Fresh WI voting restrictions mean hard work to minimize risk, guarantee turnout

Here we go again; voting made unnecessarily risky during Covid time.

A long-delayed series of reactionary rulings by a GOP-friendly Federal Appeals Court panel means more intensive organizing ahead for progressive organizers in Wisconsin, and principally in urban Democratic strongholds where expanded early absentee voting to better spur along democracy is being rolled back to a uniform, two-week window statewide.

Appeals court limits Wisconsin early voting to 2 weeks before election, stops voters from receiving ballots via email, fax

It's another win for Republicans who have for nearly a decade limited ballot access with roadblock after roadblock, beginning with the imposition of voter ID in the name of preventing voting fraud found only in GOP fear-mongering propaganda.

Two of the Seventh Circuit judges who made the ruling had earlier helped validate the voter ID law in a separate opinion.

Rational judges and fair-minded lawmakers during a pandemic that has imposed all sorts of limitations on in-person voting should be going out of their way to make obtaining a ballot and casting it as easy, simple, and stress-free as possible.

Gov. Evers is under pressure to expand the sites where voter ID can be obtained, according to a release from Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.

All Voting is Local Wisconsin and 28 voting rights groups, including the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, called on Gov. Tony Evers to enforce his own Executive Order and compel the state’s Department of Transportation (DOT) to expand access to photo ID by increasing locations and hours where voters can obtain the identification necessary to cast a ballot. 

The paucity of voter ID outlets and hours of service statewide was a deliberate Walker tactic that I've written about before.

But the Monday court ruling shows that right-wing policymakers in the legislature and on the bench will do just about anything to stymie the fullest participation in elections to harden the self-serving status quo.

Let's make sure that the progressive turnout on November - and beyond - is a repeat of the April tallies which bounced incumbent right-wing State Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly even after the right forced many electors to risk their health by voting in-person with the Covid-19 virus lurking less than six feet away.

New limitations on early voting guarantee that some Wisconsinites will be right back in lines like these in April to cast ballots which a more safety-conscious legislature and judiciary should have ordered for November.

That cynical game plan backfired once; it can be turned around a second time in November, and beyond.