Really happy to see this:(pdf)
COMPLAINT FOR DECLARATORY AND INJUNCTIVE RELIEF
Plaintiffs Ruthelle Frank, Carl Ellis, Justin Luft, Dartric Davis, Barbara Oden, Sandra Jashinski, Pamela Dukes, Anthony Sharp, Anthony Judd, Anna Shea, Matthew Dearing, Max Kligman, Samantha Meszaros, Steve Kvasnicka,
Sarah Lahti, Domonique Whitehurst by his mother and next friend Sabrena Putnam, and Edward Hogan (collectively, “Plaintiffs”), who are eligible Wisconsin voters, bring this action to protect their right to vote under the United States Constitution and federal law.NATURE OF THE ACTION
1. This action seeks declaratory and injunctive relief against Wisconsin state officials’ enforcement of 2011 Wisconsin Act 23 (the “photo ID law”), which requires voters in Wisconsin to present photo identification in order to cast their votes either in person at a polling place or by absentee ballot. This requirement will be effective as of Wisconsin’s spring primary on February 21, 2012.
2. This lawsuit seeks a declaratory judgment that the photo ID law is unconstitutional as applied to certain classes of eligible Wisconsin voters, and to enjoin its enforcement with respect to these classes. The photo ID law imposes a severe and undue burden on the fundamental right to vote under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution;
violates the Twenty-Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution as an unconstitutional poll tax; and violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in arbitrarily refusing to accept certain identification documents.
bring this action to protect their right to vote under the United States Constitution and federal law
There’s been so much bullshit heaped on and around the voting process from conservatives and media it’s a real pleasure to read something so clear and plain.
This plaintiff’s dilemma is interesting:
Plaintiff Samantha Meszaros is an 18-year-old Caucasian freshman at Carthage College, an accredited four-year private college in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and an eligible voter. She lacks all the accepted forms of photo ID under the photo ID law, including a compliant student ID card. She currently holds an unexpired driver’s license from the State of Illinois which she does not want to surrender. Ms. Meszaros intends to vote in Wisconsin next year and will vote for the first time in 2012.
And here’s the Wisconsin law:
An individual who resides in Wisconsin and wishes to obtain a free Wisconsin ID card for voting purposes must surrender any valid out-of-state driver’s license he/she possesses. Wis. Stat. § 343.50(1)(b), as amended by 2011 Wis. Act 23 § 130.
A person with a driver’s license from another state who wishes to obtain a Wisconsin driver’s license must pay a fee. Wis. Stat. § 343.21.
There is no fee waiver for obtaining a driver’s license even if that license will constitute the individual’s sole form of accepted photo ID for voting purposes.
They’re so sloppy. It’s almost like they want courts to review a poll tax. They move closer and closer to imposing a poll tax with each new voter suppression law.
h/t to the always-excellent-on-voting-rights-issues, Talking Points Memo
For comparison, here’s the Indiana SCOTUS decision that paved the way for all these increasingly aggressive voter suppression tactics.
Raven
“Jamison, take a letter… To my lawyer, Hon. Charles H. Hungadunga, in care of Hungadunga, Hungadunga, Hungadunga, Hungadunga and MacCormick;, Gentleman-?-(harumph) In re yours of the fifth inst., yours to hand and beg to rep, [ that we have gone over the ground carefully and we seem to believe, i.e., to wit, e.g., in lieu, that despite all our precautionary measures which have been involved, we seem to believe that it is hardly necessary for us to proceed unless we receive an ipso facto that is not negligible at this moment – quotes, unquotes, in quotes … That’s three quotes? Add another quote and make it a gallon … Hoping this finds you, I beg to remain, as of June 9th, cordially yours, regards.” — Groucho
Raven
“You left out a Hungadunga, he was the most important one”!
Raven
Groucho !
Samara Morgan
OWS is on it too.
‘Occupy the Voting Booth’ –thousands march to protect the vote.
