Rep calls on Walker to not enforce voter ID law for 2018 election

Disenfranchised voters — —PHOTO: Steve Cukrov

The U.S. Supreme Court this week refused to re-instate North Carolina’s Voter ID restrictions, deemed unconstitutional in a ruling by a circuit court judge that declared African Americans “were targeted with surgical precision” and that it “impose(s) cures for problems that did not exist.”

This bill is one of numerous others that have passed around the country, including in Wisconsin.

With news reports that as many as 300,000 eligible Wisconsin voters would not have been able to participate in the 2016 Fall election as a result of the voter ID disenfranchisement law, Wisconsin Rep. David Bowen, D-Milwaukee, called on Gov. Scott Walker to not enforce the measure in 2018, including for the governor’s race.

“Gov. Walker and majority Republicans’ voter ID law stopped potentially hundreds of thousands of people — many of them from communities of color — from casting ballots in the 2016 election,” Bowen stated. “That should be of great concern to anyone who cares about the integrity of our elections.”

In the 2012 presidential election, the city of Milwaukee had 41,000 more ballots cast than the 2016 election, a turnout reduction that very possibly correlates with the Republican voter ID law, Bowen's office said.

“This level of voter disenfranchisement by Gov. Walker and majority Republicans is incredibly damaging to democracy and prevents communities of color from having a voice,” said Bowen. “I demand Gov. Walker not engage in modern-day point-shaving and instead run fair elections.”

Lisa Neff

managing editor

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(1) comment

RodMay 16, 2017 9:33pm

It is to promote lawlessness to ask the government or anyone to not enforce the law. No one is above the Law. This is why we have laws. We must either change the law in a lawful manner or we must enforce the law. If we cannot lawfully change the law lawfully, we must accept the law and obey the law. To do ask someone to do otherwise is to ask them to rise above the law and not be bound by the law and is to encourage lawless chaos. The reason we have the law is not so we can pick and choose which laws we want to obey and enforce. Anyone not willing to obey, enforce, and respect the law should certainly not be in office and should resign.