Voter fraud has again become a major issue in Wisconsin campaigns, where the difference between victory and defeat and be in the single digit percentage points. Typically, however, it is the Republicans who want to have voters identify themselves as legit and Democrats wanting to make it easier for anyone to vote…dead people, felons, or even out of state activists.
Republicans continue to fight for Voter ID, which could curb fraudulent voting throughout the state. Democrats cry foul and insist that it will disenfranchise democrats voters, but their insistence that their voters are either to ignorant or lazy to get an free state ID before an election seems a little condescending to those of us who are proud of this country and proud to vote.
Story from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
Madison – State Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen is once again asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to overturn rulings by two judges striking down the state’s voter ID law and to do so in time for the November presidential election.
The photo identification law was not in place for the June 5 recall election for Gov. Scott Walker because two judges in Dane County each separately ruled the law was unconstitutional because, as one judge said, it created a “substantial impairment of the right to vote” guaranteed by the state constitution.
Van Hollen once before asked the state’s highest court to overturn rulings by the two circuit court judges at an earlier stage in the two cases but in April the Supreme Court declined to take the case. Now, the GOP attorney general is trying again.
The Supreme Court is expected to eventually take these cases, but it is unclear if it will do so before an appeals court has ruled on them or in time for the November election.
“No quarter has been given in defending voter ID,” Van Hollen said in a statement. “People in this state are very frustrated that a common sense law enacted by the Legislature and signed by the governor has been blocked.”
Further complicating the issue, two federal lawsuits against the law are currently on hold while the cases in state court resolve themselves.
In one of the state cases in March, Dane County Circuit Judge David Flanagan issued an injunction temporarily blocking the law because the plaintiffs – the Milwaukee branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera – were likely to succeed in their arguments. Flanagan made that injunction permanent in the 20-page decision he issued in July.
Another Dane County judge, Richard Niess, permanently blocked the voter ID law in March in a case brought by the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin. To get the law reinstated, voter ID supporters need to get both orders lifted.
In March, following the Dane County judges’ rulings, Van Hollen asked first that the court of appeals and then the state Supreme Court take up both cases to get a quick resolution to them, but the high court declined.
The lawsuits in state court were brought against Walker, who signed the photo ID law, and the state Government Accountability Board, which oversees state elections.
Under the law approved last year by Republican lawmakers and Walker, voters are required to show one of several approved types of photo IDs to vote. It was in place for the February primary but has been blocked by court orders since then.
Flanagan took criticism earlier this year because he signed the petition to recall Walker, who was named in the lawsuit. Niess did not sign.
Van Hollen again asks Supreme Court to take up photo ID law
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Jason Stein
August 21, 2012