David Hunt
I’m not sure that’s sloppiness. I’m worried that they think that the Supreme Court that hears such a case will deiced that poll taxes a fine way to manage elections (so that the right kind of people are the ones that can vote).
garage mahal
Love you Kay. Thanks for highlighting all the fucking bullshit out of Wisconsin.
This is interesting too – http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/noquarter/new-development-in-john-doe-investigation-of-walker-0q3ediu-135554238.html
Another major shoe has dropped indeed
kay
@David Hunt:
I don’t really disagree. Walker had plenty of laws from other states to look at, so he would know how to avoid a poll tax challenge.
The laws get increasingly more restrictive. Virginia is moving to increase requirements to vote, and Ohio tried (and failed) to do the same thing. It’s like they have a number they’re trying to hit.
jibeaux
What the hell is the logic behind making someone surrender their out of state driver’s licenses when they get a Wisconsin ID?
Punchy
I thought a poll tax was the cover charge collected by a strip club….
Steve
@David Hunt: The 24th Amendment bans poll taxes. I’m pretty sure they want to argue that it’s not a poll tax.
kay
@garage mahal:
Ooooh. I love this:
Punchy
@jibeaux: This becomes a big deal for all sorts of reasons. Typically, you cant keep your current car insurance policy if change your DL. So, if your premium is based on driving in rural Southern Illy, and now you’re forced to get a DL in Wisky where the premiums are higher, well, then you’re screwed. Also, car registration now needs to be paid to Wisky, not Illinois, so there’s a revenue aspect here, too.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Thank you Kay for staying on this. They’re not really paying much attention to the mechanics of trying to avoid getting the laws tossed, are they?
And of course, in Ohio, they kind of forgot to be subtle about who was running the redistricting and why. Buncha dipweeds, and not too bright.
PurpleGirl
@jibeaux: I think its the inconvenience factor: Will the student want to lose the home state license which is still useful when they return home. And to make the student jump through hoops by making them do multiple license applications, tests and fees. Major assholes.
PurpleGirl
@Punchy: This makes a lot of sense. Those costs are going to add up quickly.
I don’t drive and I have a NON-driver ID, so there are sides to this I wouldn’t think of.
JGabriel
@jibeaux:
People who break driving laws sometimes get their license revoked. If they have an additional, out of state, license, then a revoked license is less of a hardship.
That’s the reason that is usually given out, anyway, if I remember correctly.
.
jibeaux
@Punchy: Right. But this is not about a WI driver’s license, just an ID. To my mind, there is both no logical reason on WI’s part to make you surrender a completely different form of out of state ID in order to get the only free ID they offer; and they’ve boxed themselves into a major poll tax corner. In order to get an equivalent voter-ID compliant ID to the one you are forced to give up, you have to pay a fee. That’s a poll tax. Sadly, if you’re a voting rights advocate, it’s a good thing they wrote such bad laws. There are ways to write voter suppression laws that will pass court scrutiny, and sooner or later they’re going to figure them out. Personally, I don’t see how these pass the test. Also too, I like how they got a wheelbarrow full of plaintiffs for this.
jibeaux
@JGabriel: It’s a voter ID card, though, not a driver’s license. It’s nonsense.
campionrules
States typically don’t allow people to maintain multiple valid DL’s for different states.
In a lot of cases this has to do with possible suspensions, tickets or infractions and prevents people from jumping state lines and getting a valid ID or DL when they are suspended in another state.
In this particular case – if you are resident of Wisconsin – and the student wants to vote, so she is defacto stating that she is – then she should get a WI ID or DL. If she doesn’t want to, then she should vote in her home state of IL.
I think there are a lot of much more pressing cases that can be used against the Voter ID law than a student who doesn’t want to switch her permanent residency – which you know, is a requirement of voting in your own state.
David in NY
@jibeaux:
To further the state’s legitimate interest in insuring that only actual state residents vote.
