nation, and committed by one political party—the Republican Party.

Pocan's amendment would also change the balance of power -- by altering the legal calculus for showing voters' rights are violated -- in favor of voters. As Pocan said, "There is no explicit right to vote in the Constitution. If we had an explicit right to vote, any state that passes a law that makes it harder to vote would have to prove that they’re not harming someone’s ability to vote rather than the opposite. Right now a person has to prove that they’ve been harmed by a state law. And it really changes the burden of proof on those states that pass these laws that really make it harder for people to vote," (Mal Contends).

Sensenbrenner refuses to join Pocan, both in condemning voter obstruction at the state level, and in refusing to support Pocan's proposed Right-to-Vote constitutional amendment.

Instead, Sensenbrenner toes the GOP line on state Republican voter obstruction efforts, to repeat, calling the obstruction, "common-sense efforts to ensure the identity and citizenship of voters," (July 2012).

What Sensenbrenner is pursuing is a cynical inside/out con game in which Sensenbrenner takes no political risks in appearing to seek to repair the eviscerated Voting Rights Act, while supporting Republican voter obstruction efforts on the state level.

One hopes this anti-American effort to obstruct the vote is stopped in its tracks, and Sensenbrenner's deplorable hypocrisy is revealed.

As for Shelby,the Supreme Court will reverse this clearly untenable decision, explaining in part why the Republican Senate is working so ferociously against Supreme Court nominee, Judge Merrick B. Garland, (White House).

Time to face the facts, the Democratic Party and civil rights establishment will sell out voters.

Fight Against Republican Voter Obstruction Continues

Fighting Republican efforts to "to disenfranchise voters likely to vote for the political party that does not control the state government," (Richard Posner, Frank v. Walker).

Since 2011 Wisconsin Republicans have engineered mandatory photo voter ID and dozens of other election laws to obstruct as many non-Republican voters as possible.

This is an imperfect method of voter obstruction, but one which demonstrably is used to suppress the total number of voters likely to cast non-Republican votes.

Voting rights advocates are pursuing many actions against Republican voter obstruction laws enacted across the country by Republican-led states to achieve desired electoral outcomes for a favored political party, the Republican Party.

One action pursued by voting rights workers is in the federal court system, in which voting rights attorneys make legal claims under the Fourteenth Amendment and Section Two of the Voting Rights Act.

North Carolina

On June 21 in North Carolina, a federal judicial panel in the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, heard oral argument in North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP; Emanuel Baptist Church; Covenant Presbyterian Chruch; Barbee Chapel Missionary Baptist Church, Inc.; Rosanell Eaton; Armentia Eaton; Carolyn Coleman; Jocelyn Ferguson-Kelly; Faith Jackson; Mary Perry; and Maria Teresa Unger Palmer v. Patrick Lloyd McCrory, et al (2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 55712).

The voting rights plaintiffs challenge North Carolina's Republican-enacted voter suppression law, North Carolina House Bill 589 (2013), a comprehensive voter obstruction effort composed of many of the voter obstruction initiatives used in Wisconsin, Texas and other Republican-led states.

The North Carolina case is fast-tracked.

Gov. McCrory is an anti-voting rights Republican governor working to stop minority and college-aged voters from voting in an effort to consolidate Republican political control of North Carolina.

Voting rights advocates are watching North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP v.
Patrick Lloyd McCrory to gauge the federal courts' inclination to uphold Fourteenth Amendment claims of liberty and Due Process against incursions by Republican-led states.

North Carolina has a sordid and violent racist history of lynchings, beatings, Jim Crow laws and other liberty-destroying practices aimed at black citizens which leave minority populations particularly vulnerable to voter obstruction efforts.

Now, Latinos and college-aged voters join blacks in being targeted for exclusion from voting by Republican voter obstruction laws in North Carolina.

