WISGOP Suffer Major Setback In Their War On Democracy

Wisconsin Republicans probably won't be able to silence the voices of over 200,000 people in the spring elections.

At the end of last year, a right wing front group for the Bradley Foundation filed a lawsuit against the Wisconsin Election Commission, demanding that nearly a quarter of a million people be purged immediately from the voter registration. The Republicans were in a panic because the spring elections were just around the corner and they know that when people vote, the Republicans lose.

But the Republicans thwarted themselves while creating the election commission so that it was very partisan. The commission decided to hold off doing the purge due to an appeal filed by Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul and a federal lawsuit filed by the League of Women Voters.

The Republicans, in an state of utter desperation, launched a three prong attack against democracy:

• The front group filed a motion with the original court to find the election commission in contempt
• They also filed a petition with the Wisconsin Supreme Court to bypass the appellate court and take the appeal directly, since they had a 5-2 conservative majority
• Republican legislators filed in the federal lawsuit, asking for it to be dismissed, even though the legislators have no standing in the lawsuit

On Monday, the original court sided with the Republicans, finding only the three Democrats on the commission in contempt. He ordered the commission pay a $50 a day fine and that the three Democrats need to pay a $250 per day fine. But because the commission consists of appointed citizens who were acting in their official capacity, the taxpayers will be the ones ultimately footing the bill for this blatant act of partisanship.

The ruling was not a complete surprise since the judge presiding on the matter, Paul Malloy, was appointed by former Republican Governor Scott McCallum. Malloy also has a history of controversial statements and stunts, trying to present himself as a tough on crime type of judge.

Also on Monday, the state supreme court decided not to intervene in the appeal, leaving the matter to go to the appellate court first, despite the conservatives majority. This happened because on of the judges recused himself because he is up for reelection in the spring and would be directly affected by a decision. A second conservative justice betrayed his special interest masters by siding with the two impartial justices in deciding against the case.

State Republicans were outraged that justice was being done, demanding to know what kind of service they were getting after spending so much money on them.

On Tuesday came the major blow. The state appellate court issued an order to immediately stay the circuit court order, meaning that the targeted voters will remain in the registration for now. Furthermore, because the spring primary elections are only a few weeks away and the general elections - including the presidential primary - is on April 7, it is extremely unlikely there will be any changes before then.

And even if the Republicans prevail when it gets to the Wisconsin State Supreme Kangaroo Court, there is still the federal lawsuit hanging over their heads, so there is a change the voters will get to keep their voices through November as well.

In summary, the Republicans lost two major battles in the past two days and will get to pay for it with their tax dollars. Now excuse me while I go savor this moment and wait for the Republicans' heads to start popping.

WISGOP Thwarts Themselves Again

After taking over all the branches of government in Wisconsin in 2011, the Republicans immediately got to work to secure their power and punishing those who tried to hold them accountable. Unfortunately for them, their incompetence has sprung up on them time and time again.

In 2018, Scott Walker lost his bid for reelection by a narrow margin. Normally, he would have been able to call for a recount, but the Republicans had changed that law, making it more difficult to get a recount. And thus, Walker was unable to challenge the vote and is becoming more and more irrelevant every day.

Another thing that the Republicans changed was abolishing the Government Accountability Board (GAB), which acted as a watchdog on Wisconsin elections and investigating any possible infractions of election laws. The Republicans had their undies in a bundle because it was the GAB that approved the John Doe investigation into Walker. They cried that it was all political and a partisan attack. What they wouldn't admit is that board consistent of retired judges, all of whom were Republican.

To replace the GAB, they created the Wisconsin Election Commission, which was comprised of six people, three Democrats and three Republicans. So much for not wanting the watchdog to be political.

This has become an outstanding issue now which again is biting the Republicans in the ass.

The Republicans, through a front group, filed a lawsuit to have nearly a quarter of a million people purged from the voter registration because they might have moved, based on a voter caging stunt. It was purely coincidental [end sarcasm] that the majority of the caging happened in areas that vote Democratic.

The judge granted the petition and went a step further, saying the purge should happen immediately.

