The soon to be voted on Wisconsin voter ID bill has recently seen a few amendments, making it so the bill would go into effect over half a year earlier than originally intended.

Why is this necessary?

Well, to stop the Democratic vote in the upcoming recall elections, of course.

A majority of Wisconsinites have questioned the bill from the start, simply because the reasons why Gov. Scott Walker and the legislature gave for drafting it just didn’t add up.

Democrats argue that the voter ID bill would make it more difficult for the elderly and disabled citizens of Wisconsin to vote because of difficulties leaving their homes to get a photo ID. The bill would also harm students’ ability to vote.

But all of these demographics that would have their voting rights hindered tend to vote Democrat.

Walker is trying to push this through before the Senate recall votes begin taking place in July. In the Senate recalls, people who vote Democrat, such as students, would be the ones to vote some Republican senators
out of office.

I think it’s a bit much to say that this is a coincidence. The only reason GOP lawmakers would push this bill into effect half a year earlier than planned would be to see a change in the turnout of the recall votes.

Some people have difficulty seeing the harm that this bill has the potential to cause because it seems simple enough: Just bring your driver’s license with you when you vote.

But this bill is about so much more than that.

Walker, et al, say that photo IDs need to be required when voting to prevent voter fraud.

To quote an editorial from the Wausau Daily Herald: “As of January of this year, the Justice Department had charged two people with double voting, six people with voter registration misconduct and 11 people with violating the prohibition on felons voting.”

That’s 20 fraudulent votes.

Implementing the voter ID bill would cost approximately $5.7 million. For someone who insists that Wisconsin is so buried in debt that we need to take away workers’ rights, why does Walker want to spend so much on preventing 20 fraudulent votes?

OK, how about some simple math here: $5.7 million divided by 20 fraudulent votes equals $285,000 to stop one person.

That seems a bit extreme.

Originally, the photo ID bill would not have gone into effect until the spring 2012 primary election.

But now, an amendment has been made that would put the bill into implementation as soon as it is passed.

Even if it were just about preventing voting fraud, the bill would still not be worth it. To start, it will make it more difficult to vote. I feel like I’m repeating myself an awful lot here, but voting and democracy go hand in hand. I cannot imagine a democracy without voting. So why would an attempt to try to harm the way people vote, in effect stopping certain people from voting entirely, ever be considered democratic?

In the U.S., only four other states have similar photo ID laws: Florida, Georgia, Indiana and Kansas.

According to a May 8 Wisconsin State Journal article, the laws in these other states have stopped people from voting.

In Indiana, 1,039 voters attempted to vote without a valid ID and were unable to cast an actual ballot. Only 137 of those voters came back to vote again, this time with a valid ID. Put simply, that’s 902 people who couldn’t vote.

At the end of the day, Walker and company want to spend way too much money to see their agenda played out exactly the way they want it to, whether or not that means allowing citizens their right to vote.