Republicans Restrict Right To Vote
Ramming through 5 bills making it harder to vote and hog tying nonpartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission.
Almost all of the bills that Republicans in the Wisconsin legislature rammed through last week would have the effect of curbing our freedom to vote.
Two bills would make voting by absentee ballot more difficult for all voters in Wisconsin.
SB 939 would prohibit the Wisconsin Elections Commission or any local clerk from sending out absentee ballot applications, en masse, to registered voters, as was prudently done during the pandemic. Our ability to exercise our freedom to vote by mail should not be needlessly curtailed by this blanket prohibition. I can understand that some legislators don’t want a clerk in one locale to do this when a clerk in another locale isn’t doing the same thing. But why shouldn’t the Elections Commission be allowed to do this uniformly? If we want more people to be able to exercise their freedom to vote in our democracy, sending everyone an absentee ballot application makes sense, in general. And in specific, it makes a whole lot of sense during a pandemic. But this bill would nix both those options.
What’s more, SB 935 would make voting by absentee ballot especially more difficult for those in residential care facilities or retirement homes.
SB 935 would paternalistically require the notification of relatives of residents in long-term care facilities or retirement homes as to when special voting deputies are going to be there. Residents don’t need their relatives looking over their shoulders when they’re voting. This is an invasion of their privacy. Unless they have a legal guardian, residents should not have their freedom to vote interfered with in this obnoxious manner. What if they don’t get along with “the relatives for whom the home or facility has contact information”? What business is it of the relatives, seriously?
SB 935 would also needlessly prohibit a personal care voting assistant from helping any resident of a residential care facility or qualified retirement home to register to vote. If the personal care voting assistant is there to help the resident fill out an absentee ballot, why can’t the assistant help the resident register to vote? That distinction makes no sense. Plus, nursing homes that receive Medicare or Medicaid funding are required to support the residents’ right to vote. That should include supporting residents who want to register to vote.
And several of these bills would hog-tie the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
SB 940 would allow the Joint Finance Committee to gouge the staff or the funds of the Elections Commission if Joint Finance, on its own, says that the Elections Commission or the Department of Transportation or the Department of Corrections or the Department of Health Services failed to comply with any election law. That would give Joint Finance a huge whip over the heads of the Elections Commission, with no decent check on that unilateral power.
SB 941 would give the Joint Finance Committee and the Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules the authority to block federal funds and federal guidance, which will make it very difficult for the Commission to do its job. It’s also of dubious constitutionality: States aren’t allowed to disregard federal guidance on the conduct of federal elections, for instance.
SB 943 would require the Elections Commission to be nit-picked and hyper-monitored by the Legislature’s Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules. Every week, the Elections Commission would have to give to JCRAR “all documents and communications from the commission that the commission issued in the previous week that are applicable to municipal clerks generally and qualify as guidance documents.” This would amount to death by a thousand cuts for the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
There is one bill, SB 937, that is actually OK as amended. Authored by Sen. Kathy Bernier, with a lot of input from disability rights activists, it would clarify the status of “indefinitely confined” voters and offer some protections for them. But no Democrats would back it, preferring to take a unified stance against all the bills.
I actually think that was a mistake, morally and politically.
Morally, because the bill, while certainly not perfect, would make some necessary improvements for persons with disabilities.
Politically, because it would have behooved Democrats to show that they were willing to work in a bipartisan manner when given a decent bill to sign.
Given the hyper-partisan climate in the Legislature, that might have been too much to ask.
But Gov. Evers could demonstrate some bipartisanship by signing SB 937 and then vetoing all the others, which are far, far worse.
Matt Rothschild is the executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.
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Wi Republicans are more Russian everyday.
They are autocrats.
The tactics of the fascist repubs are so hard to fight when your vote doesn’t count.
I am very afraid we will not wake up until the hardnosed crooked dictator is already in power. Walker came very, very close.
The list of bills is just so pathetic and sad. Also shameless.
God forbid that Evers is defeated this year.
seems like the simple & obvious items that would cleanup of our voting statute is neglected by Both sides…
start with something basic like defining “qualified elector” and “eligible elector”. and if the subnotes say they refer to the same thing, then simply pick 1 term and be consistent.
Here’s an example…. “If ineligible to qualify as an elector”
clean up other duplicative and intermingled terms such as “uniformed service members” & “military electors”.
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The truth is that both sides like the chaos & confusion they have created with Chapter 6, which is currently 27 pages long!!! it kinda defines a whole lot of things while at the same time it kinda provides workarounds for everything. every member of our government including the governor should be embarrassed at the mess that Chapter 6 currently is. and if journalists & the media would hold of on their fear mongering… maybe we could actually get it cleaned up.
…. fear mongering on this topic raises big $$$ for politicians, so I’m doubtful.
ps.. I’d love it if any journalist would support removal of sec 6.36 of the statute…. which requires that voters email be provided to the politicians so that they can spam us more & beg for more money.