By Dave Zweifel
Cap Times (5/18/18)
Wisconsin Republicans have made it clear they’ll continue their crusade to make it difficult to vote.
Even after it’s been documented that voter ID laws and restrictions on absentee voting enacted in recent years by Gov. Scott Walker and the GOP-dominated Legislature serve to dissuade thousands from going to the polls, party stalwarts made it clear last weekend that they have no shame.
Delegates to the state convention voted overwhelmingly to pursue legislation that would end the state’s 40-year practice of allowing state citizens to register to vote on election day. The delegates in essence seconded Walker’s suggestion during a speech in California last fall in which he claimed Wisconsin would be “much better” without it. Instead, voters would be required to register at least 10 days before the polls open.
The delegates’ decision drew an angry reaction from Wisconsin Voices, a statewide collaboration of 53 organizations that advocate for voting rights, which pointed out that in the 2016 elections 381,444 Wisconsinites registered on election day.
“We should make it easier for people to vote in a democracy, not harder,” said Shauntay Nelson, the organization’s democracy director. “This is just the latest push by the Republican Party of Wisconsin to set up high hurdles on the way to the voting booth,” she added. …
(Commoner Call cartoon by Mark L. Taylor 2017. Open source and free for non-derivative use with link to www.thecommonercall.org )