Unsurprisingly, the three Democrats on the elections commission are blocking the purge from happening, citing an appeal by the commission and the fact that the League of Women Voters have filed a federal lawsuit to stop the purge:

The Wisconsin Elections Commission deadlocked Monday over whether to remove the voter registrations of more than 200,000 people in response to a judge's order.

The commission's inability to reach a consensus means the voters will stay on the rolls for at least the time being. An appeal in the case is ongoing and the commission faces a separate lawsuit that is trying to make sure people are not pulled from the rolls.

The three Republicans on the commission sought to take many of them off the rolls, but they were blocked by the three Democrats on the commission.

It was the second time in as many weeks that the commission broke down along party lines over the lawsuit, which has drawn national attention because of Wisconsin’s top-tier status in the 2020 presidential race.

As one could expect, Republicans are having meltdowns all across the state, accusing the Democrats in general, and specifically the three on the commission, of breaking the law, being anti-democratic. etc.

At the rate they're going, it won't be long before the Republicans end up suing themselves.

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.

Schimel: Voter ID Gave Trump Win In State

Wisconsin Attorney General was on the air with a right wing squawker, bragging about the damaging effects of the state's draconian Voter ID law:

Election officials and Democrats in Wisconsin have repeatedly argued that the state’s strict voter ID law allowed Donald Trump to win the state in 2016 by keeping thousands of voters—predominantly in Democratic-leaning areas—from the polls. Now a top Republican official in the state is saying the same thing.

“We battled to get voter ID on the ballot for the November ’16 election,” Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel, who defended the law in court, told conservative radio host Vicki McKenna on April 12. “How many of your listeners really honestly are sure that Sen. [Ron] Johnson was going to win reelection or President Trump was going to win Wisconsin if we didn’t have voter ID to keep Wisconsin’s elections clean and honest and have integrity?”

Of course, when sued, Schimel couldn't identify one case of voter fraud where voter ID would have stopped it.. Not one.

But it has been proven time and time again that the law did keep tens of thousands of Wisconsinites from the polls:

I don't know that this is the best thing for Schimel to brag about, especially when he's up for reelection this fall. Then again, he's been too busy being the top attorney for the Republicans and buying scads of swag to actually do his job, much less do it well. Otherwise, the state wouldn't be facing a backlog of thousands of untested rape kits.

Fortunately, he does have a very qualified opponent this year - Josh Kaul. Kaul is the son of the late former Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager and the lead attorneywho's been taking it to Schimel regarding the Voter ID laws:

Kaul's lawsuit challenged a broad swath of voting rules. In July 2016, a federal judge kept in place the requirement to show ID at the polls, but struck down a number of other laws, including restrictions on when and where early voting could occur.

Judge James Peterson found Wisconsin's voting laws discriminated against minorities and labeled the voter ID law "a cure worse than the disease" that tried to address "mostly phantom voter fraud." His ruling forced the state to make changes to the system it uses to issue IDs to those who have the most difficulty obtaining them, such as people who don't have birth certificates or Social Security numbers.

It's as they say, when people vote, Republicans lose. Schimel just verified that.

Federal Judge Overturns More Of Walker's Voter Restrictions

Earlier this week, a federal court struck down North Carolina's restrictive Voter ID law.

On Friday, democracy was partially restored in Wisconsin when a federal judge overturned several of Walker's voting suppression laws, including early and weekend voting:

Restrictions on early and weekend voting implemented by Wisconsin Republicans over the last five years are unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled Friday.

U.S. District Judge James Peterson found a series of other voting changes signed into law by Gov. Scott Walker to be unconstitutional, but did not overturn the state's photo identification requirement.

"Wisconsin’s strict version of voter ID law is a cure worse than the disease," Peterson wrote, before noting he is bound by earlier cases in Wisconsin and Indiana to reject the challenge to the law in its entirety.

[...]

Peterson — who was appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama in 2014 — also overturned laws that increased the residency requirement for voters from 10 days to 28 days, prohibited distributing absentee ballots by fax or email and required "dorm lists" used as proof of residence to include citizenship information.

The judge also overturned a provision of the voter ID law banning the use of expired but otherwise qualifying student IDs at the polls.

Also addressed in Peterson's ruling was the state's ID petition process, or IDPP — the system qualified voters use to obtain a free ID from the state. The lawsuit argued the IDPP is ineffective and has failed minority groups in particular.

