The left-wing, Chicken Little crowd insists democracy is falling in Wisconsin thanks to the state’s voter ID law.
With little hope of winning their legal challenges, liberals are appealing to the state Government Accountability Board to ask the Legislature for hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money to pump up a voter information campaign.
“For the most part, we are stuck with this legislation,” said state Rep. Chris Taylor, D-Madison, Tuesday at the GAB’s monthly meeting. “My goal is to make sure people know what to bring to the polls.” Taylor’s bill to spend $500,000 on GAB-led advertising campaigns failed to move in the Legislature this past session.
The idea is that untold numbers of voters were locked out of the polling booth during Wisconsin’s presidential primary election earlier this month because they did not have appropriate identification. They didn’t have proper ID because they just didn’t understand the “convoluted, confusing” law, according to advocates of the voter education campaign. Voter ID opponents assert the state’s urban areas were hit particularly hard by voter disenfranchisement.
That running narrative couldn’t be further from the truth, according to a top Milwaukee elections official.
‘No problems’
Bob Spindell, a member of the Milwaukee Election Commission, said he spoke to about 60 election chiefs on election night.
“I asked, ‘What about voter ID? How did it work?’ Without exception, every chief said there was no problems with voter ID,” Spindell said in testimony before the Government Accountability Board.
He estimated 10 or 12 voters refused to show their photo IDs at the polling stations in question. When they were told about the law, that they must show an ID or they wouldn’t be able to vote, they complied. Spindell estimated that approximately 10 would-be voters said they left their photo IDs at home. Some went home and returned with identification, some didn’t.
In the city of Milwaukee, Spindell said there were eight provisional ballots provided to individuals who did not have proper ID. Those individuals are allowed to cast a temporary ballot which is recorded when they return with a valid photo ID.
That’s eight out of 160,000-plus votes cast in Milwaukee, Spindell said.
“That’s a pretty good percentage,” he said.
The long lines reported for an election that featured historically high turnout numbers was not the result of the voter ID law, but same-day voter registration.
‘Urgent need’
Andrea Kaminski, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, said the organization trained “approximately 100 observers and placed them at polling sites in cities around the state. Preliminary figures from a League report expected to be released in a couple of weeks “demonstrate an urgent need for vigorous voter education and training of election workers” before the November election, Kaminski said.
She noted that 322 people were “not allowed to register to vote in 175 polling places” while the observers were present. Of those, 183 people were turned away because they did not have acceptable proof of residence, and 24 individuals did not meet the 28-day state residency requirement, she said.
Then Kaminski summed up what the left feels is a failure, and voter ID advocates believe is the success of Wisconsin’s strengthened voter integrity laws.
“Many of these people would have been able to register to vote under the less restrictive laws a few years ago,” she said.
Another 76 people were registered but were unable to receive a regular ballot because they didn’t have acceptable IDs, Kaminski said. Of those, 33 cast provisional ballots and 22 were “offered provisional ballots but didn’t accept them.”
Is that because those would-be voters were not eligible to vote in that district or in that election? Was it because some of them may have been trying to illegally vote? Kaminski didn’t say.
Did the voter ID law in these cases do what is was created to do? Did it stop ineligible voters? Voter fraud?
Kaminski offered the GAB anecdotal stories of people she believes were disenfranchised.
Like a Minnesota transplant who provided proof of residence at an Eau Claire voting station, but didn’t have an acceptable photo ID. Or the disabled Vietnam vet from DeForest who had proof of residence but an expired driver’s license. The man, who is in a wheelchair, was given a provisional ballot, Kaminski said, but he “stated in tears at the polling place that there was no way he could arrange transportation” to go to the Division of Motor Vehicles to update his license and then back to the polling station to provide the proper ID.
It’s important to note that the man’s driver’s license expired in 2014.
What Kaminski and other breathless defenders of the “sacred right to vote” constantly fail to mention is a level of responsibility that goes along with it.
It’s ‘reasonable’
Now Kaminski, Taylor and others on the left are pleading for hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund a statewide voter education campaign.
Republican leadership might be on board with the idea.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, on Wednesday said he would like to review the GAB request “to ensure that the money will be well spent.”
“A photo ID is required for numerous purchases and government services; it’s reasonable to remind voters to remember their photo ID on Election Day,” Vos said in a statement. “It’s clear from the high turnout in the last election that the Voter ID law worked to protect the integrity of our elections while not inhibiting people from voting.”
“I also agree with Governor Walker’s sentiments on this issue. The state has had to utilize taxpayer resources to defend the law in frivolous lawsuits from liberal activist groups who are now asking for additional Voter ID education,” he added.
Spindell said he thinks the proposed voter education campaign is a “complete waste of money.”
“We must point out that this is hard-earned taxpayer money,” the Milwaukee election official said. “I would think this is not worthwhile to do.”
And there already has been an extensive efforts to inform voters about the changes.
Sending a message
Wisconsin’s voter ID law is five years in the making. It has, and continues to be, the subject of left-wing driven court challenges. The U.S. Supreme Court last year refused to hear the case, allowing the law to finally stand. Seventeen states have similar laws on the books.
The state and local governments rolled out a massive public information campaign to let voters know what they needed to vote and how they could access a voter ID. For those who can’t afford it, the state issues a voter ID card free of charge.
“Here at the county level we made a tremendous effort” to alert the public, Milwaukee County Clerk Joe Czarnezki told Wisconsin Watchdog earlier this month. “We placed ads in all the community newspapers, on billboards, in bus shelters in the county reminding people of the photo ID law and the phone number of how to get an ID.”
Czarnezki said bus stops were particularly targeted because that’s where the highest concentrations of people without driver’s licenses are.
The county also launched targeted radio campaigns, reaching younger voters and the elderly where they listen. There were infomercials and ads in movie theaters. Basically everywhere a Milwaukee County voter would be.
“It is a concern so we tried to outreach to those people and make sure they are aware of the law,” the clerk said.
But the voter ID haters won’t take no for an answer.
‘Let’s say …’
Peg Lautenschlager, former state attorney general and the Democrats’ appointee to the state’s new Ethics Commission, grilled Spindell on his testimony – employing suspect numbers as she did so.
“In terms of the 300,000 or so people who did not have appropriate photo ID before, is it fair to say a greater percentage of them live in Milwaukee?” she asked.
“You are saying that 300,000 people don’t have a photo ID?” Spindell said.
“Approximately,” Lautenschlager shot back.
“That’s based on a Brennan (Center for Justice) study done years ago,” Spindell said. “They tried to apostatize on some statistics.”
Lautenschlager scaled back her figures.
“Let’s say it’s 100,000,” she said.
“I don’t think it’s anywhere near that. It’s almost nothing,” Spindell countered.
“Let’s just say it’s 40,000,” Lautenschlager kept on.
As the Heritage Foundation recently reported, the tactic of inflating the number of ID-less voters began years ago during the lawsuits that popped up after Indiana enacted its photo ID law. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld that law in 2008.
“Often, press reporting has not spoken accurately with respect to statistics. For example, even though both the data and reasoning used by a Wisconsin district court judge were later criticized as “questionable” by the Seventh Circuit, the statistics cited by that judge are still widely circulated by ID opponents and by media outlets such as MSNBC in reports about photo ID in Wisconsin,” the Heritage report stated.
Spindell pointed to the myriad publicity campaigns throughout Milwaukee.
“People in the city of Milwaukee know they must have voter ID, and believe me, they know how to get one,” the election official said.
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