The counter may be, “I’m a resident in Wis, but I can drive with my Ill license until it expires, and I want to.” The response may be, depending on Wis law, that once you are an actual Wis resident and want to drive, you have to get a Wis license, and driving on your Ill license is no longer permitted; so since the plaintiff says she’s a Wis resident, she has to get a Wis license anyway, and too bad that it costs money — they’re not charging for voting, they’re charging for driving.
Of course, if the plaintiff says she does not drive in Wisconsin but wants to be able to do so in Illinois without having to pay for a new license, that would thread that needle, if it were true.
This is not all so easy as it seems.
campionrules
@jibeaux:
Well. when students decide to vote they can vote in the state that they are going to school in – in this case Wisconsin. Since residency is a requirement of voting in state wide elections, students typically have to make a choice between absentee voting in their state of origin or deciding to accept residency in the state they are going to school in.
Normally, this precipitates that the State requires you surrender your previous State’s identification as you are no longer a resident of that state and are now a resident of Wisconsin.
jibeaux
@David in NY: I don’t think it’s that hard. I don’t think the state has any legitimate interest in forcing you to surrender a valid out-of-state driver’s license in order to get the only free voter identification available, which is not valid for driving. And I’m not especially swayed by legal arguments premised on what Wisconsin law may or may not be.
matryoshka
So once the student gets a WI ID, can she quit paying out-of-state tuition?
campionrules
@jibeaux:
The issue is that even though the Wisconsin ID is not a DL, you would know possess Valid Identification – with two places of residency – for two different states.
Most states have a legitimate interest with regard to people have multiple valid ids. It’s a fraud prevention move, not only for voting, but also for traffic court, employment, education and tuition benefits and social services not to mention state taxes.
garage mahal
@kay:
Notably, Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm has an absolute bipartisan zeal for prosecuting illegal campaigning, and he has several hides to prove it. This will be fun to watch unfold. Sounds like it’s all coming to a head soon, just in time for the recall.
jibeaux
@campionrules: You are a resident for voting purposes in only one state, but you can be a resident of more than one state in various other arenas. You might be determined to be a primary resident of one place but a secondary resident of another, but I’m unaware of any federal law stating that you cannot be a resident of more than one state in any context at all.
amk
@matryoshka: wham…
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@campionrules: The SC ruled in the late 70’s, I believe 78, that since a student is paying taxes in the state they are going to school in – I had to pay MA income tax even though my permanent residence was TX – that they are considered residents of the state they are going to school in.
What these laws are trying to do is get around that ruling.
campionrules
@jibeaux:
Sure, I have a good friend for instance, that maintains households in two different states. Pays taxes etc, maintains what you could call a secondary residency.
However, he certainly doesn’t have multiple valid ID’s because the states that he lives in require that he have one or the other.
That’s the real issue here – not residency – but the possession of multiple ID’s which most states have a legitimate interest in restricting.
jibeaux
@campionrules: The quoted plaintiff, and others in her shoes, apparently attend private universities who do not have identification cards compliant with Wisconsin law. I take this to mean some colleges do issue identification that is compliant with the WI voter ID law. Did those students have to surrender their out-of-state driver’s licenses in order to obtain those compliant student IDs?
Yutsano
@kay:
I am sooo using this as a legal defense if I need it. Did you snicker at that Kay?
Mino
@David Hunt: I have wondered if Holder was afraid to bring a case. Maybe his timing has been deliberate so a case can’t be brought to the Supremes before the next election and a lower court decision will hold.
campionrules
@jibeaux:
No, I doubt it. That’s why the Wisconsin law allowed Student ID’s – to specifically get around this problem. Student ID’s can be used for voting in Wisconsin(This is a good thing) but they don’t posses the legal status of a State ID card issued by Wisconsin.
They might get you cheaper movie tickets and voting but that’s about it. Try going through Airport security with one.
Regardless, that’s the issue here – Wisconsin’s not going to issues a second valid ID card to a person with a legitimate out of state ID card. They school ID loophole in the law specifically addressed this.