Peterson found the system does not require "wholesale invalidation," but that it does not act as an effective safety net for qualified electors who struggle to obtain proper IDs.

"The IDPP is pretty much a disaster," Peterson wrote, later referring to it as a "wretched failure."

As the gentle reader could have guessed, the Republicans are beside themselves after the ruling, blaming "liberal activist judges" that don't care about the will of the people, yada, yada, yada....

What they are really angry about is that the ruling will allow more black people, especially in Milwaukee, a chance to vote. Judge Peterson pointed that much out in his ruling:

Laws that limited in-person absentee voting to one location, limited early voting hours and eliminated weekend voting are unconstitutional, Peterson ruled.

The 2013 law limiting hours for in-person absentee voting "intentionally discriminates on the basis of race," Peterson wrote in a 119-page decision.

"I reach this conclusion because I am persuaded that this law was specifically targeted to curtail voting in Milwaukee without any other legitimate purpose. The legislature’s immediate goal was to achieve a partisan objective, but the means of achieving that objective was to suppress the reliably Democratic vote of Milwaukee’s African Americans," Peterson wrote.

Of course, the gentle reader already knew that because, earlier this year, a former GOP staffer, testified that the Republicans were "giddy" with the prospect of suppressing the black voters.

Republicans Are The New Black

In case you somehow missed it, on Monday, the #NeverTrump faction of the Republicans were denied their right to vote at the 2016 Republican National Convention.

On Tuesday, Donald Trump became their official presidential nominee.

Now they know how it feels to be black or poor in a Republican state.

Irony is not dead.

WI Voter Suppression Law Goes On Trial

The good people at One Wisconsin Now and Citizen Action of Wisconsin Education Fund filed a lawsuit a year ago against the State of Wisconsin regarding the newly enacted voter suppression law. The trial started on Monday with fireworks and the naming of names when former Republican staffer Todd Allbaugh testified against the law:

Todd Allbaugh, who served as chief of staff to then-Sen. Dale Schultz, R-Richland Center, when the state's voter ID law was passed in 2011, said there initially wasn't much enthusiasm among Senate Republicans to pass the bill.

Sen. Mary Lazich, R-New Berlin, argued on the bill's behalf to her colleagues in a closed caucus meeting, Allbaugh testified.

"She got up out of her chair and she hit her finger on the table and said, 'Hey, we've got to think about what this could mean for the neighborhoods around Milwaukee and the college campuses around the state,'" Allbaugh said.

Schultz, who did not seek re-election in 2014, voiced some opposition to the bill and what it might do to voting rights, Allbaugh said. His opposition was met by a spirited defense from then-Sen. Glenn Grothman, now a member of Congress.

"At that point, Sen. Grothman cut him off and said, 'What I’m concerned about is winning. You know as well as I do the Democrats would do this if they had power … so we better get this done while we have the opportunity,'" Allbaugh said.

Allbaugh said Sen. Leah Vukmir, R-Wauwatosa, and then-Sen. Randy Hopper, R-Fond du Lac, were "giddy" and "politically frothing at the mouth" over the bill.

He said several other senators — Neal Kedzie, who resigned in 2014, Robert Cowles, R-Green Bay, and Luther Olsen, R-Ripon — appeared "ashen faced."

Others, he said, didn't show any reaction.

Unsurprisingly, the senators named by Allbaugh have gone into hiding and are not responding to any reporters.

And as if there was any question as to the intent of the voter suppression law passed by these giddy Republicans, the lawyer for the plaintiffs put it as clear as can be:

"Restricting access to the ballot box was not simply a consequence, but the very purpose of these laws," lawyer Josh Kaul told the court, asking not only to have the laws struck down, but for a judge to find they were passed with discriminatory intent.

So, What Just Exactly Happened In Wisconsin On Tuesday?

This past Tuesday, the eyes of the nation were on Wisconsin while they had their spring elections. The nation was watching because of the presidential primary and saw that Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz won their respective party primaries.

What the rest of the country might have missed was what happened with the down ticket races. Wisconsinites also voted for a state supreme court justice and numerous county, municipal and school board seats.

And that's where it gets a bit peculiar.

