Wisconsin’s voter ID bill passed, 60-35; it now goes to the Senate, to be worked on next week. The bill will require that voters show picture ID before voting: what really has Democrats in a tizzy about this is that to be valid a student ID will need “current address, birth date, signature and expiration date.” This effectively removes all Wisconsin student IDs from consideration… and if they start adding that information it will become abundantly clear, very quickly, that a lot of students are not going through the hassle of changing their legal address every year to reflect their attending college. Which is another way of saying that a lot of students are voting in districts that they’re not actually supposed to be voting in.
This is the real issue for Democratic party bigwigs, methinks – and for all that they pretend that it’s a minority voter issue. The reality is, people will bend over backward to make sure that the urban poor get ID to keep from being disenfranchised: this country takes voting seriously; it’s the right thing to do; and – if the first two reasons aren’t enough – the federal government will come down like a hammer from orbit on anybody trying anything different. But students being told that they can’t vote in Madison because they actually live in Sheboygan? Yeah, that’s going to get less sympathy. – even if the Democratic party would rather have that vote count in Madison.
Which leads me to the next thought: do you think that there are any Wisconsin Democrats out there who wish that they hadn’t wasted their get-out-of-Wisconsin-free card on opposing labor union reform? I kind of think that there are some Wisconsin Democrats out there who wish that they hadn’t wasted their get-out-of-Wisconsin-free card on opposing labor union reform.
Via @kevinbinversie, who is detecting a certain amount of protester fatigue from WisPolitics.com right now. If so, they’re not the only ones…
Moe Lane (crosspost)
Actually, I’m not so sure it’ll catch that many people, Moe. At least when I went to college 20+ years ago you listed two addresses, current address and permanent address. Things like tuition bills were mailed to current, and grades were mailed to permanent. So it was very common for students to list their folks place as current address, and their local address as current, so the place that the grades and bills would be sent was swapped.
They already have this in Florida. Deal with it Wisconsin!
The only kind of people who would be “disenfranchised” by a law like this are the kind who don’t have a legal right to vote in said area. And I really don’t care about their opinion on this matter.
Next: a really cheap advertising campaign. You could probably get some blogger to put up a tipjar to finance it.
If you can’t afford the fee for the voting ID, come to Republican Party Headquarters. We’ll run you down to the office where you can apply, and pay the fee for you!
Ah, crap. Next thing you know, the fascist RethugliKKKans will try to disenfranchise dead people!