{"id":45157,"date":"2016-11-03T14:28:51","date_gmt":"2016-11-03T19:28:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=45157"},"modified":"2016-11-03T14:28:51","modified_gmt":"2016-11-03T19:28:51","slug":"the-fight-against-wisconsins-voter-id-laws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/the-fight-against-wisconsins-voter-id-laws\/","title":{"rendered":"The fight against Wisconsin’s Voter ID laws"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Shahzeb Ahmed<\/strong><\/p>\n

To Sharon Luellen, being part of the electoral process is more than just a civic obligation. It is her right.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy vote counts,\u201d she said succinctly as she sat on a canopy-shaded steel bench across from the homeless shelter where she lives. A new photo ID in hand after an unexpectedly swift trip to a local Department of Motor Vehicles office, she is excited to cast her ballot.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, if I couldn\u2019t vote here, I would probably leave Madison and go somewhere I can vote; probably Chicago,\u201d Luellen said.
\n
\nWisconsin\u2019s strict voter ID law, passed in 2011, requires voters to prove they are living at a Wisconsin address, be registered to vote in Wisconsin and be a US citizen. This will be the first election for which the law is being implemented.<\/p>\n

A federal judge criticized the state for making it too hard for some residents to acquire the IDs, a process that disproportionately harms aspiring voters like Luellen, who has no car, no permanent address and few resources.<\/p>\n

“The Wisconsin experience demonstrates that a preoccupation with mostly phantom election fraud leads to real incidents of disenfranchisement, which undermine rather than enhance confidence in elections, particularly in minority communities,” U.S. District Judge James Peterson observed during the July 29 hearing. “To put it bluntly, Wisconsin’s strict version of voter ID law is a cure worse than the disease.”<\/p>\n

Judge Peterson struck down several restrictions placed by the laws, but observed that he could not overturn the entire voter ID law because a federal appeals court had already found such restrictions to be constitutional.<\/p>\n

But Luellen was determined. Luckily for her, she happened to meet Gail Bliss at the Salvation Army homeless shelter, where she was living at the time.<\/p>\n

Bliss was volunteering to help homeless persons acquire documentation that would enable them to vote in the upcoming elections. She drove Luellen and her daughter, Michelle, first to the Social Security Office in Madison to get their social security cards and then to the DMV to get state IDs. The Salvation Army provided documentation attesting the fact that Luellen was a resident of the shelter at the time.<\/p>\n

Bliss, 61, is runs the voting services department at the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that has filed a lawsuit challenging the state\u2019s photo ID law.<\/p>\n

Among the scores of people Bliss has helped, one of the most difficult cases was that of Beverly Lynn Winters \u2013 a Chicago-born woman who had moved to Madison to be closer to her boyfriend after growing tired of the violence in Chicago. She had just been robbed at gunpoint and had lost all her IDs. Luckily, she still had her social security card, which she kept at home as advised by the Social Security Administration.<\/p>\n

When she got to Madison, she began living in a homeless shelter. She had previously worked for a Chicago-based social service agency feeding homeless people. Her role had now reversed. And then things got worse.<\/p>\n

Winters was robbed again in Madison. This time, she lost her social security card too.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem is you can\u2019t leave your social security card at home when you are homeless,\u201d said Bliss.<\/p>\n

Unable to find a job without the social security card, Winters went to apply for one, only to be told her records didn\u2019t match the name on her birth certificate. She contacted the League of Women Voters, which had a $5,000 grant from the Evjue Foundation to help people pay for birth certificates. She finally managed to get one online.<\/p>\n

By now, however, her troubles were only beginning. \u201cWhen Beverly was born in Chicago, her parents had not decided on her name,\u201d said Bliss. \u201cSo her birth certificate said \u2018Female Winters\u2019\u201d. The DMV in Wisconsin would not issue a social security card because it requires a photo-ID. Winters could not get a photo ID because it requires a social security card. She was stuck in a catch-22.<\/p>\n

The one way she could prove it was her birth certificate was to get her school records that identified her as Beverly Winters. She managed to get an elementary school record showing her name, birth date and parents\u2019 information. That, too, was deemed inadmissible.<\/p>\n

\u201cLuckily, and I know it sounds silly when I say luckily, but she\u2019d had a bad asthma attack a month before and had been to the emergency room,\u201d Bliss recalled. They went to the hospital and acquired a certified copy of the medical record showing her name.<\/p>\n

The Social Security office finally accepted the medical record as proof and issued her a social security card. She then used the card to get a state ID from the DMV. Winters was able to get a job and move out of the shelter \u2013 something she hadn\u2019t been able to do previously because no one would hire her without a social security card. The whole process had taken around 16 months, in large part because Winters had kept disappearing and resurfacing.<\/p>\n

