Amid Protests, Wisconsin Republicans Target Minority Voters

While massive protests hold the state's attention, Wisconsin Republicans are advancing voting laws that could disenfranchise thousands of the state's poor and minority voters.

This week, with Democratic Senators still in hiding to prevent a vote on Gov. Scott Walker's plan to bust public sector unions, unopposed Republicans advanced Senate Bill 6, a law that would require voters to show ID at the polls.

If passed, SB-6 could be the most restrictive voter ID law in the nation.

For a decade, Wisconsin Republicans have claimed voter fraud is rampant in the state. In the 2004 elections, Republicans announced just before the polls opened that they would challenge the eligibility of almost 40,000 voters, but only in the city of Milwaukee. Milwaukee is 40% Black, 15% Latino and mostly Democratic. The rest of the state, majority-white, was not challenged.

After the election Wisconsin Republicans cried fraud, and after an extensive investigation voter fraud was uncovered: of three million votes cast in the state, only seven total were fraudulent.

Just before last year's elections, Wisconsin Republicans were caught conspiring with state Tea Party groups to target minority and student voters using dubious practices.

But Republicans didn't blink. They continued to push a voter ID law that would accept only a few types of IDs, making it harder for traditionally-Democratic segments of the population - the poor, minorities, and students - to vote.

Studies indicate that up to 12% of eligible voters have no ID, while the numbers are even higher for people of color, senior citizens, the disabled, the poor and students.

Nor will Senate Bill 6 recognize a student ID as valid, despite the fact that every other state with voter ID laws accepts them.

Republicans are also trying to axe provisions that would have provided free IDs for those who couldn't afford them and a public information campaign to alert state residents of the change. The current bill also extends the period citizens must have lived at their current residence from 10 to 28 days. Some believe this provision was aimed at the masses of students who arrive for classes 2-3 weeks before fall primaries.

While Wisconsin's public employees are flexing their muscle in an attempt to preserve the right to collectively bargain, Wisconsin Republicans are quietly stripping our nation's most fundamental right, the vote, from the state's most vulnerable residents.

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Photo Credit: Institute for Southern Studies