One Wisconsin Now

Thanks to WSJ yesterday for this great response to the Supreme Court's Indiana voter ID ruling.  The editorial noted:

Wisconsin votes at just about the highest rate in the nation. Seventy-three percent of Wisconsin's adult population cast ballots in the 2004 presidential election.

...

Wisconsin is virtually the best state in the nation at voting. Our Legislature should strive to keep it that way.

Looks like I got my amen. 

In the wake of the Supreme Court's ruling that Indiana's voter ID law is constitutional, about 12 Indiana nuns were turned away Tuesday from a polling place because they didn't have state or federal identification bearing a photograph. 

Another person who attempted to vote with a federal ID card was turned away because the card had no expiration date on it, and a woman who was newly married was turned away because her driver's license name didn't match the one on her voter registration record.

You can check out the full story here.

The League of Women Voters says it all in this MJS editorial.

"...it is shocking that proponents of voter ID are citing a report which rolled out old findings that appear to point to widespread illegal voting in Milwaukee in the 2004 election. The truth is that virtually all of the irregularities identified in the 2004 election already have been debunked or found to be simple errors - people signing in on the wrong line, a glitch in the voter history that incorrectly looks like people voting twice, or a misspelled name. The study identified no reports of anyone impersonating anyone else at the polls."

 If only this editorial had come from the MJS itself, which has been complicit in the cultivation of Wisconsin's "voter fraud" myth. 

Every time someone calls out the reporting on the MPD report, like the LOWV has done here, the case for voter ID dies a little more.

Wisconsin Democrats stonewalled Republican attempts to bring AJR17 (photo ID amendment) to a vote yesterday, despite the dramatic fanfare of a GOP press conference that went down in flames.  But a voter ID debate of greater import is raging right now in the uppermost echelons of our nation's government, as the Supreme Court deliberates the constitutionality of Indiana's voter ID requirement, which is one of the strictest in the nation.

The New York Times recently reported that the Justices might not overturn the law, despite the slew of amici (including ACORN, the ACLU, the NAACP, and Senator Feinstein and other lawmakers considerably involved in the creation of HAVA), who have filed briefs in support of the petitioners that include some of the best research available on voter "fraud".  From the Times:

The justices’ questioning indicated that a majority did not accept the challengers’ basic argument — that voter-impersonation fraud is not a problem, so requiring voters to produce government-issued photo identification at the polls is an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote.

If you can't prove a negative, does it automatically make it true?  The 67-page report from the MPD this week and all the other reports of voter "fraud" be damned.  Republicans have exploited and ridden on the politically convenient premise that voter fraud is "just too difficult to prosecute", all the way to the Supreme Court.  In constitutional analysis, statutes under judicial review receive strict scrutiny when they burden fundamental rights.  No right could possibly be more fundamental to democracy or to the functioning of a citizen than the right to vote.  And with the resounding lack of evidence of voter fraud to date, a Court that resorts to anything less than strict scrutiny in its review is doing nothing more than accommodating the faulty arguments of the GOP.

Under strict scrutiny, statutes that burden fundamental rights must be narrowly tailored to acheive a compelling state interest, by the least restrictive means possible.  The conceivable "compelling state interest" in this case, respondents would contend, is the preservation of electoral integrity.  But certainly, governments must also corroborate the importance of their interests with evidence, lest controlling parties become accustomed to invoking dubious "interests" on a whim with constitutional impunity.

In the absence of such justifications, a statute will inevitably fail to pass constiutional muster.

Circuit Judge Evans stood up for strict scrutiny when Crawford v. Marion County Board was heard in the US 7th Circuit Court of Appeals (read the entire opinion and his dissent here): 

The fig leaf of respectability providing the motive behind this law is that it is necessary to prevent voter fraud ... But where is the evidence of that kind of voter fraud in this record? ... Nationwide, a preliminary report to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission has found little evidence of the type of polling-place fraud that photo ID laws seek to stop. If that's the case, where is the justification for this law? Is it wise to use a sledgehammer to hit either a real or imaginary fly on a glass coffee table? I think not.

...

As I read it, strict scrutiny may still be appropriate in cases where the burden, as it is here, is great and the state's justification for it, again as it is here, is hollow.
 

The Supreme Court should gut the law.  Justice Ginsburg was as willing as Evans to call out the real motives behind Indiana's voter ID statute when she said in oral argument, "The reason they are bringing a facial challenge is because the horse is going to be out of the barn ... They will have the election, and just what they are afraid of could happen — that the result will be skewed in favor of the opposite party.”

