Now it turns out a top official in Gov. Scott Walker's Department of Transportation (DOT) wants to keep it secret that voter IDs are free. That way citizens who don't realize they're legally entitled to free voter IDs will cough up $28 a pop for them.
Aren't Walker's tea party supporters opposed to government taking hard-earned money from citizens? They should really be furious about Walker's government trying to grab money for ID cards that by law are free.
"While you should certainly help customers who come in asking for a free ID to check the appropriate box, you should refrain from offering the free version to customers who do not ask for it."
That's a quote from Steve Krieser, recently promoted to the third-ranking official in the DOT, in a memo sent to all DMV employees.
You see, in order to receive a free voter ID, a citizen must check a certain box on Form MV3001. If they fail to check that box certifying they need a photo ID for voting (which everyone does), the DMV can charge $28.
If the DMV can trick enough people into paying $28 for a free ID, Krieser might even get another promotion.
The reason for all this flimflam is that the free voter ID under the law actually is the same Wisconsin photo ID that the DMV has sold in the past for $28 to people who don't have driver's licenses.
Apparently, Republican legislators didn't worry much about that in their rush to pass a voter ID law to make voting more difficult for poor people, racial minorities, students and the elderly—all groups more likely to vote Democratic than Republican.
But now the DMV is appalled to be losing all the revenue from the photo ID cards they used to sell because students now can use free voter ID cards to get into bars. Talk about unintended consequences.
GOP Moves to Disenfranchise
Of course, if Republicans could have gotten away with charging $28 or, even better, $2,800 for each voter ID for folks who didn't have driver's licenses, they would have.
Since the people without driver's licenses are primarily poor, African American, Latino or elderly, it would have been a sure-fire way to keep a lot of Democratic voters away from the polls.
But even the right-wing John Roberts majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld Indiana's version of a voter ID law in 2008, couldn't stomach charging citizens to vote in America.
That would be an unconstitutional poll tax, a practice widely used in the segregated South under Jim Crow laws to prevent poor African Americans from voting.
In the South in those days, Democrats were the ones conspiring to prevent African Americans from voting. The parties reversed roles after President Lyndon Johnson and the Democrats embraced the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act in the 1960s.
Republican President Richard Nixon devised what he called the "Southern Strategy," turning his back on the Republicans' proud history as the party of Lincoln. Republicans openly began courting racist Southern whites alienated by the Democrats' support of civil rights.
When President Barack Obama won by a wide margin in 2008, Republicans began urgently devising new ways to prevent African Americans from voting.
The five states passing photo ID laws to accomplish that in the past year were Wisconsin, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Kansas.
It was part of a central campaign financed by Walker's political underwriters, the right-wing, billionaire Koch brothers. Some interesting local variations were written into state laws.
In Gov. Rick Perry's Texas, a concealed-carry gun permit is an acceptable voter ID, but a college student ID is not.
Walker's Republicans deviously wrote specific requirements for student IDs into the law that no Wisconsin college IDs meet, potentially disenfranchising all 242,000 state students.
Charging for free IDs is just one of the games being played involving the Wisconsin DMV. A fourth of the offices around the state are open less than one day a month.
Then, shortly after making DMV the repositories of voter IDs, Walker announced he was shutting 16 offices, many of them in Democratic areas. The decision was reversed only after an outcry from Democratic legislators.
Republicans justified passing the voter ID law with stories of imaginary voter fraud. The real fraud is being committed by Republicans conspiring to prevent citizens from voting and charging them for free IDs.
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Please spare me. The Waukesha DMV was moved based on cost of real estate, a growing population, and projected economic base growth in certain areas. It was not a Republican plot. You sound like Joel now.
Hey Joel- your statement about the DMV being like a political kidnapping is telling. Even you understand that government is a bloated, painful beauracracy staffed in large part by clock-watchers.
Now, however, Joel has come to a point at which it is too much to even require freeloaders to ASK for the freebies. At what point do we expect anything at all from people? Is there a minimum level at which we expect people to be responsible for themselves?
The DOT edict is not meant to prevent the poor from getting free IDs. It is meant to prevent those who are financially able to pay for the IDs from getting free IDs. Joel- aren't you in favor of taxing the "rich"? ID fees are just another tax, and just another tax that we've exempted the freeloaders from. The least they can do is ask.
My grandfather is 88. He no longer drives so he doesn't have a driver's license anymore. He also doesn't carry a state ID card since he doesn't get carded when he walks down to watch the Packers game at the local watering hole. He still likes to vote though, and since he doesn't qualify as poor he will have to pay to get a state ID card for the sole reason of voting. Basically he is being charged a fee to exercise his Constiutional right to vote.
"It is meant to prevent those who are financially able to pay for the IDs from getting free IDs."
So you're basically saying the poor can vote for free, but the rest of us have to pay for the right.
This article brought out the comments... because of "racist" folk like Joel and moi. We are racists simply because we acknowledge that racism still exists, and are willing to speak or write out those thoughts.
I had a recent reminder of that in West Bend WISCONSIN (not Mississippi or Alabama). I was at the Kettle Moraine Jazz festival, was waiting in a food line. One long line, 2 order windows. I truly believed it was one line splitting when it got to the 2 windows. Then the lone black couple left one of the registers, nobody from the all white long line moved over to fill the spot. Then I noticed that the clerk at one window was white, the other clerk was black. You might as well have posted "Whites only" and "Colored only" signs! - Well, that's West Bend for you, Wisconsin's true colors, no pun intended. But, I noticed it happening, so that makes ME the racist!
1. Note 5 states adopting Voter ID, Wisconsin is the only northern state listed, the other 4 are southern states. Are those 4 states ones we also hold in high regard?
2. Gun license qualifies as Voter ID (Texas), student ID does not (and Wisconsin student ID may not qualify). This is the classic battle of "redneck (with guns) establishment" vs "long-hair student liberal", students are the same "white-traitors" who rode on the civil rights Freedom buses to the south. Students are also the same environmentally conscious folk that gave the EPA it's power. Time to shut that vote down! Besides, the "good people" could once go down to the local union plant and get a better paying job than if they went to college, education is not really valued by the large working class voting block known as the Baby Boom, but making money is valued.
3. Poll tax, just like our fellow southern states. Driven by the knowledge that "half the people do not pay ANY IRS 1040 income tax." Remember that our constitutional founding fathers only granted "property owners" the right to vote, no votes from the servants, tenants, or slaves occupying the owners land (not even his wife). The states rights southern plantation owners wanted to keep it that way, "workers have no rights." Given that idea, how would you like it if we said "employees of a business" could not vote, but "owners of a business" could? In the corporate boardrooms, that's the way it is!
4. Barack Obama won by a wide margin in 2008... clear sign that the election system is "broken" if it can elect a "black muslim" into the Oval Office... or so the "local majority" has taken away from that experience, right or wrong. The backlash of all that is Michelle Bachmann, is Ron Johnson, is the Tea Party, is Scott Walker, is all the recent law changes we are seeing. Even business is now "on strike", refusing to rebuild the economy until they get the changes they want. Not so different from our collective bargaining union workers stopping business until they get what they want.
Dave - so your grandfather does nothing else in which he needs to show an ID? I find that hard to believe. Nice try though.
That would be a good idea if anyone was ever arrested for voter fraud.