Anna Baldwin, an attorney with the Voting Section, Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Dept of Justice, argued on June 21 the "cumulative" consequence of numerous North Carolina Republican voter obstruction provisions has both the intent and effect of obstruction of minority and college-aged voters in North Carolina.

Other voting rights attorneys arguing the case, (16-1468), before the federal panel include Penda Hair and Allison Riggs who spoke to the discriminatory intent and effect of North Carolina's voter obstruction law.

Three voting rights cases were ordered consolidated for trial in 2015: North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP v. McCrory; League of Women Voters v. North Carolina and United States of America v. North Carolina.

Earlier this year Republican U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder allowed the North Carolina obstruction laws to take effect.

The federal panel hearing the case is composed of federal judges: Diana Gribbon Motz, James A. Wynn Jr., and Henry F. Floyd.

Wisconsin cases before the federal courts are One Wisconsin Institute v. Nichol (U.S. District Court of the Western District of Wisconsin (Case 15-cv-324)) and Frank v. Walker.

As with North Carolina, Wisconsin Republicans are hostile to minority and college-aged citizens who vote against Republicans.

Republicans Escalate War on Voting Rights

Why Is It So Hard to Vote In America and What Can We Do
to Fix It - Brennan Center for Justice

Having eviscerated critical provisions of the Voting Rights Act in 2103, (Shelby County v. Holder, Cornell), Republicans across the nation are targeting voting rights through state legislation.

This is a continuation of the years-long multi-state, Republican-led attack on voting.

Federal litigation against two swing states' anti-voting rights laws show the Republican efforts to make voting as difficult as possible, akin to navigating the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) if a voter can find a local office open.

Ohio 

"For the second time in two weeks, a judge in Ohio has struck down provisions of the state’s voting laws. Federal district court Judge Algenon Marbley said two laws passed in 2014 violated the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection with laws that made it too easy for provisional ballots to be thrown out for 'trivial' errors," come reports from Ohio (see Graham, The Atlantic).

Wisconsin

From Wisconsin: U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman rejected Republicans' motion (made through the Wisconsin Dept. of Justice), to halt judicial consideration of the restoration of voting rights for citizens who have difficulty obtaining the Republican-crafted range of acceptable voter IDs, another Republican-imposed pre-condition to vote (WBAY-TV News, AP).

Republican suppression strategy on voting rights is to pass laws making voting as difficult as possible for disfavored classes of voters, then oppose and seek to stall all litigation seeking to secure voting rights for the targeted classes of voting.

This is what is being addressed in the federal cases, Ruthelle Frank, et al. v. Scott Walker and One Wisconsin Institute v. Nichol.

The Republican strategy comes as Scott Walker and legislative Republicans have changed the administrative law process of rule-making into a Republican-Party political operation.

An effective method to stop Republican-disfavored Wisconsin voters is to make obtaining necessary voting IDs conditioned on the whim of the state Department of Motor Vehicles personnel.

In Wisconsin, residents who literally die waiting on the DMV to issue acceptable voter IDs have engaged in "customer-initiated cancellation," (Opoien, The Capital Times).

The successful ACLU response to the Wisconsin Republicans' DoJ's June 6 motion in Ruthelle Frank, et al. v. Scott Walker, et al. is reproduced below.

Republicans sought to stay (halting a trial or other legal proceeding), the voting rights advocates' work to prevent "vulnerable voters from being disenfranchised in the rapidly-approaching elections on August 9 and November 8, 2016."
---
ACLU response to the Wisconsin Republicans' DoJ's June 6 motion in Ruthelle Frank, et al. v. Scott Walker, et al

 June 6, 2016

via ECF (Electronic Case Files]

The Honorable Lynn Adelman
362 United States District Courthouse
517 East Wisconsin Avenue
Milwaukee, WI 53202
Re: Ruthelle Frank, et al. v. Scott Walker, et al., Case No. 11-cv-1128

Dear Judge Adelman,

We represent Plaintiffs in the above-captioned case, and we write in opposition to Defendants’ letter filed today.