The state is simply going to tell her that her school should issue a compliant card.
I’m not defending this – I’m simply pointing out why the state has an issue and a legitimate one at that, in not giving out multistate ID’s.
jibeaux
@campionrules: My father has a Virginia driver’s license because he works and lives during the week in Virginia. He votes in and maintains NC as his legal residency, where he has a permanent home. If asked to prove residency in NC for voting purposes, he could produce a passport, deed to the house, many utility bills, tax records, etc. reflecting that. He was not asked, to my knowledge, to surrender his passport with a NC address upon getting a Virginia driver’s license.
ploeg
@jibeaux: I’m guessing that one of the conditions for being compliant would be that the student ID contains whatever address is on the student’s drivers license, so the student ID is more or less a duplicate of the student’s drivers license.
amk
@Mino: Nope. He is moving ahead with the fight.
David in NY
@jibeaux:
Well, I think you discount the weight that courts are likely to give to the state’s interest in assuring that only residents of the state vote there. If she’s a resident of WI as she claims, why does she insist on holding an Ill license? Either 1) she intends to return to Ill, suggesting she’s not really a WI resident or 2) she’s trying to avoid paying the required fees to drive in WI. In either case, the state is arguably within its rights in asking her either to be treated as a resident of Ill for voting purposes or to pay the fees required of any other Wisconsin resident.
I don’t like the law; I just think that I hope that other plaintiffs are more sympathetic.
jibeaux
@campionrules: Then the state of Wisconsin should offer, free of charge and without requesting any surrender of other forms of identification, to anyone who can establish residency in the state of Wisconsin, an ID card valid only for voting purposes. They are setting themselves up very nicely for legal challenges, IMO.
kay
@garage mahal:
It’s good timing.
Conservatives in Ohio had “coingate” prior to the ’06 election. They invested worker’s comp money in rare coins and beanie babies.
I had so much fun with the beanie baby thing. I was at a parade and this woman asked me “what is this thing with Noe all about?” and I just kept my face completely impassive and said “Republicans spent workers comp money on beanie babies”. She was like “those bastards“.
You need one like that. Where they’re both corrupt and incredibly dumb.
Mino
@amk: I meant that now he is making a move on all the voter restriction laws. Some of those laws have been in place for quite a while. But perhaps it took that long to study the impact and make their case.
I still believe he want to have a lower court decision in place during the elections.
rea
@David Hunt: The present Supreme Court might like the idea of a poll tax in theory, but the 24th Amendment explicitly bans them.
jibeaux
@David in NY: 1) she intends to return to Ill, suggesting she’s not really a WI resident
That’s silly. If I go take a six-month temporary contract job somewhere with every intention of returning home afterwards, I can’t be a resident of that state while I’m there? There is Supreme Court precedent striking down as unconstitutional state requirements that you have to live in the state for x number of days or months in order to establish residency. It was a California welfare case, can’t cite it off the top of my head.
18 year olds going to college out of state live in two worlds. They are legal adults, but where mama or daddy or grandma lives is home, and they’re likely going back there for any breaks they can afford and all summer long. They would have any number of legitimate reasons to maintain a driver’s license in a state they frequently return to and may intend to return to permanently after a one or two or four year educational program.
Yevgraf
@jibeaux:
Ostensibly, to comply with the non-voting aspects of driving law – namely, if you are resident of a state for more than 30 days, you have to obtain a local operators license to be in compliance with the law. That’s been my state’s requirement since Hector was a pup.
In other words, if you’re claiming voting residency, then you’re a resident, and need a local operator’s license.
That part actually makes some sense.
campionrules
@jibeaux:
Well I don’t disagree about the ID. However, my feeling on this particular lawsuit is that it will go nowhere based on the plaintiff’s particular situation. Like I said the State will claim an interest in showing that they are actual residents of Wisconsin and I believe that it’s likely the courts will agree in the controlling interest of the state.
