League disagrees with AG’s effort to reinstate voter ID law

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The League of Women Voters takes issue with the state attorney general’s effort to restore the voter ID law in time for the November elections.

J.B. Van Hollen said Tuesday he would ask the State Supreme Court for a second time to directly review a pair of judicial rulings which struck down the photo ID requirement for voting. The justices refused to take up the cases last spring.

League Director Andrea Kaminski says it would be a “grave error” to change the rules again for November. Her group won its Dane County lawsuit against the voter ID mandate earlier this year.

A second Madison judge ruled the same way in a suit from black and Hispanic groups in Milwaukee.

The state is challenging both rulings in appeals courts in Madison and Waukesha. Van Hollen wants the Supreme Court to take direct control of both cases.

Kaminski said Van Hollen is simply trying to restore an “unconstitutional law which will make it extremely difficult or impossible for many qualified Wisconsin citizens to vote.”

Van Hollen has said the appellate courts are acting too slowly.

League of Women Voters attorney Lester Pines disputes that. He says the case is moving quickly. Pines said it would be a mistake for the Supreme Court to “rush in on such an important constitutional issue as the right to vote.”

Dane County Circuit Judge David Flanagan sided with a UW-Madison professor who said over 300,000 voters do not have acceptable forms of IDs. Flanagan said getting one is a “substantial burden” for the poor, especially if they have to buy the required birth certificate.

A state demographer disagreed, saying almost everyone has the IDs they need to vote.

Van Hollen said people are frustrated that a “common sense” law is being blocked. Republicans have long contended that a voter ID law would fight fraud.

Tags: news, government, wisconsin