Forum Post: We won one!

Judge Bars Voter ID in Wisconsin Sandra Khalifa Thursday 8 March 2012

“The impact of the law hit disproportionately hard on the elderly, indigent and minorities.”
A Dane County judge has granted a tem­po­rary in­junc­tion against Wis­con­sin’s new voter iden­ti­fi­ca­tion law, which he called “the sin­gle most re­stric­tive voter el­i­gi­bil­ity law” in the coun­try.
Cir­cuit Judge David Flana­gan’s rul­ing Tues­day means the voter ID re­quire­ment would not apply for the April 3 pres­i­den­tial pri­mary and local gen­eral elec­tion.
A spokesman for At­tor­ney Gen­eral J.B. Van Hollen said the state likely would ap­peal, and other state elec­tion of­fi­cials pointed out that other as­pects of the law will re­main in ef­fect, such as hav­ing to sign a poll list.
The NAACP’s Mil­wau­kee branch and im­mi­gra­tion and worker rights group Voces de la Fron­tera had sued over the law last year. A trial on whether to grant a per­ma­nent in­junc­tion is sched­uled for April 16.
In grant­ing the in­junc­tion, Flana­gan found that the plain­tiffs likely would suc­ceed at trial and would suf­fer ir­repara­ble harm with­out the court’s inter ven­tion.
“It’s a solid vic­tory for vot­ing rights and all vot­ers in the state of Wis­con­sin,” said Richard Saks, at­tor­ney for the NAACP, at a news con­fer­ence Tues­day at St. Mark’s AME Church, 1616 W. Atkin­son Ave.
“It’s a win for the hun­dreds of thou­sands who have dif­fi­culty or find it im­pos­si­ble to get voter ID under Act. 23.”
Rep. Jeff Stone (R-Green­dale), a co-spon­sor of the voter ID law, said: “Ob­vi­ously, I’m dis­ap­pointed. It’s a good piece of leg­is­la­tion. It’s a good law. I’m look­ing for­ward to hav­ing the de­ci­sion ap­pealed, and I be­lieve at end of the day we will have a photo ID law in ef­fect in Wis­con­sin.”
With the pri­mary loom­ing, he won­dered whether con­fu­sion would ensue.
“Un­for­tu­nately . . . we will have our elec­tion sys­tem going back and forth,” Stone said. “But we will have to allow the legal sys­tem to work its way through to get an an­swer. We have con­sti­tu­tional law.”
Flana­gan’s 11-page order cov­ered the his­tory of Wis­con­sin Supreme Court rul­ings up­hold­ing votes even when they might have run afoul of tech­ni­cal pro­ce­dural re­quire­ments im­posed by the Leg­is­la­ture. He dis­tin­guished Wis­con­sin’s voter ID law from In­di­ana’s voter ID law that was re­cently up­held by the U.S. Supreme Court.
He also re­lied on the tes­ti­mony and re­ports of the plain­tiffs’ ex­pert, pro­fes­sor Ken­neth Mayer of the Uni­ver­sity of Wis­con­sin-Madi­son, whose work con­cluded there were more than 220,000 con­sti­tu­tion­ally qual­i­fied vot­ers in Wis­con­sin who don’t have the type of ID re­quired under the so-called Act 23 voter ID act, as well as af­fi­davits from 40 res­i­dents de­scrib­ing the costs and dif­fi­cul­ties they en­coun­tered while try­ing to ob­tain a photo ID to allow them to vote.
Na­tionofChange fights back with one sim­ple but pow­er­ful weapon: the truth. Can you do­nate $5 to help us? Flana­gan found the im­pact of the law hit dis­pro­por­tion­ately hard on the el­derly, in­di­gent and mi­nori­ties.
Not sur­pris­ingly, re­ac­tion to the de­ci­sion was split along party lines.
Re­pub­li­can Sen­ate Ma­jor­ity Leader Scott Fitzger­ald of Juneau said: “Photo ID is a rea­son­able re­quire­ment to make sure that your vote isn’t can­celed out by some­one else’s fraud. Fif­teen states re­quire photo ID for vot­ing, and 16 more re­quire some other form of ID. Our photo ID bill was based on an In­di­ana law that was up­held as con­sti­tu­tional by the U.S. Supreme Court, and I am con­fi­dent that the ap­peals process will once again strike down an ac­tivist Dane County judge.”
