Highlighting Wisconsin's Voter Suppression

Three years after the state of Wisconsin passed its voter ID law,  U.S. District Judge James Peterson  blocked it, noting that 9 percent of all registered voters did not have the required forms of IDs. Black voters were about 50 percent likelier than whites to lack these required IDs. Judge Peterson found that 85 percent of those denied IDs by the Department of Motor Vehicles were black or Latino. After the November 2016 election, 11 percent of those surveyed in Milwaukee County and Dane County on why they didn't cast a ballot "cited the voter ID law and said they didn't have an acceptable ID;" of those, more than half said the law was the "main reason" they didn't vote. Hillary Clinton carried the city of Milwaukee by 77 to 18 percent; however, she was greatly hurt by the fact that almost 41,000 fewer people voted in 2016 than in 2012. [1]

An analysis by Media Matters for America found that only 8.9 percent of TV news segments on voting rights from July 2016 to June 2017 "discussed the impact voter suppression laws had on the 2016 election, while more than 70 percent were about Trump's false claims of voter fraud and noncitizen voting."

There have been a number of studies made of the effects of voter suppression actions. A post-November 2016 election study by Priorities USA found that turnout decreased by 1.3% in the three states that adopted stricter voting laws but increased by 1.3% in states where state ID laws did not change. Wisconsin's turnout dropped 3.3% -- an estimated 200,000 fewer voters. The Government Accountability Office found that stricter ID laws in Kansas and Tennessee had decreased turnout by roughly 2 to 3%, with the largest drops among black, young and new voters. According to a comprehensive study by MIT political scientist Charles Stewart, an estimated 16 million people -- 12 percent of all voters -- encountered at least one problem voting in November 2016. Researchers estimate that nationwide, there were more than one million lost votes in the November 2016 election, because of things like strict ID laws, long lines at polls, and difficulty registering.  Trump won the electoral college vote by 78,000 combined votes in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. [2]

Turning again to Wisconsin: "The voter ID law was one of the 33 election changes passed in Wisconsin after [Scott] Walker took office, and it dovetailed with his signature push to dismantle unions, taking away his opponents' most effective organizing tool." [3]

Footnotes
[1] Ari Berman, "Rigged," Mother Jones, November/December 2017.

[2] Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffrey, "Less hot air, more sunlight," Mother Jones, November/December 2017.

[3] Berman.