The supreme court contest was unfortunately won by the corrupt, unqualified and unpleasant Rebecca Bradley, Scott Walker's hand-picked appointee and the dark money candidate. In another bigger race, Milwaukee County Emperor Executive Chris Abele, the billionaire's son, spent enough of his daddy's money to buy that election. (To show just how unpopular he is, he had to spend more than $5 million on the race, which came out to be about $35.00 per vote. That is unheard of for a local position.)

But then, as one gets further down the ballot for the even smaller races, the progressives won a majority of them.

At first glance, it would appear that the problem was that people who came out for Bernie did not vote down the ballot. This was especially true in Milwaukee County (which, by the way, is the only of the 72 counties Bernie lost).

But when the bigger numbers are looked at, the number of people that didn't vote down ballot was about the same for each party.

What was noteworthy is that the turnout for Republicans was much higher than for Democrats, especially in the greater Milwaukee area and which probably explains why the results were as there were.

It can also be explained as a combination of two factors.

One was the concentrated anti-Trump movement which was focused mostly on the Republican establishment's stronghold of the WOW counties (Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington). Unsurprisingly, Cruz was the strongest in this area, as was Bradley.

This focus on the WOW counties spilled over into the western suburbs in Milwaukee County, which could also again explain the high numbers in the area for Bradley and the conservative Abele.

Added to this ramped up GOTV effort by the GOP establishment was the fact that not as many progressives were allowed to vote due to the voter suppression laws now in place. That is why Congresscritter Glenn Grothman was bragging about it and a former GOP staffer went public with his calling out of this reprehensible law for what it is.

While the Republicans are trying to say that the high turnout showed that the voter suppression law had no effect, it actually shows that it had a very big effect. Presidential elections, including the primary, is about the only time that the Democrats do turn out in force for an election.

In fact, when compared to 2008, the Democratic turnout dropped by nearly ten percent. For the same time frame, the Republicans saw a jaw-dropping 168.5% increase in turnout. Now the change in the right wing voters can easily be explained when their candidates were John McCain and Sarah Palin. Add to it that McCain said that the economy was strong just as the Bush/Cheney recession blew up and, well, who would be excited to try to fight for that mess?

On the other hand, the Democratic Party as a whole seems to have forgotten what good messaging is. In Wisconsin, we're not even sure if they know what messaging - good or bad - is. The Wisconsin Democrats have excelled at one thing though - alienating anyone who is not part of the establishment.

Despite what explanation or explanations the gentle reader might prefer to subscribe to, the end result is the same. Like a power play in hockey, where a player on one team is sitting while the other team is in full force, the Republicans knocked out a large segment of Democratic voters while amping up their own efforts.

The result is these odd and lopsided results.

Get Thee Out To Vote! (And Vote For These People)

Happy Voter Suppression Day!

Polls are open from 7 am to 8 pm and make sure you bring your picture ID.

And when you go to the polls, vote for these people:

President: Bernie Sanders (Feel the Bern!)  (If you have to vote for a Republican, vote for John Kasich)

Wisconsin Supreme Court: JoAnne Kloppenburg because Becky Bradley isn't fit to sit on a park bench much less the highest bench in the state.

Milwaukee County Executive: Chris Larson because this is still a democracy, not a plutocracy.

Milwaukee County Supervisors:

District 1: Theodore Lipscomb
District 2: Sequanna Taylor
District 4: Marina Dimitrijevic
District 5: Marcella Nicholson
District 9: Steve Taylor
District 11: Patricia Najera
District 12: Peggy Romo West
District 13: Willie Johnson, Jr.
District 14: Jason Haas
District 15: Eddie Cullen
District 16: John Weishan, Jr.
District 17: Anthony Staskunas
District 18: Martha De La Rosa

Milwaukee County Circuit Courts:

Branch 31 Hannah Dugan
Branch 45: Jean Kies

City of Milwaukee

Mayor - Tom Barrett

Alderpersons:

District 2: Chevy Johnson
District 4: Bob Baumann
District 7: Khalif Rainey
District 8: Justin Bielinski
District 11: Tim Kenney
District 13: Terry Witkowski
District 14: Tony Zielinski

