May 5, 2011

Wis. voters required to show photo of Jeff Stone

Good friend of the blog Emily Mills on the WISGOP's voter ID bill.

Everybody knows the Republicans' bill is most likely to discourage from voting those classes of persons who are most likely to vote Democrat. Even Wisconsin's Louie Gohmert, Senator Glenn Grothman of Washington County, copped to this empirical fact yesterday.

Personally, I didn't watch any of the hearings, but my most reliable sources tell me the bill's sponsors, Republicans Jeff Stone and Don Pridemore, were utterly clueless in the face of questioning and were reduced to offering up personal anecdotes from their college days.

Indiana passed a similar bill, which was challenged and went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which decided in favor of the constitutionality of the photo ID requirement in the case of Crawford v. Marion County Election Bd., which lead opinion has the added Republican bonus of having been authored by the liberal avatar Justice John Paul Stevens.

Now I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I reckon any and all concerns leveled at Messrs. Stone and Pridemore are addressed in that set of opinions, and even more so among the numerous Friends of the Court briefs filed on behalf of the photo ID bill's supporters, all of which documents are freely available on the internets these days.*

Reportedly Jeff 'Get me the least expensive black guy' Stone mentioned the case, but it was quickly made apparent he hadn't even gotten past the syllabus: Preparation with an H for hilarious.

These are your lawmakers, Wisconsin.

* I mean, you don't even have to hump it down to the law library and reconnoiter the latest-fangled digital reader of microfiches.

14 comments:

  1. gnarlytrombone2:12 PM, May 05, 2011

    I reckon any and all concerns leveled at Messrs. Stone and Pridemore are addressed in that set of opinions

    I really don't think so, except for a few jabs about the requirements being equivalent to a poll tax. Most of that territory has been covered already.

    Almost all of the trenchant objections in the hearing related being state being utterly unprepared to implement the requirement and the bill's near total failure to address this reality.

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  2. As to its legality, that is. Failure to effectively brainstorm the implementation is another of their problems entirely. But I'll have to check out the WisEye archive at some point. Sounds entertaining.

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  3. gnarlytrombone2:44 PM, May 05, 2011

    is another of their problems entirely

    The point wasn't made explicitly, but the Dems' underlying argument seemed to be that Wisconsin's law would be less equitable than Indiana's because it's so much harder to get an ID.

    Pridemore (who's name's Don BTW) countered with the magical mystery mobile DMV offices.

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  4. this is a much more restrictive bill than Indiana's. a lot fewer documents count as "ID" for voting purposes. a LOT. AND it's a lot harder to get to a DMV to get an ID, in very many parts of the state.

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  5. So it's worse than I thought and they haven't even tailored the bill to the law. Yikes.

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  6. Rumor would have it that the sponsors of the "education" bills are less than informed regarding the contents of said bills, let alone legal repercussions or consequences of implementation.

    This seems to be the natural outcome of sponsoring prepackaged legislation.

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  7. gnarlytrombone3:52 PM, May 05, 2011

    This seems to be the natural outcome of sponsoring prepackaged legislation

    I don't know if this measure in particular stems from a model code. But there was a glaring incongruity between Stone's protestation that "we've been working on this for 10 years" and the fact that this bill is half-baked on the details.

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  8. @gnarlytrombone, admittedly induction, but certainly not unreasonable to ask the question.

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  9. Your sources didn't even get the names of the bills authors correct. They are Stone and Tauchen. So much for reliable!

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  10. Never said authors. But let's call 'em "champions."

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  11. gnarlytrombone6:48 PM, May 05, 2011

    They are Stone and Tauchen.

    Tauchen wrote the part about eliminating straight-ticket voting, if that's what you mean. But Stone and Pridemore are the Kahunas.

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  12. What I would be curious to find out is what exactly have been the effect on voting in states that have IDs, such as Indiana. At least this will make me come back to the blog Illy to get my question answered.

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  13. gnarlytrombone8:29 PM, May 06, 2011

    Some research here, KR.

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  14. Thanks Gnarl. Interesting stuff.

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