In this particular situation. I think there are others involved in lawsuits that have much more amenable claims and challenges to the law.
JGabriel
OT.
Time Magazine pats Protestors on collective heads, says “You’re adorable.”
.
Mino
@kay: Whoo, beanie babies. How in hell did they maintain electoral credibility with that on theri resume.
kay
@Yutsano:
Walker is the kind of sanctimonious, serious, vacant-eyed conservative that I find a little scary. Kasich is just a bumbling tool. Any side could buy Kasich. Walker actually believes the dogma. It’s like a religion to him. He thinks he’s a sacrifice to the Cause. It’s spooky.
rea
@David in NY: You only need a Wisconsin drivers’ license if you’re going to drive in Wisconsin. You can meet the residency requirements for voting even if you don’t drive in Wisconsin, and even if you plan someday to move somewhere else.
jibeaux
@Yevgraf: You don’t need a local operator’s license if you don’t drive in that state. But if your car is back home in your home state, you’re going to want your state driver’s license for the summer you spend back home.
jibeaux
@campionrules: There are numerous plaintiffs to that lawsuit, in differing situations.
campionrules
@jibeaux:
Yes, Yes. I’m not arguing the student is not a resident of Wisconsin. I’m saying that she is. But she’s not going to get a duplicate ID from the State for the reasons that I’ve gone over. Since WI allows Student ID as a way to vote then the State and the courts are simply going to tell her to make sure that her college is complaint if she doesn’t want to give up the ID from Illinois.
The ID’s themselves are the issue in this case not the residency.
As for your Father, that’s the perfect example of the situation. He maintains a Virginia DL but has a residency in NC. No problem. He can only vote in one state of course and his passport is a Federal Documentation of Citizenship. It has nothing to do with State residency only with Citizenship status. No state can revoke or take away your passport – it’s a federal document.
David Hunt
@Steve:
Yes, I’m aware that poll taxes are unconstitutional. I’m sure that the actual court ruling would have tons of legal wording that amounted to saying that an obvious poll tax wasn’t a poll tax. Back when Thurgood Marshall was still with the NAACP, Supreme Court case law made Jim Crow laws “constitutional” by ruling that such laws weren’t actually discriminating unless the actual text of the law explicitly said that was its purpose. i.e. the Supreme Court gave Southern States a blueprint of how to craft Jim Crow laws. I’m very worried that the Roberts Court would be willing or even eager to use this method.
jibeaux
@campionrules: I know that. My point is that it has the address on it in NC. It is an ID that he could presumably use to reflect NC residence. He has a lot of other documentation reflecting an NC address. He only votes in one state, but if he wanted to it would not be particularly difficult to vote in both. People with substantial ties to two states are going to have that kind of thing. For that matter, there’s nothing I can think of to stop someone from getting a Wisconsin ID and simply denying that they have any out of state driver’s licenses. If the goal is fraud protection, there’s got to be some more coordinated and centralized system for dealing with that. I’m guessing that’s why everyone uses social security numbers for so many purposes beyond their intended one.
FormerSwingVoter
Didn’t the Supreme Court look at a case about Voter ID laws and judge it constitutional? Like, in 2008 I think.
If they can show that the law affects different groups in different ways they may have a “equal protection” case, but I’m pretty sure there’s no way you can challenge these laws on “undue burden” grounds anymore. Well, I guess you can, but you’d lose.
Unless I’m remembering something completely wrong.
Soonergrunt
@Mino: Because stealing from government and stealing from employees are both laudable practices to Republicans. SATSQ.
David in NY
@rea: Yes. I noted that in an earlier comment. If her position is that she doesn’t drive in WI, I think she’s OK. A rare bird, perhaps, but that will do.
Yutsano
@kay: Yeah, but his PARENTS? Going back to how he was raised? THAT’S his defense? I’m practically hysterical over that.
Samara Morgan
@Soonergrunt: well, stealing from brown people in foreign countries under the guise of “helping” them is laudable practices for the military.