This Court should deny Defendants’ last-minute request to stay this case, which has been pending for five years and was filed four years before the One Wisconsin case.

Plaintiffs will soon be filing a motion for preliminary injunction to prevent vulnerable voters from being disenfranchised in the rapidly-approaching elections on August 9 and November 8, 2016.

The motion will provide sufficient time for the Court to rule, and for any necessary changes to be implemented in advance of those elections.

Defendants’ remaining requests related to discovery scheduling issues should be addressed after Plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary injunction is resolved—that is, after the imminent, irreparable harm to Wisconsin voters has been addressed (and prevented).

The outcome of Plaintiffs’ motion may greatly impact how remaining discovery is structured, to the extent that any is even necessary.

Defendants lastly raise various substantive arguments in the letter that can be addressed in the context of Plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction.

Plaintiffs intend to seek class certification in conjunction with their motion for a preliminary injunction, at which point Defendants can respond.

Defendants’ opposition brief can also fully address their latest attempt at evading constitutional liability, the new administrative rule Wis. EmR1618, in response to Plaintiffs’ motion. As Plaintiffs expect to demonstrate, this “new” rule is unlikely to alleviate the unreasonable burdens faced by Plaintiff class members. After five long years of DMV involvement, it is now clear that a bureaucracy designed to regulate driving has no business being the gatekeeper for our democracy.

This Court should deny Defendants requests and, Plaintiffs respectfully request, act quickly on Plaintiffs’ imminent motion for a preliminary injunction. [links added]

Respectfully,

s/ Sean J. Young
Sean J. Young
Attorney for Plaintiffs
American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, Inc.

Bizarre Republican Polemics Defending Voter Obstruction

Even in the courtroom Republican defenders of voter obstruction substitute polemics for constitutional reasoning as Republicans refuse to close out project attacking voting rights

Republican defenders of voter obstruction often use virtually identical language to defend state laws that "disenfranchise voters likely to vote for the political party that does not control the state government," to borrow a phrase from Judge Richard Posner.

Posner's extraordinary 2104 On Suggestion of Rehearing En Banc is a veritable judicial white paper explaining Republican state efforts to suppress voters, (Posner, Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit), (Friedman, The Brad Blog), (Mal Contends).

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, the Republican Party's point man on Republican voter obstruction in his state, announced yesterday his office filed an appeal in the voting rights case, Ohio Organizing Collaborative v. Jon Hustad (Case No. 2:15-cv-1802), (Ohio Secretary of State).

Said Hustad, "To ensure we were fulfilling our goal of making it easy to vote and hard to cheat, we expanded weekend and weekday hours for in-person absentee voting as part of a compromise for the reduction in hours that came with the elimination of Golden Week," (Hustad, Ohio Secretary of State) (emphasis added). Hustad terms the Ohio Organizing Collaborative case the Ohio Democratic Party et al v. Husted, using Republican Party polemics contradicting the federal judge hearing the case on the title.

Easy to vote and hard to cheat.

This phrase may sound familiar to Wisconsin politicos. That's because the Republican Gov. Scott Walker often uses the phrase (or a derivation) when trying to defend voter obstruction in Wisconsin.

"In our state we have a photo ID requirement that would make it easy to vote and hard to cheat," Walker told reporters last year at Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst's Roast and Ride event, (CBS News, June 6, 2015) (emphasis added).

From Ohio to Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and across the country, Republican voter obstruction operatives such as Hans von Spakovsky, and John Fund employ the phrase as a justification for voter obstruction laws such as Wisconsin's. Catchy phrase but vacuous as an argument.

Bizarre

In Wisconsin, the Republican case for voter obstruction as made at the bench trial of One Wisconsin Institute v. Nichol (U.S. District Court of the Western District of Wisconsin (Case 15-cv-324)) has veered into the vacuous and the bizarre.

