Update: Van Hollen attorney met with GOP officials before election suit

Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen's fight to suppress the turn-out in the presidential election, specifically aimed at Milwaukee blacks, is drawing howls across the nation.

From Andrew Hacker's piece in the current New York Review of Books.

Obstacles to getting blacks to vote have always been formidable, but this year there will be barriers—some new, some long-standing—that previous campaigns have not had to face. ... 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, June 2005), p. 1.]

It's not that Van Hollen is a racist. It's just that blacks' voting gets in the way of the GOP winning this November, and a Party has to have its priorities.

From Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez’s interview with Queens College political science professor and bestselling author Andrew Hacker.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Hacker, on that issue of the drivers licenses, you go well beyond Indiana. You look at Louisiana. You look at Milwaukee alone. Talk about who has drivers licenses, who has the official ID, and who doesn’t.

ANDREW HACKER: Yes, in the state of—in Milwaukee, just which has a large black population, over half the black residents do not have drivers licenses. You know, those of us who live in Manhattan know that you—many people in Manhattan don’t have a car, but Milwaukee is a kind of, you know, semi-suburban area. They just don’t have them. And they can’t vote. Well, once this, by the way, steps—

AMY GOODMAN: And that’s compared with 15 percent of white adults.

ANDREW HACKER: That’s right. 15 percent of white adults don’t have licenses in—that’s in the rest of the state of Wisconsin. In Milwaukee, over half.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, I’d like to ask you about this issue of the disparate impact, because this question of trying to control or limit the rolls, the voter rolls, is not new in American history. Obviously, the progressive reform movement in the early twentieth century attempted to have municipal reform to prevent immigrant voters, who were then basically the base of the Democratic Party machines in different cities. So there have been battles back and forth throughout American history between those who want to control the size of the electorate and those who want to expand it. So, to what degree do you see this as more racially motivated or more class-based? It’s usually that the poorer sectors of the population are the ones that are being attempted to be restricted.

ANDREW HACKER: Well, of course it’s class-based. The poorer you are, whether you’re white or Asian or whatever race, the less likely you are to have, let’s say, a settled address or a driver’s license. That, we understand. Once again, we get to this disparate impact. And therefore, when I hear, yes, it’s poor people, but then I go and look at the racial, if you like, complexion that’s here. Now, you don’t have your race on a driver’s license, but there’s been research, particularly, as Amy pointed out, in the state of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, to actually find out, in racial terms, how many people have licenses. That required doing more than just looking at names on licenses—well, just names, yes.