vote suppression

Okay, so let Scott Walker and J.B. Van Hollen and the rest of the Wisconsin GOP crowd drone on about supposed vote fraud and the wisdom of the party's Voter ID law (currently stoppered by two courts and counting). Here's the thing: Even some noteworthy Republicans are beginning to come clean and describe the whole issue -- not just in Wisconsin but nationally -- as nothing other than what Democrats have been saying it is: A badly disguised and crudely enacted part of a widespread GOP vote-suppression scheme.

MIke Nichols is a former Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter who is now a regular columnist for that newspaper. He is also a senior fellow with the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, a "nonpartisan conservative think tank" (whatever that means; and so much for the "vast liberal media"). Nichols thinks Tuesday's election suggests everything is just fine with Voter ID, because there were no serious problems with delays at the polls or people being turned away in droves for lack of proper ID.

When just before Christmas the US Department of Justice ruled that South Carolina's new Voter ID law may not be implemented because it amounts to a vote suppression scheme that violates civil rights, we here in Wisconsin could rightly say, "Amen, brother." Because Wisconsin's new Voter ID bill, also enacted by Republicans hoping to suppress the voting opposition, was even more onerous than the measure enacted in South Carolina.

But it's just a moral victory, because, as the American Prospect notes:

Even though the rejection of South Carolina’s law represents a welcome new tone from DOJ, there is little the Obama administration can do to overturn the whole slate of new voter-suppression measures. Section 5 [of the federal Voting Rights Act] only covers nine states and a smattering of counties and townships, allowing states like Wisconsin, Tennessee and Kansas to implement the same kinds of restrictions without federal approval.

We are all GOP nowBev Harris of the excellent not-for-profit group Black Box Voting has been doing some serious research nationwide over the past few months on widespread threats to election integrity in Wisconsin and other states. The results of her work will appear in a five-part weekly report to be released on http://www.blackboxvoting.org throughout the month of September. 

Wisconsin Republicans have "fixed" a virtually non-existent vote fraud problem by forcing upon state citizens an elaborate and complex voter ID requirement. Most experts say Wisconsin's recently enacted voter ID law will serve to make it harder for at-risk populations, students and Democratic-leaning voters in general to choose their elected officials.

We are all GOP nowOthers here and elsewhere have pointed out many times why the Republican Party's recently enacted Voter ID law serves no legitimate purpose other than to suppress voting by Republican opponents. The law requires official ID for voting, and makes it hard to get that ID; it also almost triples the amount of time a person has to reside in a voting district in order to be eligible, thereby disenfranchisng many highly mobile students and other citizens who rent. Ironically, a current and rare court case in which state prosecutors allege vote fraud by one Milwaukee couple offers further proof that the law is superfluous in actually protecting the vote.