West Bend Republican state senator, caulking expert and cultural critic Glenn Grothman has convinced the Wisconsin Legislature with a straight face that a big city like Milwaukee can manage its in-person absentee voting during the same number of hours as can a smaller community.
West Bend has about 30,000 people, while Milwaukee is 20 times larger, with roughly 600,000 residents - - and Milwaukee's 15 aldermanic districts on average have more residents than does all of West Bend - - but Grothman is now the Legislature's election fairness expert and his already-approved Senate bill flew through the Assembly on a party-line vote at the end of the session and is headed to Gov. Scott Walker's desk.
The bill mandates that in-person absentee voting in all Wisconsin municipalities will be trimmed uniformly from three weeks to two weeks before election days, and will be further limited to a maximum of 45 weekday-only hours - - parent-and-worker-friendly weekend hours are now banned - - during those two weeks.
All municipalities, regardless of size, will be allowed to offer early in-person absentee voting at a single location only - - so the time frames for in-person absentee voting have been compressed but the current limitation on voting sites is not expanded - - therefore where do you think the longer lines and greater inconvenience will be?
West Bend, or Milwaukee?
And why?
These restrictions and the barriers to voting inherent in the Wisconsin GOP's high-priority and partisan Voter ID law should be investigated by federal voting rights officials, I have argued.
A federal Dept. of Justice Investigation is long overdue going all the way back to Walker's actions in Milwaukee and the Supreme Court fiasco with Gabelman and Prosser.
ReplyDeleteYes.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.justice.gov/crt/about/vot/vra06.php
Section 3 "(A) the Attorney General has received written meritorious complaints from residents, elected officials, or civic participation organizations that efforts to deny or abridge the right to vote under the color of law on account of race or color"
That the GOP is preventing others, along for the ride to obstruction, does not disconfirm what this attack on voting does to the African-American and Latino communities in Milwaukee and other urban areas.