In Wisconsin, 200,000 Voters Hang In The Balance While Commission Is Deadlocked | Talking Points Memo

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A very partisan battle is being fought in Wisconsin over whether or not to purge 200,000 voters from the rolls just before the 2020 election.

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1282068
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Let the cheating begin.

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I have often said that the most dangerous thing is to not know the Republican mindset.

Trump, and many others, believe that they have the G-d-given right to rule. Not govern, mind you, because governing involves compromise. They wish to rule because they firmly believe that they are correct in everything, from social to monetary issues. They cannot see any compromise between their point of view and any other.

Accordingly, anything they do to assure that they rule is okay, as well. After all, we liberals and independents simply don’t know that the Republican Way is the only way. So, if they can’t convince us, they’ll just make it so they don’t have to. Thus, gerrymandering and voter suppression are their tactics of choice.

They know they are the party of the angry white folks. They also know that those folks will be in the minority soon. So, they have to double down on all their efforts to stack the courts with right-wing ideologues, and press Republican governors and legislators to cull voting lists and shut down voting places where “those people” vote, and, in essence, make it increasingly difficult for anyone except white folks with money to vote.

I think we have one, or maybe two, chances left to undo all that. However, it must be done at the local level, first. Republican statehouses have to be flipped to maintain electoral integrity. Lawsuits against gerrymandering must be sustained.

Fight back, and let’s keep our democracy.

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You have the majority of the media in this country telling Trump voters to hate Democrats. Why do the DNC not treat these people like the bad-faith actors that they plainly are?

Reach out and point, Dems. Either that, or get outside of 30 miles from a major city and turn on a radio, and begin to realize where you are, and what America has become while you were dismissing the ‘flyover states’.

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For more Republikkklan ratfukking, enjoy this little morsel

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Every single Indivisible group in Wisconsin should make it its mission to ensure they take voters to the registration offices, wherever they may be.

For myself, I can and will file for a year-long absentee ballot request for all FOUR elections that will take place in 2020.

If one thinks one’s registration is in question, it is their duty to make one’s registration valid before the elections.

Do I think the purge is wrong? Possibly. I don’t know where it’s all taking place. But voters have the responsibility to ensure they vote and, if they don’t, to make sure they are registered in time for the elections. Some of it is self-accountability. I’m traveling four and a half days a week and I can still make it happen.

ETA: having had a registrar of voters in my family, they can only do what they’re permitted to do. If one doesn’t vote for an extended period of time, it’s legal to remove the voter from the rolls, as they probably no longer live in the area for a variety of reasons, including death.

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The quality of reporting and editing at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has sure declined in the Gannett era (emphasis added:

Separately, the liberal League of Women Voters of Wisconsin this month sued the commission in federal court to try to keep the voters on the rolls.

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Hopefully, cell mate.
If either can avoid the legal jeopardy, I’m confident there’s a place for them on the has-been-circuit, something like greeting and regaling the attendees at CPAC and its national derivatives.
ETA: It’s absolutely a natural for Trump and, I’m sure that, if he set his mind to it, Meadows would make a fine understudy.

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It just goes to show that a GOP Cock—I mean, Republican, cannot win an election unless it’s in the Old Confederacy or if they prevent people from voting.

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I hope this leads to vicious infighting that in turn clears the way for the Democrat in the race.

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A lesson, that is unfortunately lost on many registered Dem voters, who don’t actually bother to vote.

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In my former State of Connecticut, they instituted a motor voter law which registered anyone renewing their driver’s license. Not sure if it’s still in place, but my ancestor who was a registrar in CT seriously saw it as a pain, as the State would send all these registrations which, in many cases, were already registered and just fine.

I’d rather have too much than too little, but that’s just me.

Thing is, it’s way easy to keep one’s registration up to par. If one doesn’t vote, there are multiple notifications that go out to the voter. If they’re returned undeliverable, the voter is removed from the roles; if they’re returned completed, the registration is updated.

While I agree and believe the GOP is performing illegal purges, it really is up to the voter to make sure they’re properly registered too.

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I’m sure our Founders would be delighted to know that 200 years after they created the US Courts the political leaning of those Courts would be the first thing mentioned in predicting how they would rule. Probably just as happy as they’d be knowing money was to become the mover in America’s politics. It’s the new originalism and that aint no oxymoron.

I’m also sure hat the fact that only GOP’er run states are booting thousands from the roles has nothing to do with their politics. I guess there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. If the GOP feels it needs to do this to scrape by they’re toast in the long run.

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It can be insidiously done making it tough for “voter beware” to be reliable. I was born in Hartford and am not surprised the Constitution State makes voting easy. But now I live in Florida and it sure as hell isn’t like that here. I was booted although I’ve not moved and voted in every election. They said it was an error. In 2012 I voted at the Atlantic Beach Florida city hall and when received my ballot the red neck at the table highlighted “democrat” with a yellow highlighter. I asked why. He would not say. I asked again and was threatened with arrest. It took 4 months to find out what I already knew “he should not have done that” but I never found out why. Later I did when I found out I was no longer a registered voter. I doubt I’d suffer that in CT.

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Whoa.
My voting story is really my mother’s. The last time she voted was in 2012. We went together because I knew her dementia was getting worse than it was in 2008. The person at the registration table noticed that my mother’s name on her ID didn’t match her voter registration form, a form in which she probably signed back in 1950, which would have been before she married, then divorced, but hey she’s lived at the same address since 1962 and she never had a problem before. The problem was she used her middle name initial, and most of her legal paperwork she used her maiden name initial. All this hoohaw over one letter when she had voted at the same polling place for over 40 years.

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Her middle initial probably had nothing to do with it. That was the excuse. Her party affiliation or demographics ( likely to vote Dem ) was the real deal.

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OK can someone explain to me all this fuss and muss about people who on the voting rolls but haven’t voted in x amount of elections? I mean does the Election Board get fined or something if every voter is not properly tagged and placed on the correct address?

Back when all of this seem to be starting I remember someone commenting, somewhere, on the fact that he was trying to do the “good citizen” thing and notify his election board that he was moving out of state. He was told “Don’t worry about it. When we see that you haven’t voted after so many cycles we’ll remove you from the rolls.”

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See as far as I know we don’t register by party. When I vote in the primary I have to request which party ballot I want.

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I think you underestimate how difficult and opaque the voter registration process is here, certainly by comparison with other democracies. In Ireland–I just checked out of curiosity–you fill out a one-page form online verifying your address and nationality. You also list everyone else resident at your address who’s 18 or over. Then you’re done. You’ve registered not only yourself but all your kids and roommates. Nobody then sends you junk mail asking you to reverify from time to time. If you move, you go back online and tell them your new address. Then you’re done again.

A very simple process also exists in the UK. Takes a few minutes. You can register even if you can’t remember your national insurance number.

The voting rights situation here is very similar to healthcare. People are so used to a nightmarish bureaucratic landscape that they can’t quite believe there’s an easy alternative.

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We all know how much Republicans claim to revere the Founding Fathers, and “Paul Weyrich, “father” of the right-wing movement and co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, Moral Majority” is high up there on the list.

Weyrich said: “Now many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome — good government. They want everybody to vote. I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”

Can you believe the gall of those “goo-gooers” thinking good government is a good thing, and that voter participation is part of that pathology?

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