Novack Doctrine

One witness for the Republicans, Waukesha County Clerk Kathleen Novack, testified at One Wisconsin, saying, "too much access to the voters as far as opportunities" to vote exist 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.

Schimel Doctrine

Republicans at the Wisconsin Dept. of Justice also kept up their line of reasoning that photo voter IDs are popular with citizens who possess the Ids, hence Wisconsin's restrictive law conditioning the right to vote on presenting Republican-approved photo voter IDs is both popular and Constitutional, (Mal Contends). This is the Schimel Doctrine, so named after Wisconsin's current Republican attorney general.

The Schimel Doctrine that voting restrictions' constitutionality is conditioned on polling numbers was ridiculed by a Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit's three-judge panel in 2014.

"What conceivable relevance is a polling number to this litigation?," said Judge Frank Easterbrook, a voting rights opponent and author of the 2014 opinion upholding Wisconsin's photo voter ID law in Frank v. Walker.

Testimony has concluded in One Wisconsin. Closing arguments are scheduled for June 30.

One Wisconsin Institute

Below is a press release from the One Wisconsin Institute on the conclusion of testimony.

Testimony Concludes in Federal Voting Rights Trial Challenge to Republican-Led Attacks on Electoral Participation in Wisconsin

Intentions of Five Year Campaign to Undermine Voting Rights and Impacts of Voter Suppression Schemes on Legal Voters Exposed

MADISON, Wis. — Testimony concluded today in the federal voting rights trial, One Wisconsin Institute et. al. v. Gerald Nichol et. al., which challenges the state voter ID requirement, changes to voter registration requirements, limits on early voting and other restrictive changes to Wisconsin’s election laws adopted by Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican-controlled legislature.

Plaintiffs argued that the changes were meant to and have the effect of making it more difficult to vote in Wisconsin, especially for minorities, young people, and voters who tend to support Democratic candidates.

The following are the statements of One Wisconsin Institute Executive Director Scot Ross:

“The testimony and evidence provided to the court exposed the intentions behind the myriad of election law changes and revealed the impacts on voters of the five year assault on their rights perpetrated by Gov. Walker and the Republican-controlled legislature.

“Gov. Walker and Republican legislators set out to make it harder for minorities, young people and voters who tend to support Democratic candidates to participate in our elections. As a result, legal voters have been denied the franchise, and will continue to be denied their right to vote unless their suppression schemes are struck down.

“The real voting fraud in Wisconsin has been exposed, and it is these politicians manipulating the rules on voting to give themselves an unfair partisan advantage.

“Their actions have subverted our democracy and violate federal law.”
# # #
One Wisconsin Institute is a non-partisan, progressive research and education organization dedicated to a Wisconsin with equal economic opportunity for all.

Ohio Voter Suppression Law Held Unlawful, Opinion Points Way for Wisconsin Voting Rights

Black folks just love the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments
of the United States Constitution. But will they ever get that
Republican Party-enacted state laws against voting are really
for the greater good of the country?

Thursday, May 26, 2106 is the last day of trial in One Wisconsin v. Nichol, a major voting rights case challenging Republican voter suppression laws in Wisconsin.

Yesterday, a voting rights case in Ohio, signaled what could be a major development for voting rights federal litigation, in favor of the voters against Republican efforts to obstruct voters held in disfavor by Republicans state legislators and governors.

The Ohio case is Ohio Organizing Collaborative v. Jon Hustad (Case No. 2:15-cv-1802) heard by U.S. District Judge Michael H. Watson who issued his 120-page opinion finding a voter suppression law blocking an in-person early voting ritual in Ohio, Golden Week, to be in violation of the United States Constitution and Voting Rights Act.

The Voting Right Act is a law first passed in 1965 to enforce the 15th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.