Roger Moore
I’m pretty sure that the goal is to see how far they can push it without running afoul of the 24th Amendment, and you never know for sure what you can get away with until you’ve pushed far enough to be told no. Besides, with the assholes on the right wing of the Supreme Court these days, you never know what you might be able to get away with. Until elected officials are made to suffer personally for writing plainly unconstitutional laws, they’ll continue to push the limits.
ChrisNYC
@FormerSwingVoter: That’s the case at the last link in the post. That was a facial challenge. The Court said, “Too abstract. You may have a case if you come in with actual voters who are burdened.” And, voila, this case.
kay
@FormerSwingVoter:
The Indiana case was weak, and the resulting opinion reflects that. It’s all over the place. I hate to second guess after the fact, but I will. I don’t think voter protection folks should have brought the Indiana case when they did. It was too soon and they couldn’t show the burden. It was too speculative.
If you read some of the hoops the plaintiffs are jumping through here (in the complaint) it really is a burden. These are better facts.
IMO, the justices in the Indiana case simply could not comprehend some of the practical barriers that people struggle with, because voter ID hinges on class issues (it’s hard to imagine not having an ID for many people of a certain class or status) but it’s the lawyers job to show them that, and the lawyers in the Indiana case didn’t show them.
xian
eventually we’ll need a truth
commission and de-republicanization
ericblair
The root of a lot of this stuff is our country’s paranoia about national IDs or residency documentation on one hand, and insistence on tough immigration policy on the other. So we’re using the permission to drive a certain class of vehicle on public highways as a residency permit, and an identification card for a social insurance fund as proof of citizenship. This causes all sorts of problems, independent of deliberate voter suppression shit.
Anybody who thinks that states are adamant about restricting a person’s residency to one state only hasn’t dealt with a state trying to collect income taxes. In that case, they’re much more liberal about the whole business for some reason.
kay
@Yutsano:
I feel like I know conservatives like him, though. People who believe they are inherently morally superior? That’s why I think he’s scary. He thinks he’s a martyr. Yuck.
Mnemosyne
@campionrules:
Now, I admit that this was twentymumblesomething years ago, but I distinctly remember that I had both an Illinois driver’s license and a California state ID card when I was in college because I needed an ID with a local address to write checks. (Yes, kids, this was back in the day before you could use your debit card anywhere and would have to write a check if you didn’t have cash with you.) I did not have to surrender my DL in order to get an ID because the state recognized that I might have legitimate business in their state that didn’t have anything to do with driving.
I can understand not wanting people to have multiple driver’s licenses, but I don’t understand a restriction on letting people have more than one non-driving ID card.
jibeaux
And I just want to say, I appreciate David and campionrules talking about these issues with me. There were good points raised, and I hadn’t thought about the realities that someone could, say, try to claim state benefits in two places with one state ID and one state driver’s license. This is always a good place for learning more. Okay, “often.”
catclub
“If the goal is fraud protection, there’s got to be some more coordinated and centralized system for dealing with that.”
A national ID card! The GOP is fully into that! And black helicopters! and re-education camps! ( and exclamation marks).
@Mnemosyne: Exactly.
Samara Morgan
@kay: cmon Kay– that is western christianity in a nutshell. The idea that you have the right to impose your belief set on others because said belief set is “morally superior.”
I deal with it every time i comment here, from every one from Khalid to AL.
campionrules
@jibeaux:
Same here.
I wasn’t trying to be argumentative – just trying to flesh out some of the concepts here. I think we can all agree that the Voter ID law is not a good thing in any way, shape or form.
But these are some of the arguments that the Righties and the Courts may raise with regard to these lawsuits. I think it’s important on our side to be able to discuss all of the avenues and winding roads of the law so that we can better understand it in order to better destroy it.
