By Jeff Simpson
I had an old sales manager that used to always say "If you fail to plan you plan to fail.". Which was the first thing I thought of this morning when I read Dee Hall's story in the Wisconsin State Journal(emphasis mine).
Three state agencies charged with implementing voter ID for the Nov. 4 election say they have no additional money set aside to help voters and state workers comply with the newly reinstated requirement.
But municipal clerks in Wisconsin’s two largest cities say they will spend thousands of dollars and hire hundreds of poll workers in the next few weeks to ensure that voters have the proper government-issued photo identification when casting their ballots.
Spokesmen for the three state agencies — the Government Accountability Board, the Division of Motor Vehicles and the Department of Health Services — all say they are using existing staff and resources to handle the demand.
In addition, the accountability board says it has no money for a public information or outreach campaign to ensure voters are aware of the requirement. GAB spokesman Reid Magney said the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee has asked the agency to develop a budget request by Sept. 30, which it will consider at its quarterly meeting sometime after that.
Gov. Scott Walker’s spokeswoman, Laurel Patrick, said the state — which fought a long legal battle to have the stalled requirement put back into force — has no estimate of how much it will cost to implement voter ID.
Despite the fact that the original Voter ID bill was held up on court, the republicans in Wisconsin kept trying desperately to pass something that held Constitutional muster. It was such an important issue, one could argue THE most important issue to Scott Walker that he was considering holding a special session to pass a Voter ID law**.
Posts