But Scalia, as incoherent and gregarious as ever, chided instead, “Why are we arguing about whether there is one-half of one percent of the electorate who may be adversely affected and as to whom it might be unconstitutional?”

Right.  What are we, the Supreme Court or something?

This from the guy who literally told us to "get a life" after we questioned his impartiality in a case involving his hunting buddy Dick Cheney.  Please, Scalia - get a job.

Keep Crawford v. Marion County Board in your sights.  The law will bomb if it faces a strict scrutiny challenge.  And we can finally put the voter ID debate to rest in Wisconsin, and focus on overhaul of SVRS and other areas of the system that need help the most - rather than punishing voters.

1988:  "Read my lips:  no new taxes."  -George H.W. Bush, Republican National Convention on the eve of his nomination

20 years later:  "No new taxes."  -Senator John McCain, 2008 Republican presidential candidate

Houston, TX, 2008:  "I'm very proud to endorse John McCain for the presidency of the United States of America." -George H.W. Bush, former U.S president who broke his promise and raised taxes to offset the deficit

It has to be awkward to lose to your endorser's son in the 2000 primary, vote against his tax cuts, and then scramble to assure skeptical conservative voters that you want to make them permanent now.  You know, those tax cuts -- the ones that increased the income of America's millionaires by 10.1% (that's pocketing an extra $78,460 annually) while the poorest 20% of American households saw an extra $250 a year (bus fare) and the middle class picked up the rest of the tab.

Let's hope he pulls another '41' and breaks his promise to the richest 1%.  Otherwise, all this talk of being a maverick can finally be put to rest.

The following unfortunately went unpublished as a letter to the editor in response to Sam Clegg's column that ran in the Herald this week concerning the death tax.  In addition to accusing OWN of framing the estate tax debate as a class warfare issue to propose an unreasonable solution to the state budget shortfall, he appeals to a Congressional report on the death tax that, amazingly, contains arguments that are all exactly congruent to his own.  Clearly, though, the truly unthinking are the masses who subscribe to our bleeding heart views on economic policy. 

In the meantime, Sam cries for the rich kids of the world.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

While I’m certain that freshman and economics major Sam Clegg is currently flooded with requests to speak at the next meeting of the United Nations Committee on Economic and Social Affairs, I feel compelled to issue the following statements regarding the “death tax” in Wisconsin in the hopes that at least the university community will lend an ear.

Daniel Miller contends that the estate tax actually runs small, self-made farms and businesses into the ground, is economically inefficient, deprives the neediest populations of the money it would otherwise be receiving from charity, and ultimately redistributes the hard-earned wealth of honest Wisconsinites to “desperate masses” of the shiftless and the undeserving. And, says Clegg, because of the high-minded, unimpeachable rhetoric of progressive groups like One Wisconsin Now, the legislature will resort to scape-goating the ultra-rich to close the budget shortfall.

So brace yourselves, readers, for some liberal propaganda. To give you some national figures, according to the Federal Reserve, only 4% of family businesses have a net worth of more than $2 million, leaving those 96% of family businesses in the United States who are worth less than $2 million exempt. Furthermore, the USDA reports that the average farm household net worth ranged from $576,000 for small farms to $1.5 million for very large family farms, which is well within the exemption range. The little guys are still protected.

Miller insists that “substantial expenditures” and an “undesired allocation of resources” are required for profitable rates of compliance, but fails to describe how. And keeping the estate tax is actually a great incentive for the super-wealthy to donate to charities if they wish to avoid the tax, because charity is tax-exempt.

The estate tax only taxes those born into wealth – not the ones who earned it. And, under the federal law, the inheritors still get to keep at least their first $1 million for free – tax-exempt. In fact, that figure is closer to $2 million now since changes to the law in 2002.

Ultimately, the Wisconsin Department of Revenue reports that for the next biennium, estate tax collections are estimated to be $244.9 million. True, it will not plug the $300 million hole. But it will certainly come close.

It’s true that a proposal more in line with conventional American wisdom might also close the budget gap. But if a progressive, liberal economic policy has any underpinning at all, it is that everybody should at least have a set of minimums of access to the system, beyond which it is their responsibility to “make it”. Adam Smithians, rejoice.

It is you, Sam Clegg, who has framed this debate as if supporters of the death tax compare tax breaks for the rich to murder. It is you who appealed to class warfare to vindicate your opinion. And it is you who perpetuates the political culture war that poisons our university community.

In the words of Archbishop Hélder Câmara: “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist.”

Mitra Jalali is a senior at UW-Madison majoring in Political Science.