Why Yes, Deanna Alexander Was Lying About Voter Supression

Milwaukee County Supervisor Deanna Alexander, a "rising star" among Republicans, has already gained notoriety for her vulgar, racist tweet mocking the death of a black man, Eric Garner. She added to her shame by using her elected position to raise funds for personal use;

Alexander first came to national attention by using taxpayer money to send out a newsletter that included false information that voters would need a picture ID to vote despite the fact that on October 9, 2014, the United States Supreme Court issued an order against voter ID for the November elections. Alexander displayed an amazing amount of faux outrage in denying that she did anything wrong:

Ms. Pabst called Supervisor Deanna Alexander twice on Friday to ask about a newsletter sent to constituents in October. The newsletter, accurate at publication, alerted fall general election voters that they would need to show a photo ID to vote. After the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Voter ID requirement for the November election, Supervisor Alexander used email, social media, and a second mailing—a bold post card—to update voters with the new information that electors would not need to provide an ID in order to vote.

“Ms. Pabst knew all of this, yet continued to publish an article falsely proclaiming that the notice was a mistake,” Supervisor Alexander said. “This irresponsible report has increased confusion by leading voters to believe that I either didn’t notice the error or purposely sent untrue information.”

“Ms. Pabst knew on Friday that I had provided voters with two rounds of information and that each were accurate at the time I published them; there was no mistake. Her article is
disappointing and sloppy journalism.” Supervisor Alexander concluded.

At the time, I said Alexander would have been better keeping her big mouth shut.

I was correct.

Recently obtained records show that Alexander was indeed lying through her teeth. Here is the requisition for the mailer:

Click image to embiggen

Since it is hard to read, here is a close up of the top of the requisition:

Click image to embiggen

The gentle reader will note that printing didn't even start until October 9th, the same date that the Supreme Court stopped the voter suppression. Further more, the invoice shows that the mailer wasn't completed until October 20th. Alexander had plenty of time to stop the printing and make the proper corrections. But she willfully chose not to.

There is no doubt in my mind that Alexander truly believes she did nothing wrong with the mailer. Or with the inappropriate tweet, for that matter.

That is the problem with racism. It is so ingrained in the mind of the plantation economy-minded that they can't even recognize the error of their ways. It also accounts for her "rising star" status among Republicans.

But it is still wrong and Alexander needs to be held accountable for her wrongdoings.

Taxpayer Funded Voter Suppression - There's More!

Deanna Alexander and her benefactor, Boss Abele

Last week, we reported about Milwaukee County Supervisor Deanna Alexander, a "rising star" among Republicans who caught caught using taxpayer money to send out a newsletter falsely informing people that they needed a photo ID to vote, even though the US Supreme Court had put a stop to it for the November elections.

Alexander defended herself by saying that she sent out a correction postcard to notify her constituents that her newsletter contained the false claim.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel did a blurb about the incident, giving Alexander cover by calling it a mistake.

Instead of keeping quiet and hoping the story would go away, Alexander tore into the journalist, Georgia Pabst, in a press release from her official office. Alexander accused the reporter of of "sloppy journalism":

Friday evening, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reporter Georgia Pabst published an article with a misleading title and context.

Ms. Pabst called Supervisor Deanna Alexander twice on Friday to ask about a newsletter sent to constituents in October. The newsletter, accurate at publication, alerted fall general election voters that they would need to show a photo ID to vote. After the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Voter ID requirement for the November election, Supervisor Alexander used email, social media, and a second mailing—a bold post card—to update voters with the new information that electors would not need to provide an ID in order to vote.

“Ms. Pabst knew all of this, yet continued to publish an article falsely proclaiming that the notice was a mistake,” Supervisor Alexander said. “This irresponsible report has increased confusion by leading voters to believe that I either didn’t notice the error or purposely sent untrue information.”

“Ms. Pabst knew on Friday that I had provided voters with two rounds of information and that each were accurate at the time I published them; there was no mistake. Her article is
disappointing and sloppy journalism.” Supervisor Alexander concluded.

Like I said, Alexander would have been better keeping her mouth shut.

It turns out that Pabst did some more of that sloppy journalism and found that Alexander was lying through her teeth.

