A statue outside of the public library where I would have been elligible to vote before Scott Walker signed the Wisconsin Voter ID Law, lengthening residency requirements, this spring.
When I last lived in Wisconsin in 2006, voting was easy. Wisconsin had a bevy of accommodations which made it easier, rather than more difficult, for people to vote, including same day voter registration, registration without photo-ID, and a ten-day residency requirement. My husband and I moved back to Wisconsin in the end of July so I could take a job as a Visiting Assistant Professor at a local university, and I was excited to vote in the recall election of Republican State Senator Dan Kapanke, who voted for Governor Scott Walker’s union-busting budget this spring.
You can imagine my surprise when I went to my local polling place today to vote and was told that I cannot vote because, although I have a valid Wisconsin driver’s license, have registered my car in Wisconsin, have switched my auto and renter’s insurances to Wisconsin policies, and a have a one-year residential lease in the city where I live, I have only been living in the state for ten days. You see, under the new Voter ID Law that Scott Walker signed in May, the residency requirement for vot ing has been raised to 28 days. Soon, under the same law, Wisconsin voters will be required for the first time ever to show picture-ID when they head to the polls.
These new voting restrictions are accomplishing what Scott Walker hoped. They’re disenfranchising voters: people who do not have the required paperwork to prove residency (for instance, the homeless), people without state issued IDs (the poor, the elderly, those without cars), and people who (like me, or say the tens of thousands of college students in this state) move often. These are people who are already vulnerable to voter disenfranchisement, many of whom (poor people, students) often vote for Democrats. While state officials are expecting a high voter turnout for this election (40%-50%), I can’t help but wonder how high the turnout might be without these new, restrictive poll laws.
And so I say, congratulations Scott Walker: you’ve successful stripped the masses of their voting rights! I can’t wait to help vote you out of office when your recall comes up. And don’t worry, I’ll have been living in Wisconsin for well over 28 days by then.
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Never Bet against the United States, watch out Republicans or the ones that call themselves the Bag of Tea Party, we are coming for you! The win in New York was the beginning but now it’s Wisconsin, next target our nation. The Republicans are like the “Chicken Little’s” always saying that the “Sky is Falling”, like the same ones that were the “Chicken Hawks” (“W” Wars), big talk no courage.
Generations have worked hard and sacrificed much for the country to reach this point (individuals and collectively as Unions!), and with further hard work and sacrifice (along with our relentless self-doubt) the United States will rise again, we do not tire and we are coming back, no matter what “Standard and Poor’s AKA “Scandal and Snores”, Fake News and the Republicans (especially the Bag of Tea Party) “Chicken Little’s” lackies keep saying about our nation.
The United States, favors creativity wherever it can be found. We’re apostles of prosperity and defenders of the free exchange of ideas and when more people in more countries are free to rise, to invent, to communicate, to dissent, it’s not the doom of United States leadership, it’s the triumph of the American way.
You know what this current crowd of GOP liars want is to turn the United Sates into China, where only a few giant corporations run things, they own the factories, the apartments, the grocery stores, the gas stations, the newspaper and magazine publications, the radio stations, the television stations and you pay them and they get all the benefits, and if you do not like it go jump off cliff. Well some Chinese workers seeing that as individuals that they cannot progress have done just that by committing suicide.
The current crowd of GOP liars want to steal Medicare and Social Security from the elderly, they want to abolish a woman’s right to choose and have control over her own body, they want to abolish collective bargaining rights for our Unions, and on top of it all they want to blame the poor, the middle class, the public sector workers and Unions for a recession that the Republicans created (Thanks to the Dullard “W”), while their beloved “Fat cats” continue to pay themselves exorbitant salaries, bonuses, fringe benefits.
Many tell me that the economy was great under “W”, but when you are cooking the books and have taken TWO of the most expensive WARS OF CHOICE in our history, “OFF THE BOOKS”, well now you see the results that will be with us for the next three decades. Remember “W” learned how to “cook the books” with his “No Child left behind” program from the great State of Texas (Rick Perry, cooks the books too), but hey the Republicans never lies right (Just about Wars and everything else)? Please, tell me another!
Boehner Got 98% the USA GOT A DOWNGRADE
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/174925-boehner-i-got-98-percent-of-what-i-wanted-in-debt-deal