WISGOP Just Can't Get Enough Voter Suppression

Republicans really, really hate it when people vote. They know that the more people that vote, the worse things will go for them. But instead of coming up with policies that the people would support, the Republicans would rather just squash the voice of the people. One would be hard pressed to find where this is truer than Wisconsin.

There was the sordid gerrymandering which was done in secret which boxed in Democrats so badly that even when they receive the majority of voters, they still have a minority in the legislature.

The Republicans also passed a Voter ID law so oppressive that it's caused an estimated one percent reduction in voter turnout:

How much did Wisconsin’s voter identification requirement matter in 2016? We conducted a survey of registered nonvoters in the counties surrounding the cities of Milwaukee and Madison to estimate the number of registrants who experienced ID-related voting difficulties in the 201 presidential election. We estimate that 10 percent of nonvoters in these counties lack a qualifying voter ID or report that voter ID was at least a partial reason why they did not vote in 2016, and six percent of nonvoters lacked a voter ID or cited voter ID as their primary reason for not voting. Theoretically, we argue that voter ID requirements ‘‘directly’’ affect voters who lack qualifying IDs but also ‘‘indirectly’’ affect voters who are confused about their compliance with the law. We find evidence of such confusion, with many respondents mistakenly believing that they did not have th necessary ID to vote when they actually did. Our analysis permits us to calculate bounds on the possible turnout effect in 2016. Most of our credible estimates suggest that the voter ID requirement reduced turnout in these counties by up to one percentage point.

For their latest stunt, the right returned to one of their favorite things - voter caging.

The misnamed Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty - a Bradley Foundation front group - filed a law suit demanding that nearly a quarter million voters be purged from voter rolls because they may have moved because they didn't respond to a letter within a month to voter caging letters.

Oh, and in what I am sure is just pure coincidence (not really), these voter caging letters just so happened to not be sent out in an impartial manner, but to target Democratic areas and areas with the highest African American populations, like Milwaukee and Madison:

The letters went to about 7% of Wisconsin's registered voters, but were concentrated more heavily in some parts of the state than others.

Milwaukee and Madison — the state's Democratic strongholds — account for 14% of Wisconsin's registered voters but received 23% of the letters.

Across the state, 55% of the letters went to municipalities where Democrat Hillary Clinton out-polled Trump in 2016.

This decision will be almost certainly appealed immediately but don't hold your breath for a better outcome.  The right wing special interest's control five of the seven seats on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

The real kicker is that these right wing snowflakes are the first to scream about changing the will of the people when something like holding a criminal Republican president* accountable for his criminal behaviors.

Voter Caging In Wisconsin

Voter caging is a dirty little trick that the Republicans around the country have been using for over half a century to purge voters - mainly African Americans - from voting lists. Here's how it works:

Voter caging is a practice of sending mass direct mailings to registered voters by non-forwardable mail, then compiling lists of voters, called “caging lists,” from the returned mail in order to formally challenge their right to vote on that basis alone. Other methods, such as database matching, have been used more recently to compile voter caging lists. The practice is used almost exclusively by officials or members of the Republican Party, local and national.

Wisconsin has not been spared from this crap.

In 2010, One Wisconsin Now broke the story of how Republicans, Americans for Prosperity and other Tea Party groups were conspiring to commit voter suppression - complete with a recording and transcription of their meeting discussing exactly how they were going to do it.

Earlier this year, documents from the John Doe investigation into Scott Walker's illegal campaigning as Milwaukee County Executive revealed that Walker and his campaign were working with Walker's county staff to do voter caging.

It appears that since the US Supreme Court has stopped the Republicans from implementing their voter suppression laws in November, they are resorting back to this long time favorite act of denying people their right to vote.

Case in point, I received this mailer on Saturday:

I'll admit that when I got it, I didn't think much of it, although I did note that the person they addressed it to hadn't lived here for more than 15 years. I chalked that up to the Republicans' usual inefficiency.

Like I said, I didn't think much about this until I read this ominous statement from the Milwaukee County Elections Commissioner:

Milwaukee County Elections Commissioner Rick Baas added that the event’s attendees should all remain on the lookout for what he called a “really weird” phenomenon. “If people start to get mail at their homes around election time addressed to people who don’t live in that house, what you need to do is collect that mail and get it to me, so I can see if that person is registered to vote at your address,” he said. “Then we’ve got a case, a case Democrats say we don’t have.”

One thing that that the article doesn't mention is that Rick Bass is also an officer of the Republican Party of Milwaukee County as well as a realtor, a group that has been in the tank for Scott Walker.

To recap, the elections commissioner, who just so happens to be an officer of the Republican Party, warns people of "really weird" mailers addressed to people who don't live at that address. Then the Republicans send out really weird mailers addressed to people who don't live there. Then people are supposed to bring in said mailers and - voila! - proof of voter fraud! At the very least, it will give the right wing propagandists and radio squawkers their "proof" that voter suppression is necessary to contain voter fraud - even though said fraud consists of 0.000000031% of all votes cast since 2000.

I can't help but keep thinking about just how bad the Teapublican agenda really is that they have to go to such extremes to have even a chance of winning.

Cross posted at Crooks and Liars

Wiggy to The Rescue

By Jeff Simpson

The whole Paula Deen(I would have to know who someone was to worry about what they were saying) incident, was a non story and one we gladly ignored on our blog.  However right wing paid defender of all things republican, Jimmy Wigderson rode to the rescue!  

In a blog post entitled Saving Paula Deen, he writes


From the little I’ve gathered, some years ago she said, “n*****” without rapping. Now, most of us who are adults know that you can’t use that word.

Get it...see the code words there?  "without rapping".....Because its the exact same if a white racist  who idolizes plantations and felt that black staff members would have to use their own bathrooms and not be seen by her friends(among many other things)  or if a rapper uses the word in one of his songs. 

No difference!  

Then says most of us who are adults know you "can't use that word"....yet uses it perpetually throughout his post(none in context)!    Wiggy jumped on the chance to use the N word as often as possible, it appears to be a therapeutic post for him.  

However to be fair we all know Wiggy sees no color.**


** In the voting booth because he has a career of working to stop minorities from voting!  

Ladies and Gentlemen...your republican party!