First off, she did not send the correction postcard. Milwaukee County Clerk Joe Czarnezki, who had received numerous complaints about Alexander's newsletter, is the person who sent out the postcard correcting her lie:

The post card mailing sent out the weekend before the November 4 election to 7,000 constituents of County Supervisor Deanne Alexander to tell them they did not need a photo ID to vote, was initiated and paid for by County clerk Joe Czarnezki.

Czarnezki said he received complaints about the information in Alexander’s newsletter that was received by many residents in Alexander’s northwest side district the weekend of October 25 saying they needed photo ID to vote. After consulting with the Government Accountability Board in Madison, the board recommended that correspondence be sent correcting the information, so the post card mailing was prepared, he said.

Postage and mailing for the post card cost about $2,000, he said. Alexander’s name was on the post card, along with Czarnezki’s . She contacted him about the matter after the post card preparation was under way, he said.

But there's more!

Pabst found out that Alexander's misleading and false newsletter wasn't mailed until October 21, almost two full weeks after the Supreme Court ruling. Alexander had more than enough time to stop the mailing of the newsletter, if not the printing of it. Yet she willfully chose to do nothing.

Something tells me that this is not the end of this story. Because when it comes to Republican corruption, there's more. There's always more.

Taxpayer Dollars Used For Voter Suppression In Milwaukee

Milwaukee County Supervisor Deanna Alexander is a Republican's Republican.

Alexander won her office with a late race-baiting flier against her African American opponent. She's appeared at CPAC, was named a "rising star" by dark money group American Majority, illegally accepted free legal representation from a Bradley Foundation funded lawyer, supports gay bashing Chick Fil A and has accused Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis of supporting infanticide.

Yeah, she's a real pip, alright.

So it comes as no surprise to us in Milwaukee that she used taxpayer money to mail out 7,000 copies of her newsletter which included the information that a photo ID would be needed to vote on Election Day:

Here's a close up of the part in question:

The first problem with this is the fact that US Supreme Court blocked the implementation of this voter suppression law for this election.

But wait! There's more. There's always more.

This matter was quickly brought before the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board who ordered her to immediately send out another postcard - again at the taxpayer expense - to correct the misinformation she distributed.

Per her Facebook page, on Friday - just days before the election - she sent out the correction notice. It is doubtful that the postcards will get to the people in time before Election Day.

Despite the fact that it cost taxpayers thousands of dollars to send out the original mailer and thousands of dollars more to send out the correction, I have a feeling that we won't hear from the conservatives about this waste and fraud.

For me, the unanswered question is that why Alexander sent out only 7,000 of these mailers when she represents more than 50,000 people. You don't suppose that these mailers were targeted at a certain class of voters, do you?

Cross posted at Crooks and Liars.

Today's Right Wing Conspiracy Theory Brought To You By Dan Sebring

Dan Sebring is running for the umpteenth time against US Representative Gwen Moore. Last go around, Sebring's claim to fame was  running a racist ad against her. This year, he decided to let his proverbial hair hang loose by going with a full blown right wing conspiracy theory:

Republican Dan Sebring, who is running to represent Wisconsin’s 4th District in the House of Representatives, told ThinkProgress he suspects a political motive behind the Supreme Court’s recent ruling putting the state’s voter ID law on hold.

“The United States Supreme Court said we can’t implement it for this election,” he said at a Milwaukee County Republicans party this week. “My personal feeling is that this is a play to steer the outcome of the gubernatorial election so that Scott Walker wouldn’t have a chance of getting on the ticket in 2016 for the White House. I think that’s what they’re trying to do.”

Yeah, okay, Danny Boy, whatever you say.

Let's just ignore that the SCOTUS ruling was 6-3 to stop the voter suppression for November, which means that two of the five conservative judges agreed that it would be untenable to impose such restrictions on such short notice, especially since many of the DMV offices were only going to be open a day or two before the election.

But what do you expect from a guy who thinks it's a good idea to hold a gun raffle at a family-friendly fair?

Cross posted at Crooks and Liars

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

Sorry, Scott Walker, No Voter Suppression For You!

As with other states, there has been a long, protracted battle in Wisconsin as the Republicans, led by Scott Walker, fought to impose some of the most severe Jim Crow voter suppression laws in the nation.

Those fighting for the right to vote, led by the ACLU and the unions, won a stay of the voter suppression law earlier in the year.