Thanks to you jibeaux – I appreciate the ability to have a civil conversation online……..even at BalloonJuice(Because there are never, ever any flame wars here at all! And never between Front Pagers)
catclub
@jibeaux: and note that illegal voting is way down the list of things that real people with real desires for cash and food are likely to do
with their multiple ID cards.
Yes, it may be possible to vote in two states with an ID and and DL, but who would actually bother? On the same election day?
Now getting cash money from two states is amuch better value propostion. Nonetheless, vote fraud is what they were pushing when they wrote these laws.
campionrules
@Samara Morgan:
Lol – That’s every major religion in a nutshell. Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism.
Some of the smaller religions or religious outshoots tend to be a little more moderate…..until they become the dominant religion and then’s its back to the basics.
I’d go beyond religion though – it’s actually any top down power structure in a nutshell – see Communist Russia or Pol Pot.
campionrules
@catclub:
That’s probably true – actual voter fraud when it occurs – has mainly been with Absentee voting in the last few years.
It’s probably unlikely that someone with two id’s would be voting but you can also understand why a State would be reluctant to hand them out. The republicans care about voter fraud but the State agencies care about social service benefits, criminal convictions etc.
The Spy Who Loved Me
I guess I just don’t see the big deal in this. My daughter is a legal resident of one state and attended college in another state. For the 2008 election, she requested an absentee ballot from our local election office, filled it out and mailed it back. She voted.
Roger Moore
@campionrules:
Power corrupts, and it attracts the corrupt and corruptible. Once a religion hooks into the power structure of a country, it is corrupted by the ability to enforce its beliefs, and it attracts power hungry people who see it as a way in.
askew
@matryoshka:
I used to work in the residency office at U-W Madison and unfortunately, the requirements to get residency for tuition purposes are pretty difficult to meet. You have to be able to prove that you would be living in Wisconsin even if there was no universities for you to attend. Getting a WI ID doesn’t count.
kideni
@jibeaux: Indeed. The first plaintiff is the 84-year-old woman who was born at home, doesn’t drive, has no birth certificate (never needed one), and would need to spend over $200 to get records fixed so that she could get a birth certificate (the birth record has her maiden name and her mother’s name misspelled, which would likely be flagged by the DMV, which has been ruthless in scrutinizing people’s records as they try to get ID). She’s voted in every election since 1948 and serves on her village board, but she can’t get an ID.
Another plaintiff is a homeless Vietnam vet who only has his veterans ID, which isn’t deemed sufficient.
I think the Republicans just took the legislation straight from ALEC and didn’t read it. During the (few, brief) hearings on it, a number of people testified to the gaps and omissions, and the Republicans just ignored them. I remember one exchange in which someone pointed out the problem of student IDs not being included, and the Republican sponsor of the legislation said “oh, student IDs are covered.” In other words, he didn’t know what was in his own legislation.
Thank you so much, Kay, for keeping an eye on all this.
Enlightened Liberal
@campionrules:
Absentee voting is the province of the Republicans, they have been actively pushing it with their base for years. It also isn’t the subject of these “voter fraud” laws. Wonder if there is a connection. Hmmm.
Maybe along with fighting these laws, Democrats and voting rights activists should be flooding poor and working class communities with absentee ballots.
Makewi
So she wants to be able to officially reside in the state of Wisconsin, so that she can vote there, but isn’t willing to give up her Illinois drivers license – even though she wouldn’t be entitled to have one since she resides in another state. Oddly, I don’t expect her to get a lot of sympathy over this from the judge. Or anyone really.
Very, very few people are going to view having to obtain an acceptable ID as something akin to a hardship. Maybe in 1940 or even 1960, but in 2012. Nope.
It’s laughable really.
kay
Makewi, you’re full of it.
I’ve been doing these voting rights posts a while now and you nearly always pop up in them, to insist it doesn’t matter.
Months go by and there you are again, saying it doesn’t matter.
It bothers you that conservatives are suppressing voting.
You’re defensive because you’re ashamed.
You should trust your gut and stop listening to Federalist Society lawyers.
You’re better than them.