A trial over Wisconsin’s voting laws kicked off Monday with a former aide to a Republican state senator testifying that GOP senators were “giddy” over the prospect the state’s 2011 voter ID law could keep some people from voting. Todd Allbaugh, who worked at the time for then-Sen. Dale Schultz (R-Richland Center), said some senators expressed a lack of enthusiasm to take up the voter ID legislation early that year during a private meeting of Republicans. Sen. Mary Lazich (R-New Berlin) then made the case for the bill, he testified. “She got up out of her chair and hit her fist or her finger on the table and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got to think about what this would mean for the neighborhoods around Milwaukee and the college campuses,'” Allbaugh said.
Schultz said they ought to consider what they would be doing to people’s ability to vote, according to Allbaugh. That elicited a response from Glenn Grothman, who at the time was a state senator and now is a member of Congress.
“Grothman said, ‘What I’m concerned about here is winning, and that’s what really matters here. … We better get this done quickly while we have the opportunity,'” Allbaugh said. “I’ve characterized it as giddy and that’s part of what bothered me so much,” Allbaugh testified.
Allbaugh named two other senators — Leah Vukmir and Randy Hopper — as being gleeful over passing the bill. “They were politically frothing at the mouth,” he said of Vukmir and Hopper, who lost a recall election a few months after the voter ID law passed.
Full Article: Ex-GOP staffer says senators were ‘giddy’ over voter ID law.