Wisconsin: Records Reveal GOP Assault on Voting in Wisconsin Began Mere Days After 2012 Elections

[Scuba]

http://www.onewisconsinnow.org/press/records-reveal-work-on-gop-assault-on-voting-in-wisconsin-began-mere-days-after-2012-elections.html

Records Reveal Work on GOP Assault on Voting in Wisconsin Began Mere Days After 2012 Elections

Madison -- A review of legislative drafting records by One Wisconsin Now has uncovered that Republicans began work to attack state election laws mere days after the November 2012 election and that an omnibus bill on the legislative fast track, introduced by Rep. Jeff Stone, was developed under the close supervision of Assembly Speaker Robin Vos.

One Wisconsin Now Executive Director Scot Ross commented, “The Republicans were so obsessed that they failed to win Wisconsin’s Electoral College votes for the seventh election in a row that they started drafting this voter suppression scheme before all the votes in the November 2012 election were counted.”

The legislation, Assembly Bill 225 (AB 225), was announced late in the afternoon on the Friday before Memorial Day and is being rushed through the legislative process while much of the public and media attention is focused on the biennial budget. Among the provisions of the bill are:

Re-imposition of a voter ID requirement found to be Unconstitutional by lower courts and still subject of state and federal lawsuits

Measures making it easier for ballots cast by legal voters to be discounted due to minor clerical errors;

Restrictions on early voting hours and essentially eliminate weekend voting in large urban areas;

Repeal of the state policy that allows voters to use electronic copies of qualifying documents to verify their residency;

Increased partisanship of election regulators at the state Government Accountability Board and in local polling places; and

Repeal of campaign transparency requirements and repeal the 100 year-old-plus ban on corporate contributions.

[midnight]

1. "many states neglected their obligation to provide voter registration services to applicants and

recipients of public assistance benefits."


I wonder if this could be an area to focus on... to help get more voters to the polls..

Impact of Proper Section 7 Implementation

For the past several years, Demos and its partners have been working with state officials to properly implement Section 7 of the NVRA after finding that many states neglected their obligation to provide voter registration services to applicants and recipients of public assistance benefits. Since 2007, Demos’ work, which has included both litigation and cooperative work with state officials, has helped 1,820,633 eligible voters apply to register to vote at public assistance agencies. In the chart below, the first column is the number of voters projected to apply for voter registration at public assistance offices, had there been no intervention to increase enforcement of Section 7 requirements. The second column is the number of eligible voters that actually applied to register after Demos and its partners took action. The last column shows the net impact that enforcement of Section 7 has had in terms of increasing voter registration applications through public assistance offices.

http://www.demos.org/registering-millions-success-and-potential-national-voter-registration-act-20