The Ohio case is heard in the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

Writes Judge Watson:

EIP [early in-person] voting in homogenous black blocks was 4.316 times higher than homogenous white blocks in 2008… 4.4476 times higher in 2012… usage rates of Golden Week specifically were far higher among African Americans than among whites in both 2008 and 2012… In other words, in 2008, for example, ‘the rate of voting early in person during golden week is three and a half times greater in homogenous black blocks than homogenous white blocks.’

One Wisconsin v. Nichol 

In the Wisconsin voting rights case, a series of voter suppression laws enacted into law by Wisconsin Republicans since 2011 are challenged as violative of the Voting Rights Act and the United States Constitution.

Argue the plaintiffs, One Wisconsin Institute and Citizen Action of Wisconsin Education Fund, as noted at Election Law at Moritz:

Count I: Violations of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act
Count II: Undue Burdens on the Right to Vote in Violation of the First Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment
Count III: Disparate Treatment of Voters without a Rational Basis in Violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment
Count IV: Partisan Fencing in Violation of the First Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment
Count V: Abridgment or Denial of the Right to Vote on the Basis of Race in Violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Fifteenth Amendment
Count VI: Abridgment or Denial of the Right to Vote on the Basis of Age in Violation of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment

Wisconsin Republicans

Wisconsin Republicans in the politicized Wisconsin Department of Justice argue, (among other points), that because Wisconsin's photo voter ID law for example is popular in their view, it is also constitutional, a bizarre argument used in two federal voting rights cases by Wisconsin DoJ Republicans, (Mal Contends).

Wisconsin Republicans also present protestations at trial by municipal clerks—representing white, Republican suburbs in Milwaukee's hyper-segregated greater urban area—who said  Republican-enacted election laws help the adminstration of elections. The clerks did not explain how or why.

Wisconsin Republicans also argue that the high voter turn-out in the April 5 Presidential Primary disconfirms the voting rights advocates' challenge of GOP-enacted election laws. DoJ Republicans suggest laws designed to suppress the vote of the non-Republican-voting electorate should be judged on their effect on total voter turn-out and not individual classes of voters such as Latinos, blacks, and college students, a talking point rather than a solid legal argument, (MediaMatters). Consider the hypothetical. If most voters were able to pay a $10 fee to vote, would the successful overcoming of the $10 burden mean that such a hypothetical law is not a violation of the 24th Amendment outlawing polling taxes?

The vast minorities of blacks in Wisconsin live in Milwaukee and southeastern Wisconsin, (Wisconsin Dept. of Heath Services), or as Paul Ryan and fellow Republicans like to point out: The "urban" areas.

In Wisconsin, urban means Milwaukee, Kenosha and Racine counties. Along with Dane County, these four counties comprise some one-third of Wisconsin's 2012 presidential election voting total.

The GOP stops enough 'urban' people voting, and they win.

Republican-enacted laws cut early voting from 30 days before Election Day to 12 days, cut the hours during which voters may cast early voting, (in-person, absentee voting), and restrict early voting to one location per municipality, in the name of uniformity. The city of Milwaukee with a population of 599,164 can only have one early voting location, just like the village of Lannon with a population of 1,092. Most blacks in Wisconsin are concentrated in Milwaukee and southeastern Wisconsin, and it's clear what Republicans aim to achieve: Voter suppression.

If U.S. District Judge James Peterson adopts the logic of Judge Watson, it is likely Peterson will find the Republican laws attacking early voting disproportionately affect minority voters, (2013 Wisconsin Act 146), for example.

The bench trial is scheduled to conclude on Thursday, May 26 and is being heard by U.S. District Judge James Peterson.

Wisconsin Voting Rights Trial: GOP's DoJ Is Back to Citing Polls as Constitutional Argument

Wisconsin Republican Party, DoJ Keep Citing Polling in Federal Litigation

At oral argument in the voting rights case, Frank et al v. Walker et al (No.: 14-2058), heard at the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in August 2014, Wisconsin DoJ Assistant Attorney General Clayton Kawski argued Wisconsin's restrictive photo voter ID is constitutional because results of a polling question on voter ID, (Marquette University Law School), showed more Wisconsin citizens favored voter ID than opposed it, (14-2058, Ruthelle Frank v. Scott Walker oral argument, civil,  09/12/2014) (2-minute, 34-second mark).

