In a moment of extraordinary honesty, a GOP congressman from Wisconsin said a new voter ID law will help the eventual Republican presidential nominee win the state in November. Rep. Glen Grothman’s prediction, made in response to questions about Tuesday’s primaries in the state, gave credence to critics of voter ID laws who say they are tools used by conservatives to disenfranchise the poor and minorities, many of whom vote for Democrats. Grothman told WTMJ-4’s Charles Benson that despite past GOP candidates’ poor showings in the Badger State, this year will be different. “Now we have photo ID, and I think photo ID is gonna make a little bit of a difference as well,” he said. Grothman said something similar in 2012, when he was minority assistant leader in the state Senate. At that time, he said the law, which he helped to pass in 2011, could help GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney if it were in effect for the November election because “people who vote inappropriately are more likely to vote Democrat.”
Don’tcha just love those rare moments of unintended Republican honesty? You know, when they slip up and actually admit what most reasonable, rational observers have known all along, even as Republicans stick to their tried and true talking points? Why, yes…anti-LGBT laws really ARE about protecting “religious freedom” and criminalizing abortion is ALL about protecting women’s health; why do you ask?
Few people with even the most tenuous grip on reality accept the Republican talking point that Voter ID laws are about “protecting the integrity of elections.” Voter fraud, such as it is, poses an almost infinitesimal problem. It certainly doesn’t rise to the level of representing a clear and present danger to the democratic process.
Virtually anyone with a pulse recognizes that “Voter ID” is actually code for “Voter suppression.” Most of the laws passed in various red states have had the (desired if not openly stated) practical effect of installing a succession of ever more difficult to surmount hurdles impacting the ability of some individuals (usually those who vote “inappropriately”- i.e.- Democratic) to register to vote and exercise their franchise.
What Rep. Grothman did was to openly admit to the craven, corrupt, and highly partisan reasons behind voter ID laws. It’s not about “protecting the integrity of elections;” it’s about Republicans metaphorically putting their thumb on the scale in order to ensure the election of Republican candidates.
Mom used a word that simply and elegantly described what Voter ID laws represent; she called it “cheating.”
The law, which has not been a factor until this cycle, limits the forms of identification accepted for individuals to cast a ballot and is considered one of the strictest in the nation. An estimated 300,000 registered voters in Wisconsin, 9 percent of the electorate, were considered at risk of being disenfranchised in Tuesday’s primaries. The law in Wisconsin, and in other states with similar rules on the books, predominantly affects certain groups: African-Americans, the poor, elderly individuals and students.
When you adversely impact fully 9% of your state’s registered voters, and when that impact falls on minorities, the poor, senior citizens, and college student (all of whom are traditionally heavily Democratic constituencies), it’s no longer about electoral integrity. It’s about rigging elections to ensure the election of Republicans. As Rep. Grothman admitted, “people who vote inappropriately are more likely to vote Democrat.”
It’s about cheating. You can do that when you’re arrogant enough to believe that the only “appropriate” votes are those cast for Republicans. Republican arrogance and demagoguery (as demonstrated by Grothman) sees nothing wrong with doing whatever it takes to ensure that only those who take their responsibility seriously and vote “appropriately” are allowed into a voting booth.
When you’re convinced that government should be and is by rights the exclusive property and playground of the Republican Party, ensuring that people who “vote inappropriately” are excluded probably seems a perfectly logical approach.
Conservatives often defend the laws as tools to guard against voter fraud, promoting voter integrity and even increasing turnout. However, there is almost no evidence that in-person voter fraud is a widespread issue. Conservative Judge Richard A. Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit bluntly characterized Wisconsin’s law as a “poll tax.”
It should be clear to anyone paying attention to the arguments being made in support of Voter ID laws that such laws are a solution in desperate search of a problem. “Voter fraud” is as mythical as your average unicorn, and it poses a similarly invisible threat to the integrity of the democratic process.
Voter ID laws are little more than thinly veiled legalized voter suppression. It’s cheating; Republicans who fear they can’t win elections on their own merits are now heavily invested in tilting the playing to ensure that those who traditionally vote for Democratic candidates face difficult- in some cases, impossible- to surmount obstacles in order to register and vote.
“There is only one motivation for imposing burdens on voting that are ostensibly designed to discourage voter-impersonation fraud,” he wrote in an opinion for a case addressing Wisconsin’s law, “and that is to discourage voting by persons likely to vote against the party responsible for imposing the burdens.”
Voter ID laws have been described by some observers as “evil,” which makes sense if one’s definition of evil encompasses gaming and corrupting our electoral system in the name of “electoral integrity” with the express, if unstated, goal of making it easier for Republicans to prevail.
As Judge Posner stated, there’s no factual argument to be made in support of Voter ID laws. The argument that it’s about preventing voter fraud is laughable, because as has been amply and often demonstrated, there IS no voter fraud problem.
I can’t help but think that if someone had created this sort of corrupt system in the financial industry, people would be going to prison for it. In politics, we call them Republicans and meekly acquiesce to the creation of a system in which “one man, one vote” has been rendered in some cases almost meaningless.
All Rep. Grothman’s moment of unintentional honesty did was confirm what’s long been already known about Voter ID laws. It’s long past time for the rest of the GOP to step up and admit to the truth.
