June 2, 2011

 

 

 

 

The Legislature has passed two huge bait-and-switch bills.  The first was touted as a bill to fill in an end-of-the-fiscal-year budget shortfall, but it also contained sweeping measures to take away public employee rights.

 

The second was touted as simple photo ID requirement to prevent voting fraud, but it included sweeping changes to voting procedures.

 

The Senate debated this bill for nearly 11 hours over three days.  The Republicans maintained that the new requirements are not confusing nor burdensome and are needed to prevent voter fraud.  The Democrats argued that the new requirements will discourage many people from voting.

 

I voted against the bill because it takes Wisconsin backwards.  The history of the United States is a history of expanding the right to vote.   When George Washington was elected president, voters had to be white, male, property owners, and belong to the proper church.  In the 230 years since then, we have removed barriers to voting.

 

Women first started organizing for the right to vote in 1848, but it wasn’t until 1920 that the 19th amendment was ratified.  African Americans got the right to vote in 1870, but many states put up barriers like poll taxes and literacy tests.  It wasn’t until 95 years later that the Voting Rights Act prohibited such barriers.

 

In 1970, at a time when so many of our young people were fighting and dying in Vietnam, we lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.

 

Then we introduced absentee voting for people who are homebound, hospitalized, in nursing homes, or out of town on Election Day.  Later we said you no longer have to give a reason; anyone can vote absentee.

 

We enacted same-day registration, so you don’t have to make one trip to City Hall to register and another to the polling place to vote.

 

Now we come to 2011, and Wisconsin’s new voting law is absolutely on the wrong side of history.  If there is a voting problem in Wisconsin today it is that not enough people vote.  In the April 5 election, people were astounded that 38 percent of voting age adults went to the polls – less than half of eligible voters cast ballots, and we call it astounding.

There are ways we can increase voter turnout.  Instead, this law is calculated to make the voting process more cumbersome and confusing.  And when people encounter obstacle after obstacle, they are more likely to give up trying.

 

 

I support measures to encourage more people to vote, not to erect new obstacles.