David Michael Miller
The lawsuit launched by liberal groups One Wisconsin Institute and Citizen Action of Wisconsin argues that Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican-led Legislature enacted changes in state election law to make it harder for people of color to vote. The groups claim the changes violate the federal Voting Rights Act, the First Amendment and equal protection clause.
The trial came before Judge James Peterson in a federal court in Madison, and coverage has made much of the testimony regarding the impact of the photo ID mandate. But the suit also targets other changes that have made it more difficult to vote and have gotten less attention, including reducing early voting from 30 days before an election to 12 days, limiting the hours when voting can take place and restricting early voting to one location per municipality.
To rebut the idea these changes were problematic, the state brought testimony from clerks for the cities of Cedarburg and Port Washington, who said the new laws were easily accommodated. “From the start, we have had virtually no problems at all,” said Waukesha County Clerk Kathleen Novack. But that testimony is a double-edged sword, showing the new rules worked well in heavily white, heavily Republican areas, but leaving the question whether they then gave these districts an advantage over urban areas with high minority and Democratic voting patterns.
Two elections experts from urban cities testified that this was indeed happening. Madison City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl detailed how the election law changes created delays at polling places and prevented voters from casting ballots. And Milwaukee Election Commission executive director Neil Albrecht testified that in the 2016 presidential primary election, the turnout percentage in the city trailed the statewide average by nearly 10%, a gap far higher than in 2008, when it was less than 2%.
Is this what the law intended to accomplish? A key “gotcha” moment in the trial came when Novack testified that weekend voting gave “over-access...to particular parts of the state” and “too much access to the voters as far as opportunities.” This is someone whose job is to make sure all who want to vote do so, and she is arguing against that mission, in favor of reducing access to voting. Her testimony echoed the claims of Republican leaders like Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) that reducing early voting hours would “level the playing field” between urban and other areas.
As the suburban clerks testified, there were no problems for voters casting early ballots in the 2012 presidential race in those areas under the new rules. But size matters. Madison had 182,859 registered voters for that election, or 37 times more than Delafield, and by law is required to handle all in-person early voters at one place. The restrictions in hours for early voting, combined with the one-polling-place requirement, meant long lines and more barriers to voting in urban areas.
The impact of such restrictions was measured by elections expert Kenneth Mayer, whose analysis found this: “In 2010, the last statewide election in which late weekend registration was permitted in the three days before an election, significantly more people registered over this period in municipalities with higher African American population concentrations.”
In addition, he concluded: “Turnout in student wards (...nearby colleges and universities, and which have large concentrations of 18-24-year-old registrants) dropped significantly between 2010 and 2014.”
Elections expert Barry Burden did a comparison of the 2010 and 2014 elections, which showed that the disparity in turnout between blacks and whites grew from 3.8 percentage points in 2010 to 11.3 points in 2014. The disparity between Latinos and whites grew from 17.9 points in 2010 to 28.8 points in 2014.
The evidence seems overwhelming that major reductions in the days and hours when people can vote led to fewer ballots being cast in urban areas. It remains to be seen how Judge Peterson will rule: Final arguments are scheduled for June 30, and his ruling is likely to be issued in late July.
Regardless of how he rules, the threadbare justification for reducing access to voting amounts to a confession by Republican leaders that they can’t win a presidential election in Wisconsin that provides equal access to all voters. Indeed, they haven’t since 1984.
In a nation that’s rapidly moving to a majority-minority population, the Republicans in this state and others are sending a message to black and Hispanic voters that they will do everything possible to make it more difficult for them to vote. In the case of black voters, who were systematically disenfranchised as voters for most of American history, it’s a shockingly ugly strategy. And in the long run probably a stupid one. It may make GOP candidates anathema to minority voters for decades to come.
Bruce Murphy is editor of Urban Milwaukee.