At every community event or forum where I spoke in Wisconsin during the last weeks of September, I was asked questions about the voter ID law. What I said was that no matter how people felt about the law, they should be opposed to its last-minute implementation in so chaotic and dysfunctional a manner. While other states had time to prepare for the implementation of new voter ID requirements imposed by Republican legislators and governors, Wisconsin had not, since the assumption was that Judge Adelman's highly praised ruling would carry the day.
Congresswoman Gwen Moore, D-Wisconsin, implored the state's Government Accountability Board, which oversees elections, to delay implementation of the new law until after the November 4 election -- arguing that to rush implementation would "create widespread confusion for voters and election officials."
Walker and his allies rejected the common-sense proposal for a delay.
But the US Supreme Court accepted the logic of the appeals for a delay, with an emergency intervention that Lisa Subeck, the executive director of the activist group United Wisconsin, hailed for preventing voter suppression.
"In a blatantly desperate political move, Walker made last-minute administrative changes to the process of obtaining an ID and nearly succeeded in suppressing the votes of hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites who lack the required photo identification," explained Subeck, a Madison city council member who is expected to be elected to the state legislature in November.
"Wisconsin's law, considered one of the strictest in the nation, is the centerpiece of the Walker administration's war on voting, and aims to stifle the voices of senior citizens, low-income and minority voters, and students at the ballot box," added Subeck. "With less than four weeks until election day, the Supreme Court has put the rule of law ahead of the Scott Walker's political gamesmanship. Tonight's decision ensures that the right to vote in Wisconsin's upcoming gubernatorial election will not be infringed upon by an unfair and unconstitutional voter ID law. And I fully expect that Wisconsin voters are now more galvanized than ever to put an end to Walker's war on voting by making their voices heard in the voting booth on election day."
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