Next Tuesday, Wisconsin primary voters will show up to the polls, approved ID in hand and ready to vote. Or so they hope. A public education campaign required by the 2011 law has gone missing, due to lack of state funding. Oops.
The Government Accountability Board (GAB), a nonpartisan agency responsible for producing voter education materials, met in October with Republican State Senator Mary Lazich. They told her they’d need between $300,000 and $500,000 for the campaign. Lazich compromised by giving them a budget of $0, despite the fact that they were a major sponsor of the voter ID bill.
Based on this meeting, the GAB decided against making a formal request for funds to the Republican-controlled legislature. It has since voted to dismantle GAB and replace it with two partisan agencies by June 2016. After all, why be accountable to the people who elected you?
The impact on the Wisconsin primary because of voters’ confusion about what kind of ID to bring might be disastrous. ProPublica reports:
“In 2012, a political scientist who testified on behalf of the state in its defense of the statute estimated that between nearly 200,000 and 300,000 voters in Wisconsin did not possess a valid voter ID. His counterpart on the plaintiffs’ side put the estimate at more than 350,000 registered voters in the state.”
Volunteer groups have taken on the education mission, handing out flyers and taking voters without driver’s licenses to get state-issued ID cards.
“We’ve heard from a number of people who have said they didn’t have enough information about the law,” Andrea Kaminski, the Executive Director of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, told ProPublica. “They’re surprised they didn’t see anything on TV, on the Internet.”
The GAB’s extensive website is the go-to source for information on voter ID. It lists acceptable forms of voter ID, and displays a series of videos about what to expect at the polls, polling place procedures, absentee voting, and how to get a state-issued card.
https://youtu.be/K6xHD-P1uzc?list=PL0Fr2i9Jmdy89st76It_c1zh4I3Ug6mlz
Featured image is a screengrab via YouTube.
