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JUST THE FACTS ON VOTER ID
Republicans haven’t won a partisan statewide race that mattered since 1998; the GOP fix is to suppress the Milwaukee vote
by John-David Morgan
April 4, 2005
FACT: 122,797 voting age Wisconsinites do not have a driver’s license or photo ID card, according to the state Department of Transportation (DOT). 85,000 of these citizens -- 70 percent -- are elderly people.
Yet the Republican-controlled state Legislature is ready to send a bill to Gov. Jim Doyle that would require people to present a valid state ID at Wisconsin polls before they can vote. Only four states -- Florida, South Carolina, Louisiana and South Dakota -- require a picture ID for voting.
In Florida, Louisiana or South Dakota, if a person does not have a picture ID on election day, he or she can sign an affidavit affirming identity, and is able to vote. The legislation proposed in Wisconsin (AB63) would not allow affidavit voting. If the Legislature’s Voter ID bill becomes law, Wisconsin would join South Carolina as the states with the most restrictive voting laws in the country.
FACT: Governor Jim Doyle, a Democrat, is preparing to veto the bill, just as he did in 2003, the last time Republicans sent legislation of this type to his desk. As the vote in the Senate approaches, the Republicans don’t have the votes they need to override Doyle in either the state Assembly or Senate. They are two votes short in the Assembly (the Voter ID bill was fast-tracked through the state Assembly on a 64-33 vote); and anywhere from two to three votes shy in the Senate.
The Republican Party of Wisconsin has responded with a ten-day radio advertising blitz, leading up to the expected Senate vote. The ads target the districts of four of the Senate Democrats who voted against the GOP’s 2003 Voter ID legislation: Roger Breske of Eland, Russ Decker of Schofield, Dave Hansen of Green Bay, Julie Lassa of Stevens Point. Throughout the state, Doyle is the target of the ads.
Sen. Decker is on record saying that he will not support the Voter ID law. But Sen. Jeff Plale, a very conservative Democrat from South Milwaukee, is expected to vote for AB63. Plale’s district includes the East Side of Milwaukee, Downtown, Bay View, St. Francis, Cudahy, South Milwaukee and Oak Creek. The Election Protection Coalition, a host of progressive, civil rights and minority voting rights groups allied to stop Voter ID, is calling on Plale’s constituents to let their senator know where they stand on the voting rights.
FACT: The Republicans are pushing Voter ID because the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found that “at least 82 felons illegally voted in Milwaukee in 2004” and calls it “clear evidence of fraudulent voters in the November election.”
“It is now time to put a stop to this outrageous misconduct that disenfranchises honest voters and consistently threatens to hijack elections,” says Republican Party of Wisconsin Chairman Rick Graber, who calls Voter ID election reform “common sense.”
FACT: There has been only one case of prosecuted voter fraud proven in the state of Wisconsin. In the September 2004 primary election, a University of Eau Claire student from Outagamie County voted both at school and at his home address in Outagamie. He had photo ID. Many felons on probation have ID’s, and many have drivers’ licenses. The GOP Voter ID bill does nothing to stop probationers from voting once, twice or three times at different addresses.
“Common sense” says that probationers can more easily get to the DOT and pay their $9 or $6 for an ID than an elderly person, a student in poverty or a homeless person. The Election Protection Coalition and other groups fighting the bill say Voter ID would fail to stop felons from voting but would “limit the ability of the elderly, poor, and students to exercise their right to vote.”
FACT: The Voter ID bill was introduced by state Rep. Jeff Stone (R – Greenfield) in the midst of the Journal Sentinel’s “Cardgate” investigation. [JIM – LINK TO OUR CARDGATE STORY HERE] That Journal probe looked at voter registration cards and found that less than one-half of one percent (0.47 percent) of people voting in Milwaukee had flubbed the registration form so badly that it was “suspicious.” The inability of people to fill out forms properly was not proof that the voters did not have ID’s, only proof that overworked poll workers did not make sure everyone registering on election day filled out the form properly. Milwaukee elections workers processed 277,535 ballots in the 2004 election, more ballots than in any election in over a decade.
Journal Sentinel plunged headlong into the Cardgate voting fraud story – two solid weeks of coverage – and found nothing. Rather than do the responsible thing and embarrassingly admit that there was no story, as Geraldo Rivera did when he found Al Capone’s vault empty, the newspaper has continued to stumble around in the dark, spinning a non-story across the state with screaming headlines. The Elections Protection Coalition calls it “a made-up conspiracy.” In their 2004 election report, the coalition points out that the biggest problems on election day were understaffed polling places, overworked poll workers, and that people had to wait hours to vote at some polling places.
Cardgate,
coupled with “felons voting” (a follow-up of the newspapers 2000-2001 felons voting story) has created the perception that “Milwaukee has a problem” and the Republican Party of Wisconsin is proposing Voter ID as the solution. Milwaukee did have problems handling the flood of voters on presidential election days. Voters’ rights groups again point out that Voter ID does nothing to address those problems.
WHY PROPOSE A LAW THAT FIXES NOTHING?
From a GOP perspective, Milwaukee does have a problem on election days. The people of the city vote Democratic, especially in presidential elections.
FACT: Former Gov. Tommy Thompson was the last Republican to win a partisan statewide election in Wisconsin that was not for the office of the Treasurer. Their last big win was back in the fall 1998, when Thompson beat progressive labor attorney Ed Garvey. In tightly contested races such as the 1998 U.S. Senate race (Russ Feingold vs. Mark Neumann) and the last two presidential elections, the city vote in Milwaukee has overwhelmed Republican candidates.
Incidentally, the GOP’s seven-year drought has coincided with the rise in black voting strength in the state. The Republican hope is to make voting in Milwaukee less convenient. However, as voting rights groups note, Rep. Stone’s Voter ID bill harms senior citizens in rural areas where the DMV isn’t a bus, cab or county van away much more than it does senior citizens or low income people in Milwaukee.
A secondary reason is that Republicans saw an opportunity to begin campaigning around the state against Jim Doyle more than a year before the 2006 governor’s election. The Republican Party of Wisconsin radio ads have a familiar sting – in so many words, “Stick it to Milwaukee,” just as Gov. Tommy Thompson said when rallying support for the new Brewer’s Stadium.
FINAL FACT: The Voter ID bill is so restrictive that homeless people would be all but barricaded from the polls. Lacking an address, homeless people are currently allowed to bring a registered third-party to the polls to vouch for their residency in the ward. AB 63 kills this provision in the law, severely limiting a homeless person’s ability to exercise his or her voting rights as a citizen of the state of Wisconsin.
Cartoon courtesy of
Barbara Luhring -
www.naotrc.com
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