Just to follow up on Ed’s entry from yesterday, I’ve got some thoughts on the Voter ID legislation being pushed through the legislature by Republicans.
For all their talk about balancing the state’s multi-billion dollar structural deficit, Republicans in the State Senate and Assembly don’t seem too concerned about adding nearly $6 million in costs to the state’s bottom line in order to solve a something that has never been proven to be a widespread issue in Wisconsin (emphasis mine):
Wisconsin’s bill, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, would cost more than $5.7 million to implement. The measure would require voters to use a driver’s license, state ID, military ID, passport, naturalization papers or tribal ID at the polls. Student IDs would be allowed, but would have to include a current address, birthdate, signature and expiration date. Currently no college or university ID used in the state, including UW-Madison, meets those standards.
Despite no evidence to prove widespread vote fraud here in Wisconsin – and not for a lack of trying by investigators – Republicans still seem to think voter ID and its multi-million dollar price tag is necessary.
Where’s the logic in that?
Republicans have to declare voter fraud is a serious problem because it diverts attention from the real problem: election tabulation fraud. Each of the voting machines were designed by companies owned and managed by Republican partisans. As a designer myself, I contend, that the various “problems” in recording, tabulating, and storing votes are elemental and deliberate to the design. In other words, the machines were designed to be manipulated. In addition, many political operatives within the election system, like staff of Boards of Elections, are partisan and, without representation from non-partisan citizens or Green and Independent parties, have developed- unchecked- procedures, some obvious others more subtle, that serve their party and not the citizens.
Ed Muskie said in 1972 “There are only two kinds of politics, the politics of fear, and the politics of trust.” The American electoral system is fraught with problems but we move on blithely believing the vote is sacred.
There have been cases of voter fraud and without voter id who knows how much more and it will be a deterrent for it. Only people or groups that have something to fear are fearing voter id. It is the checks and balances to the voter rolls and whom is voting. Several audits have shown people who are dead signing up, wrong addresses and such and please drop the fake it cost money line. Why are we recounting again? Who paid for it?
We had fair honest elections before the liberals and conservatives came along.
Olaf,
You need a nap.
Olaf, you are either being facetious or you clearly did not read any of the recent posts. Voter fraud is illegal and has been for a couple of centuries. It’s also existed for that long. The points being made are that there is a lot of money about to be thrown at a solution that does not have a problem, that does not prevent what still happens, and that will disenfranchise innocent eligible voters. As Palli said, we have a much bigger problem (by orders of magnitude) with election administration than we ever had with voter fraud. And we will keep pounding the right with facts until they have nowhere else to run.
Rich, I hope your right, unfortunately reality has never been a deterrent to republican policy
Can’t be fix both so the whole process is correct?
I have no problem showing my ID. I have to when I check out books or DVD’s at the libary or when I buy my cigs.
The use of the library…buying alcohol…cashing checks…none of these are constitutionally protected rights.
As I have previously stated…laws being promoted during the current legislative session in Madison will make it easier for me to shoot you than to vote for you.
I never show my id when I check out books at the library, I show my library card….sometimes I dont have mine and show my wifes and sometimes the grandparents take the kids and show either mine or my wife’s….is that what your suggesting we do for voting Donny? I have also not shown my id to buy beer(i dont smoke) in 20 years. Nor have i ever shown an Id to write a check,
On the bright side, folks: The legal challenge will likely be successful.
Turns out the Wisconsin Constitution and subsequent statutes place a high value on Wisconsin citizens going to the polls, vested with this franchise of deciding what to do with our state. If I may: See
http://malcontends.blogspot.com/2011/05/stop-gop-voter-obstruction-bill.html
I have to show ID to buy a gun!
one of the concealed carry laws won’t require you to have a permit or training to carry it…
you do in fact have to show some form of ID to register to vote…
And you dont think you should have to donny?
I do and I think we should for voting. Don’t you want it to be right and fair?
Just got up from my nap as I was told to do! Please tell me how many people you know don’t have a driver’s license or state ID? Mostlikely none!
How much is this recount costing the tax payers? Millions!
Olaf, read the news if you don’t want to believe this site…but the recount will in fact cost somewhere between $1 and 2 million…voter ID between $4 – 6 million in the first two years.
As for people without IDs, I can give you 19 without trying…my 88 year old mother in a nursing home and the 18 nuns in the cloister in the Town of Sumter who made the news last week.
That’s an inconvenient truth for poor Olaf.
Those without state-issued photo identification and who would need to obtain one under the Wisconsin Voter ID bill include:
23 percent of all elderly Wisconsinites over the age of 65
17 percent of white men and women
55 percent of all African American males and 49 percent of African American women
46 percent of Hispanic men and 59% of Hispanic women
78 percent of African American males age 18-24 and 66 percent of African American women age 18-24
[Driver License Status of the Voting Age Population in Wisconsin, 6/05]
I do Donny which is why I am so opposed to this bill, right now Wisconsin has about the most “right and fair” elections in the country!
Aren’t nursing house exempt?
They are under the current bill…but that wasn’t always the case. But the original poster stated that he couldn’t think of anyone who didn’t have a driver’s license or state ID.