Wisconsin will soon have the what’s arguably the nation’s most restrictive voter ID law. The bill was passed through the the Republican-led Senate late last week and is expected be signed into law by Gov. Scott Walker on Wednesday. Voter rights advocates are worried that the new bill will keep some of the Democratic party’s key constituents away from the polls in 2012. And as more bills sweep across the country, concern is growing over the GOP’s push to fix a problem that, statistically, just doesn’t exist.
But that wasn’t a concern of Republican Governor Scott Walker last week when the bill passed the state Senate. “Requiring a photo identification to vote will go a long way to eliminate the threat of voter fraud,” Walker told the Wisconsin State Journal. “If you need an ID to buy cold medicine, it’s reasonable to require it to vote.”
… Many people are worried that sort of consistent voter turn out is in jeopardy because the new voter ID laws will make it too costly to go to the polls. “What it does it it puts the onus on the citizens to do all this legwork, when really voting is a right put into the Constitution,” Marcelo said. And that legwork, he says, doesn’t stop at the price of getting a new ID, which can range in price up to $50. It also requires people to take time off of work or school to stand in line at their local DMV, and the price may increase if a person needs supporting documents, like a birth certificate. The Legislative Fiscal Bureau estimates that if the bill becomes law, it could cost more than $5.7 million to implement, according to the Journal.
For organizers at The League of Young Voters, a civic engagement group that works primarily with low-income youth voters in and around Milwaukee, the bill’s passage came as no surprise. They’ve already been organizing and building a local coalition for months to help get young people ID’s.
Rob “Biko” Baker, executive director of the League of Young Voters, says that the numbers tell the story. Only 25 percent of African Americans and 34 percent of Latinos in Milwaukee County have valid licences, compared to 71 percent of young white adults elsewhere in the state, according to a 2005 report from the Employment and Training Institute at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee.
Those statistics, he says, are crucial to seeing the bigger picture, one that has very little to do with partisan politics. “This is about voter suppression. When our folks can’t vote, we can’t influence the political agenda,” Baker says. “What’s at stake is democracy.”
Full Article: Wisconsin Set to Pass Country’s Most Restrictive Voter ID Law – COLORLINES.