One Wisconsin Now Condemns Latest GOP Effort to Limit Voting as Citizens Continue to Rally to Protect Access to Ballot Box

MILWAUKEE — Joining Milwaukee community organizations, elected officials and election administrators at an event opposing the efforts of Gov. Scott Walker and top legislative Republicans to roll back the state’s nearly 40-year old same day voter registration law, One Wisconsin Now Executive Director Scot Ross denounced the GOP’s latest voting law shenanigans as “the real electoral fraud in Wisconsin today”.

“There is nothing more sacred in a democracy than the right to vote and our government ought to be working to protect and expand rights, not take them away. Unfortunately the right to vote has become the fight to vote today in Wisconsin,” said Ross.

Final numbers are not yet available for the November 2012 election but, according to statistics from the state Government Accountability Board, over one million Wisconsin voters registered to cast their ballot on Election Day in the November general elections in 2006, 2008 and 2010, including over 460,000 alone in the 2008 presidential election. In these same elections, the rate of voter participation in Wisconsin was among the highest in the nation.

“All the more galling is that the drive to take away voter rights is built on innuendo and outright falsehoods. There is no reason, other than an insatiable quest for partisan political advantage, to justify repealing a state law that has literally made it possible for millions of legal Wisconsin voters to do their civic duty and make their voices heard at the ballot box.”

After extensive investigation, fewer than two-dozen instances of improper voting have been charged in Wisconsin since 2005, in which time nearly 14 million votes were cast. In addition the head of the state municipal clerk’s association has publicly endorsed continuing to allow same day voter registration.

One Wisconsin Now has also called on Republican Speaker-elect Robin Vos, Joint Finance Committee co-chair Alberta Darling and Assistant Senate Republican Leader Glenn Grothman to provide specific evidence to prove their recent public claims alleging voting impropriety in Wisconsin. To date, none of the three have provided such evidence.

Ross concluded, “The effort to eliminate same day voter registration is built on lies and intended to serve a partisan political agenda, not the people of Wisconsin. It is the politicians behind this nefarious scheme that are committing the real electoral fraud in Wisconsin today.”