Meet Ruthelle Frank an 84 year old woman living in Wisconsin. She is one of millions of people who are at risk of losing their right to vote in November as result of wide-ranging state by state efforts to deny people the access to vote. The good news is that after ten months of advocacy by the American Civil Liberties Union, she was able to vote last Tuesday in Wisconsin, but her fight isn’t over yet. A Wisconsin judge declared a state law requiring people to show photo ID in order to be allowed to vote unconstitutional before the primary, issuing a permanent injunction blocking the state from implementing the measure. “Without question, where it exists, voter fraud corrupts elections and undermines our form of government,” wrote Dane County Circuit Judge Richard Niess in his decision. “The legislature and governor may certainly take aggressive action to prevent its occurrence. But voter fraud is no more poisonous to our democracy than voter suppression. Indeed, they are two heads on the monster.”
The troubling news is that it took multiple lawsuits and 10 months to make it happen. And she still may not be able to vote in November. Ruthelle has been voting since 1948 without any problems until the voter ID requirement in Wisconsin was enacted. Now she needs to have an ID from the motor vehicle department, and she needs a valid birth certificate to prove her identity. Unfortunately there is a discrepancy on the spelling of her father’s name and her name on the birth certificate, which could require her to pay in addition in order to prove identity. In the youtube interview she laments, “I may never vote again.”
Full Article: Voter ID requirement: The face of voter suppression and discrimination.