Then in mid-September, with less than two months before the election, the rug was pulled out from underneath the voters' collective feet. A panel of judges of the Federal Seventh Circuit - including Walker's favorite judge, Diane Sykes* (whom Walker talked about putting on the US Supreme Court if her were president) suddenly lifted the stay and put Jim Crow back in charge of the November elections.

Even as grassroots groups scrambled to help people get the photo IDs, there were some that just wouldn't be able to vote, including 84 year old women who never missed an election before.

Thankfully, the US Supreme Court stepped in late on Thursday and put an end to the nonsense, at least for now. With a 6-3 majority, SCOTUS reinstated the stay.

The bad news is that SCOTUS could still back off and allow the voter suppression to continue unabated. The other bad news is that the current Attorney General, J.B Van Hollen, is vowing to do everything he can to keep those uppity minorities, poor people and students from screwing up their plans to steal the election.

To the people of Wisconsin, make sure you get off your arses and go forth to vote like you will never be able to vote again, because if you don't, you just might not be able to.


*Diane Sykes is the former wife of Charlie Sykes, a squawk radio host in the Milwaukee area. Charlie left Diane, his second wife, under scandalous circumstances, to marry into the Bradley Foundation's wealth.

Cross posted at Crooks & Liars

Grothman: It's Already Too Easy For Blacks To Vote

The state's Teapublicans' blatant racism and efforts to suppress the black vote caught the eye of the national media, according to this story by Zachary Roth of msnbc.com:

Wisconsin Republicans are pushing a bill to end early voting on the weekend. The measure would make it harder for people in the state’s most populous areas to cast a ballot—and it would hit blacks especially hard.

But state Sen. Glenn Grothman, a Republican who is sponsoring a Senate version of the bill, told msnbc it’s already easy enough to vote.

“Between [early voting], mail absentee, and voting the day of election, you know, I mean anybody who can’t vote with all those options, they’ve really got a problem,” he said. “I really don’t think they care that much about voting in the first place, right?”

The measure, which passed the state assembly Thursday, would give municipalities two choices for early voting, known in the state as in-person absentee voting: they could offer it either from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays in the two weeks before an election; or at any time on a weekday, but not to exceed 30 hours per week, again in the two weeks before an election.

That would mean a reduction in early voting hours for the state’s two biggest cities, Milwaukee and Madison—which are also its most important Democratic strongholds.

Between the voter suppression, the gerrymandering and all the other crap that the Teapublicans are pulling, it's a pretty clear message that their agenda isn't popular and the only way for them to hold onto power is to perpetually rig the system.

Refresher Course For Today!

By Jeff Simpson


Today, the last day of work for the "full time" Wisconsin Legislature(wouldn't that be nice) you will hear alot of BS about "Voter ID".  

Please keep this in mind today:

Cartoon Of The Day

From the incomparable Stuart Carlson:

Reince: King of Denial!

By Jeff Simpson

Reince Priebus, head of the republican party, recently did what republicans do best - spend a bunch of money needlessly, to figure out a problem that was easily understood, then do nothing with the money spent.  Otherwise known as GOP Rebranding.

The party's top activists will spend much of Thursday in strategy meetings aimed at best practices for packaging and presenting their conservative ideas to young people, women, and black, Hispanic, and Asian constituencies. The training is part of the party's new outreach efforts to types of voters who overwhelmingly have supported Democrats in recent elections.

Of course in this same conference, was the party base, asking "why are slaves so upset we gave them occassional meals and didnt charge them rent?"  

Baby Steps!

However we see why there is such panic on the right.  For the first time, black turnout exceeded white turnout in 2012.   In a brilliant piece on The Daily Beast, Michael Tomasky breaks it down:

 Because for all this talk about a “new” GOP out to steal minorities’ hearts, the (usually white) people doing the talking seem to forget that today’s Republican Party is doing more to stop black people from voting than George Wallace ever did. ....

Do Republicans really think black and brown (but especially black) people just won’t notice all this? I suppose they must. They think that people won’t see what’s right in front of their nose. And of course, Republicans don’t actually talk to black people—well, they talk to black Republicans, but that is sort of like evangelicals talking to Jews for Jesus and thinking they’ve gauged Jewish opinion—so they have no way of knowing how disingenuous they look.