This argument on voting restrictions' constitutionality conditioned on polling numbers was ridiculed by the Seventh Circuit's three-judge panel.

"What conceivable relevance is a polling number to this litigation?," said Judge Frank Easterbrook, a voting rights opponent and author of the opinion upholding Wisconsin's photo voter ID law.

Seconds later after Judge John Tinder asked Clayton Kawski if popular laws can be unconstitutional, Kawski was forced to backtrack and admit the irrelevance of a polling figure to the constitutional questions.

One Wisconsin Institute v. Nichol 

The polling argument today is back at another Wisconsin voting rights trial, One Wisconsin Institute v. Nichol (U.S. District Court of the Western District of Wisconsin (Case 15-cv-324).

Notes Scott Ross, One Wisconsin Institute Executive Director on Facebook: 

So on day five of our vote trial, I have had my fav moment. The defense, [the Wisconsin DoJ], was asking our expert witness about her research on the absence of voter fraud in Wisconsin elections and noted 'polls show people support voter ID.' Our attorney came back with 'polls show some people believe our president is a Muslim,'

Polling figures as the basis for the constitutionality of laws designed to destroy the vote.

Now, that's a novel argument, but good enough for the Republican Party of Wisconsin and its adjunct operation in the Wisconsin Dept. of Justice.

Why is the Republican Party's DoJ advancing this discredited argument?

Scott Walker, Wisconsin Republicans Exposed as Frauds at Voting Rights Trial

A long-time and now-ex Fitchburg, Wisconsin chief election inspector voted in the Wisconsin Spring Election and Presidential Preference election held on April 5, 2016.

Al Potts resigned from the contract position because he wanted no part of perpetuating a fraud on voters through the imposition of Scott Walker and the Republicans' photo voter ID law because the law is intended to suppress voters and render voting as burdensome a process as possible, (Woodward Communications, Inc.).

After exchanging pleasantries with his former colleagues on April 5, Potts had to produce an acceptable photo voter ID to prove he really was Al Potts, a political moderate active in municipal and civic politics, but publicly apolitical in state and national politics.

Potts and voting rights advocates have been proven correct in their assessment of the Republican-enacted law which was found constitutional by Republicans on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in February 2104, and in federal court where a challenge to the law failed on a five-to-five vote at the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in late 2104, (Sommerhauser, WISC-TV), (Mal Contends).

The U.S. Supreme Court denied the petition to grant cert challenging the constitutionality of Wisconsin's voter ID law as a qualification to vote in March 2015, (USA Today).

A federal trial that began May 16, 2106, (One Wisconsin Institute v. Nichol), for the first time introduces evidence of the intent of Republicans to use photo voter ID to block voters by citing the words of Republican legislators, particularly citing voiced intent to frustrate and destroy the vote in "Milwaukee" and on "college campuses" to help win elections for Republicans, (Sneed, TPM; Opoien, The Capital Times).

A motion to hear testimony, evidence and exhibits citing the public and private words of Republican lawmakers to use the voter ID law to win elections by blocking disfavored voters was granted by U.S. District Judge James Peterson on May 13.

On May 16, testimony by one witness, former Republican staffer Todd Allbaugh, offered what appears to be just the beginning of devastating evidence against Wisconsin Republicans' illegal and outlandish intent at the trial.

Al Potts joins voting rights activists, and Judge Richard Posner of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in sounding the alarm about Wisconsin Republicans' destroying votes in Republicans' "efforts to disenfranchise voters likely to vote for the political party that does not control the state government," (Posner, Frank v. Walker).

The bench trial is scheduled to end on Thursday, May 26, 2016, (One Wisconsin Institute, Inc., et al v. Nichol, et al, p.1).