He added: “With as many ques­tion­able sig­na­tures, mul­ti­ple sign­ers and con­victed felons as we’ve al­ready seen in the re­call process, it makes more sense now more than ever to make sure our elec­tions are clean going for­ward.”
Cullen Wer­wie, a spokesman for Gov. Scott Walker, is­sued the fol­low­ing state­ment:
“Re­quir­ing photo iden­ti­fi­ca­tion to vote is com­mon sense – we re­quire it to get a li­brary card, cold med­i­cine and pub­lic as­sis­tance. Gov. Walker looks for­ward to im­ple­ment­ing com­mon sense re­forms that pro­tect the elec­toral process and in­creases cit­i­zens’ con­fi­dence in the re­sults of our elec­tions.”
He con­tin­ued: “En­sur­ing the in­tegrity of our elec­tions is one of the core func­tions of gov­ern­ment. We are con­fi­dent the state will pre­vail in its plan to im­ple­ment photo ID.” ‘Mod­ern-day poll tax’
De­moc­rats cheered the de­ci­sion.
Mayor Tom Bar­rett said, “As Judge Flana­gan states in his opin­ion: ‘The right to vote is a fun­da­men­tal, defin­ing el­e­ment of our so­ci­ety. The Wis­con­sin Supreme Court has de­scribed it as a “sa­cred right.’ “
U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore said, “This law does noth­ing but at­tempt to re­turn us to an era of Jim Crow pol­i­tics. Re­quir­ing strict photo ID at the polls is noth­ing more than a mod­ern-day poll tax.”
Moore added, “Our right to vote is one of the most pro­tected rights of any that we enjoy in our de­mo­c­ra­tic sys­tem. In fact, the Con­sti­tu­tion was amended five times over our na­tion’s his­tory to re­flect this Amer­i­can ideal.”
Chris­tine Neu­mann-Or­tiz, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of Voces, said: “Jus­tice has been served, but jus­tice doesn’t come easy, and we’re here to de­fend and en­sure vot­ing rights to all vot­ers.”
She and oth­ers in­volved in the case said, how­ever, that al­though they pre­vailed, the court bat­tle is not over.
Saks noted that the ini­tial re­quest for a tem­po­rary in­junc­tion was de­nied by Flana­gan. But then the par­ties asked for a hear­ing and after a full day of tes­ti­mony from Mayer and af­fi­davits and other ev­i­dence, the tem­po­rary in­junc­tion was granted.
Gov­ern­ment Ac­count­abil­ity Board Di­rec­tor Kevin Kennedy said the board will take steps to sus­pend en­force­ment of the photo ID re­quire­ment and dis­cuss im­pacts of the change with local elec­tion of­fi­cials and the pub­lic.
He noted that Tues­day’s rul­ing does not af­fect other parts of Act 23 – the re­quire­ment that vot­ers have 28 con­sec­u­tive days of res­i­dency and sign a poll list, and end­ing the prac­tice of al­low­ing some­one else to vouch for a voter with­out proof of res­i­dence.
A spokesman with the at­tor­ney gen­eral’s of­fice, which de­fended the law, said the of­fice was re­view­ing the rul­ing.
The League of Women Vot­ers of Wis­con­sin also has filed suit in state court chal­leng­ing the voter ID law. That suit is based on the equal pro­tec­tion clause of the state con­sti­tu­tion and says the Leg­is­la­ture never had the au­thor­ity to pass such a law.
On Mon­day, Dane County Cir­cuit Judge Richard Niess cleared the way for that case to pro­ceed by dis­miss­ing chal­lenges from the state that chal­lenged the league’s stand­ing to bring the case and the nam­ing of Walker in the case, said An­drea Kamin­ski, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the league.
A hear­ing on the con­sti­tu­tional issue in the case will be at 1:30 p.m. Fri­day, she said.