Conservatively Speaking

Thanks again, Gov. Doyle!

We need photo I.D.'s for voting in Wisconsin.

It's amazing how if you needed a photo id to rent a video or buy liquor, there would be no problem.  People would be lining up.

I don't think citizens need more restrictions imeding their rights to vote.  This added requirement is an unfair burden on voters and disproportionately affects minority, poor and elderly voters, who are less likely to have photo IDs. You hail from the burbs, but I notice consistently seem to work in negative comments, in one way or another, about the City of Milwaukee.

I am troubled that you only mention the portion of a report that higlights your personal preference which appears politically partisan in my opinion.

I found this part of the LAB report interesting: "We surveyed all clerks statewide and received responses for 427 of Wisconsin’s 1,851 municipalities.  Respondents indicated that 78.5 percent of their municipalities had no election-related problems."  If the other 75% clerks didn't respond, it's a pretty good bet they had no problems either.

Yes, the upcoming elections are very important to Wisconsin residents, and we have opportunities to unseat local and state politicans as well.  Tenure is not a viable reason for re-election, each must be accountable to their electorate for their actions.

Let's encourage increased voter turn-out, not produce ways to make it more difficult!

Disappointed -

What if photo ID's could be taken at the polling place?  If a voter is able to make it to a polling place, shouldn't they be able to make it there for a photo ID?  

When I turned 18 in Florida, that was the FIRST thing I ran out to do, get my voters registration card. I couldn't wait.  

If you can vote you can get an ID.  Everyone should have a photo ID of some sort anyway.  What are you hiding?

In January everyone who wants to travelout of the country will need a photo passport.

The idea that it targets the poor, minorities, old and/or uneducated is preposterous. People do have responsibilities to be educated voters

Every bill that Democrat Doyle vetoed provided that the State would come to their residence if they could not get their picture ID taken anywhere else. He is out of excuses by now!

The politicians who gain from fraudulent votes are perpetrating a myth.  Minorities, the poor, and the elderly who vote legitimately don’t want their votes nullified by fraudulent voters either.  The bills offered by the Wisconsin state legislature included ways to avoid inconveniences for those who are less mobile.  But Governor Jim Doyle vetoed it.  

If the Democratic Party can rent busses to drive people to the polls on election day, why don’t they transport the poor, the elderly, and minorities to get legitimate photo IDs?

Thanks Senator Lazich for raising this issue again.

Mark Musselman

Photo ID(s) are not bad ideas; however, politicians lack the knowledge to think outside the box.  Driver's licenses can be created by your local college student population.  Implementing an Identification card so easy to forge is a joke.  If you really want to make it worth it, issue a national ID with encryption and biometric identification information that can be used for voting, traveling within our borders for faster security screenings etc.  The technology already exists.

Janet:

No hidden agenda on my end, I was simply pointing out to the blogger that I (and I believe many others nationwide) have fundamental 14th Amendment issues with irrational voting requirements.  The Federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) mandates that all states require identification from first time voters who register to vote by mail and did not provide verification of their identification with their mail-in voter registration.

According to the National Conference of State Legislature’s Website (a bi-partisan organization); ncsl.org, only seven (7) states (Arizona, Florida, Hawaii, Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio and South Dakota) request Photo ID last time I checked. And only another seventeen (17) states have broader requirements than what HAVA mandates.

Best information I can find, only about 25% of Americans own a passport, so that reasoning doesn’t assure everyone who wants to vote will get their right to vote if we make it more cumbersome.

I left a comment for the blogger, and while I read the various contributors to Now.blogs from time to time, it's not my intention to engage in a personal debate.  If your personal blog has something I am interested in commenting on, I'll do so there.  Thanks!

Wisconsin is behind the times in voter registration reform. How will legitimate Democratic Party voters in Milwaukee, Racine, and Dane counties be protected from voter fraud when they choose between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the presidential primary? Let those Democratic state representatives and senators who refused to help override Governor Doyle’s vetoes answer to them.

Mark Musselman

Bless you Mary - this is long overdue.  More legislators should be pushing phioto ID.

Thanks Again

JOE

I truly believe, for the benefit of minorities, the poor and the elderly, that voting should be made as easy, simple, and without barriers as, say, going to Walgreens and buying a package of cold capsules! Amen Disappointed, AMEN!

What the heck does that mean?

Photo ID... God, voting is becoming a ritual.

This debate always amuses me.

Republicans say they want voter ID because of fraud. Democrats say they aren’t cheating. The truth of the matter is that voter fraud is not as rampant as people like to think. Of course it happens, but we don’t have election results being changed because of it. Maybe an occasional case of an extremely close election it has happened.

Republicans want voter ID because it will help them win elections. Not because of fraud, but because they know (and it can be shown with empirical data), that more Republicans have valid picture ID’s than Democrats. They also know that very few people will go to the trouble to get a voter ID just so they can vote. Yes it’s easy to get and ID, but if someone hasn’t bothered by now, they aren’t going to get it just to be able to vote.

Democrats complain about voter ID because they say they can’t get ID’s. The truth is that the people that don’t have them already are just too lazy to bother, or they have something to hide.

There is no mystery here. I just wish both sides would start telling the truth.