The Republican Party is thus more officially racist than it was in Nixon’s day. Back then, at least they had Jackie Robinson and Sammy Davis Jr. And at least, back then, the Republican Party did these things in code and not via the law. It was not so brazen as to think it could on the one hand be waging efforts in half the states to keep black people from voting and on the other be improving its “outreach.” The black vote will dip a bit when Obama retires, but as long as Republicans insist on these tactics, they will be doing more than they know to keep turnout high and keep hope alive.

What are the voter suppression techniques that he describes? Ari Berman from the Nation runs them down:

 In 2011 and 2012, 180 new voting restrictions were introduced in forty-one states. Ultimately, twenty-five laws and two executive actions were passed in nineteen states following the 2010 election to make it harder to vote. In many cases, these laws backfired on their Republican sponsors. The courts blocked ten of them, and young and minority voters—the prime target of the restrictions—formed a larger share of the electorate in 2012 than in 2008.

By my count, 235 new voting restrictions have been introduced in forty-four states over the past three years.
Here’s the breakdown of where such laws have been introduced in 2013.

• Mandating a government-issued photo ID to cast a ballot: Arkansas, Connecticut, Iowa, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Washington, Wyoming
• Restricting voter registration drives: Illinois, Indiana, Montana, New Mexico, Virginia
• Banning election-day voter registration: California, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska
• Requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote: Massachusetts, Missouri, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia
• Purging the voter rolls: Colorado, Indiana, New Mexico, Texas, Virginia
• Reducing early voting: Arizona, Indiana, South Carolina, Texas, Wisconsin
• Disenfranchising ex-felons: Virginia.
(On the plus side, thirty states have also introduced measures to make voting easier by adopting online voter registration, election-day registration, expanded early voting and the restoration of voting rights for ex-felons.)

Where in does the republican takeover of Wisconsin fit into this?

Let's ask Speaker Robin Vos:

 “We promise that election reform led by voter ID will be in place for the 2014 election,”  Robin Vos said.

Vos's Speech here. 

Freedom Isn't Free But Oppression Is Even More Expensive

For the past two years, the Republicans have repeatedly brought up their desire for voter suppression by ending same day registration.  They use the flim-flam reasoning that there is a vast conspiracy to commit voter fraud in each and every election to justify their desire to suppress the vote, but have yet come up with any proof of such a conspiracy.

As they kept bringing it up, people kept looking at it more and started realizing what a bad idea it was.

Scott Walker tried to sell it as being a way to relieve the stress the clerks and poll workers and gosh darn it, he cares too much to let them feel stressed, even if it means ending democracy.

The clerks made it clear that Walker was full of something besides care.

Then it came out that the voter suppression would cost over $5 million.  And that's not counting the lawsuits it would spawn.  Walker said that no matter how much he hates it when poor people, minorities and college students vote, he wasn't going to spend that much money just to step on their necks.

Besides, he needs the same day registration around so he can make his kid vote for him.

Now it comes out that the $5 million estimate was really only one third of the cost of voter suppression:

Eliminating voter registration at the polls would cost Wisconsin taxpayers up to $14.5 million, more than double the original estimate, according to a state elections board report released Monday.

The higher costs identified in the Government Accountability Board report come from new registration responsibilities that would kick in at four state agencies if the same-day registration law is repealed.

[...]

Elimination of the state law would make Wisconsin immediately subject to both the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and 2002's Help America Vote Act. Wisconsin is currently exempt from those requirements because it offers registration on Election Day at the polls.

Under those federal laws, Wisconsin would have to establish a system for offering voter registration services at state offices where people get driver's licenses and at agencies that provide public assistance or administer programs that assist people with disabilities.

Costs faced by the four affected agencies - Transportation, Health Services, Children and Families, and Workforce Development - total up to $10.5 million. Expenses to the GAB, which were first estimated to be $5.2 million over two years, were later lowered to about $4 million. That makes the combined cost about $14.5 million.

The article also reports that Rep. Joel "Get in mah belly" Kleefisch was set to introduce the bill anyway.

How much do you want to bet that the Republicans really, really hope that Walker will escape John Doe and become president so that he can once and for all do away with that pesky constitution and all the rights contained within it.