Jeff Stone has unveiled his first proposal of his campaign for Milwaukee County executive: To disenfranchise voters by requiring a photo ID from the Dept. of Motor Vehicles or the military.
Stone, a Republican state representative, is the main Assembly author of a photo ID bill being introduced. He also wants a consitutional amendment to make it almost impossible to repeal.
No matter than Wisconsin's recent elections have been almost fraud-free. Stone said there have been instances of "hundreds of thousands of names on voter rolls for people who are no longer voting," promising the requirement would clean up the problem, WisPolitics.com reported.
So othere are people who are registered to vote but aren't voting, and we want to make it as hard as possible if they do show up to vote? Is that what's happening here?
This is no small item,to require everyone to have an ID from the DMV. A 2005 study at UW-Milwaukee found:
1. Many adults do not have either a drivers license or a photo ID. An estimated 23 percent of persons aged 65 and over do not have a Wisconsin drivers license or a photo ID. The population of elderly persons 65 and older without a drivers license or a state photo ID totals 177,399, and of these 70 percent are women. While racial data was not available on the state population with photo IDs, 91 percent of the state’s elderly without a Wisconsin drivers license are white. An estimated 98,247 Wisconsin residents ages 35 through 64 also do not have either a drivers license or a photo ID.
Minorities and poor populations are the most likely to have drivers license problems. Less than half (47 percent) of Milwaukee County African American adults and 43 percent of Hispanic adults have a valid drivers license compared to 85 percent of white adults in the Balance of State
Offering free ID cards to poor people at the DVM is not going to solve the problem. We're talking about monumental problems and mass confusion at polling places, especially in minority neighborhoods (where they mostly vote for Democrats, of course.) College students are likely victims, too, unless they're going to school in their hometowns. (They also vote heavily for Dems. Is there a pattern here?)
This may play well in Milwaukee County suburbs, Stone's base of support in the exec race. But for someone trying to portray himself a some sort of moderate Republican, it could be a fatal mistake.
He may have some explaining to do on the campaign trail. Milwaukee County is still Democratic, as evidenced by Tom Barrett's 62-38 shellacking of Scott Walker in the governor's race. Stone's pushing the wrong agenda, and the wrong buttons with voters.