Voting Blogs: Wisconsin Wants You to Register to Vote—Unless You're Poor, or a Person of Color | Project Vote

Partisan lawmakers in Wisconsin are pushing a voter registration bill that is a thinly veiled attack on voter registration drives and the rising American electorate. SB295—just approved by the state Senate Elections Committee in a party-line vote—is being sold as an “online voter registration” bill, as it would make Wisconsin the latest state where citizens can register to vote over the Internet. Project Vote strongly supports online registration, but it is a convenience, not a cure-all: unless it is implemented hand-in-hand with other registration options and protections, it can make existing inequalities in the electorate even worse. And these Wisconsin lawmakers, while offering online registration with one hand, are quietly taking those other options away with the other. SB295 would implement online registration, but only for people who have Internet access and a valid, up-to-date ID through the DMV. Studies have proven that this leaves out a large percentage of the population, particularly young people, older people, poor people, persons with disabilities, and disproportionate numbers of people of color.
And there are several other amendments buried deeper in the bill that could prove disastrous for registration equality in Wisconsin. SB295 makes registrations less portable, for example, removing the current option to transfer an existing registration if you change your name or address. SB295 also makes the window for absentee voting much shorter: the current laws allows ballots to be postmarked by Election Day, but the new law says they would only count if they are received by Election Day.
Most disturbing, however, is that SB295 would entirely do away with “special registration deputies.” This—in Wisconsin—is code for “no more voter registration drives.”
Make no mistake, this bill is just the latest attack on one of the most lasting and vital legacies of the Civil Rights movement: the patriotic act of canvassing neighborhoods and helping community members register to vote. Wisconsin is one of several states that has, since 2008, been invoking misleading and disproven claims about “voter fraud” as a smokescreen for attempts to put voter registration drives out of business.
Full Article: Wisconsin Wants You to Register to Vote—Unless You’re Poor, or a Person of Color | Project Vote.