As Bliss sat on a sofa chair in the Madison Public Library where she was facilitating early voters that day, she told story after story of people she had helped acquire IDs. The common thread in was that the procedure is simple if done right.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes its detective work,\u201d she said. Mostly, it\u2019s just a matter of taking out the time to go to the DMV and go through the process. \u201cBut if you\u2019re struggling to pay rent while working a full-time blue-collar job, voting is probably not your number one priority.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Voting
Voting booths at the Madison Public Library to facilitate citizens wishing to vote early. (Shahzeb Ahmed\/MEDILL)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Another major issue is the lack of transportation from the suburbs to any of the DMV offices. \u201cMost people affected by the stricter Voter ID laws are poor and likely don\u2019t have a car. Getting to the DMV to get a photo ID is an ordeal in itself,\u201d she said. Over the last four years, Bliss has driven several people in situations similar to Luellen\u2019s to the DMV.<\/p>\n

She believes that the Voter ID laws have been encouraged by the American Legislative Exchange Council \u2013 a nonprofit organization of conservative state legislators and private sector representatives that drafts and shares model state-level legislation for distribution among state governments in the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are attempting to make it more challenging to vote and they are attempting to sow the seeds of distrust in the election system,\u201d she said slowly, carefully selecting her words. \u201cThe law wasn\u2019t so much confusing as restrictive. You can use a Minnesota ID to rent a video or board an airplane but you can\u2019t use it to vote in Wisconsin.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anita Johnson, the state coordinator for Voteriders \u2013 a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that assists people in getting photo IDs for voting \u2013 echoes Bliss\u2019 sentiment. \u201cThere are around 300,000 people [in Wisconsin] that could possibly not vote due to the confusion of the law. It affects people of color, senior citizens, people with disabilities, the homeless and students.\u201d<\/p>\n

The law is so new that many people think there is something called a voter ID that they must have before voting.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Wisconsin, there is no such thing as a voter ID. There is only a photo ID that you show when you want to register to vote,\u201d said Johnson, who blames \u201cthe Republicans for perpetuating the confusion to stop people from going to vote\u201d.<\/p>\n

Her fears may not be unfounded, as revealed time and again by whistleblowers and members of the Republican Party itself. Todd Allbaugh, a staff aide to a Republican state legislator in Wisconsin, quit his job in 2015 and left the party due to what he witnessed at a Republican caucus meeting. He wrote on Facebook:<\/p>\n

\u201cI was in the closed Senate Republican Caucus when the final round of multiple Voter ID bills were being discussed. A handful of the GOP Senators were giddy about the ramifications and literally singled out the prospects of suppressing minority and college voters. Think about that for a minute. Elected officials planning and happy to help deny a fellow American\u2019s constitutional right to vote in order to increase their own chances to hang onto power\u201d.<\/p>\n

In fact, Judge Peterson had also observed that, “The Legislature’s immediate goal was to achieve a partisan objective, but the means of achieving that objective was to suppress the reliably Democratic vote of Milwaukee’s African-Americans.”<\/p>\n

Johnson, Bliss and others like them are, however, adamant to get as many people to vote as possible by assisting them in acquiring the proper photo IDs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is personal. You know, my grandmother couldn\u2019t vote,\u201d Bliss said, noting that the 19th Amendment that gave women the right to vote was not ratified until 1920. \u201cI don\u2019t want anybody to be disenfranchised. Not happening on my watch.\u201d<\/p>\n

Photo at top: Sharon Luellen (left) and Gail Bliss talk about their recent experience at the DMV where they went to get Luellen’s photo ID. (Shahzeb Ahmed\/MEDILL)<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Shahzeb Ahmed To Sharon Luellen, being part of the electoral process is more than just a civic obligation. It is her right. \u201cMy vote counts,\u201d she said succinctly as she sat on a canopy-shaded steel bench across from the homeless shelter where she lives. A new photo ID in hand after an unexpectedly swift […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":324,"featured_media":45166,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2941,2951],"tags":[3241,3240,3172],"class_list":["post-45157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fall-2016","category-politicsnational-security","tag-league-of-women-voters-of-wisconsin","tag-voter-registration-laws","tag-wisconsin-voters"],"yoast_head":"\nThe fight against Wisconsin's Voter ID laws - Medill Reports Chicago<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/the-fight-against-wisconsins-voter-id-laws\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The fight against Wisconsin's Voter ID laws - Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Shahzeb Ahmed To Sharon Luellen, being part of the electoral process is more than just a civic obligation. 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