Wisconsin Voter ID Proponent: If You Can't Vote, You Must Not Care
Voter ID legislation is notorious for making it difficult for minorities, the poor, and basically anyone who might not vote Republican to vote at all. But don't tell that to Wisconsin State Senator Glenn Grothman! As far as he's concerned, if you didn't vote, you just didn't want it enough.
Grothman is a major supporter of Wisconsin's voter ID laws, which are among most restrictive in the country. He also happens to represent an area of wealthy, white suburbs near Milwaukee in the state senate. He hates Martin Luther King, Jr. Day ("Let's be honest, giving government employees off has nothing to do with honoring Martin Luther King Day") and Kwanzaa (it's for "white left-wingers who try to shove this down black people's throats in an effort to divide Americans").
And now he's pretty sure that people who can't come in to vote on polling day are just gumming up the system and are probably only bothering to vote as part of an elaborate scam to take rich people's money, MSNBC reports:
Wisconsin Republicans are pushing a bill to end early voting on the weekend. [...] "Between [early voting], mail absentee, and voting the day of election, you know, I mean anybody who can't vote with all those options, they've really got a problem," [Grothman] said. "I really don't think they care that much about voting in the first place, right?"
But who exactly is that "they" who doesn't "care that much about voting"? Let's see if we can guess which Wisconsin residents will be hit especially hard!
The measure would make it harder for people in the state’s most populous areas to cast a ballot—and it would hit blacks especially hard. [...] That would mean a reduction in early voting hours for the state’s two biggest cities, Milwaukee and Madison—which are also its most important Democratic strongholds. [...] While hitting big cities hard, the bill leaves voting practices in small towns largely untouched. [...] But scrapping weekend voting will hit African-Americans particularly hard, Rev. Willie Brisco, who leads an alliance of Milwaukee churches, told msnbc.
