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Friday, February 25, 2011

Republicans Stalled over Voter ID Costs.

While everyone chanted and beat the drums in the capitol rotunda, supporting collective bargaining, I was watching democracy slip away as the Senate debated one of the most restrictive voter ID bills in the nation.


Student ID’s are still not a part of Republican bill attacking our right to vote, and won’t be now. Fighting fraud or another agenda...?

State Senators tried to get around the absence of the 14 Democratic legislators, by removing the fiscal aspects of the restrictive voter ID bill, but couldn’t. How sad.
Wisconsin Radio Network: The Wisconsin Senate stopped short of a final vote Thursday on legislation which would require citizens show photo identification on order to exercise their right to vote in Wisconsin elections. Senator Joe Liebham said removing the fiscal aspect of the bill to allow a vote without Democrats present would have raised a constitutional issue – creating a poll tax. 
“In the bill is the requirement that you need to have an ID, and if we removed the fiscal aspect of providing free IDs it could have opened up that question of not allowing individuals to get free IDs, therefore creating a poll tax,” said the Sheboygan Republican.
The bill has been amended to include passports, photo ID issued by tribal governments and naturalization papers as acceptable forms of identification. 
 
Liebham said the cost of the bill, primarily for issuing free ID to those who cannot afford it, should be about one to one and a-half million dollars. 

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