Wisconsin voters are about to stumble upon a trip wire. It looks harmless enough, like a loose thread that needs to be snipped or knotted. It presents in the form of a question, appearing on the ballot for next month’s election.
Eligibility to vote. Shall section 1 of article III of the constitution, which deals with suffrage, be amended to provide that only a United States citizen age 18 or older who resides in an election district may vote in an election for national, state, or local office or at a statewide or local referendum?
The legislators who wrote this question and authorized its placement on the November ballot claim the change to Wisconsin’s constitution is needed to prevent noncitizens from voting. The state’s largest newspaper fell for that claim. One of the state’s most-watched television stations also bought the sales pitch. The rigorous fact-checkers at the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism who run the Wisconsin Watch online news service framed the issue the same way.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel told its readers the “question at the heart of the referendum, led by Republican lawmakers, is whether to prevent Wisconsin from allowing noncitizens to vote in the future.” That is not the question at all.
Milwaukee’s WTMJ-TV told its viewers that “voters will decide in November whether to amend the state constitution to expressly prohibit noncitizens from voting.” What voters will be doing if they approve the change is making it harder for citizens to vote.
Wisconsin Watch described the referendum question as a “proposal on November’s ballot to ban voting by noncitizens across Wisconsin.” Based on media summations like this, you’d think that voting by noncitizens is either a constitutional right in Wisconsin or perhaps the state constitution is ambiguous or silent on the matter. You’d think wrong.
The state constitution as it stands today explicitly grants voting rights to “every United States citizen age 18 or older.” Every United States citizen age 18 or older. If the state constitution already says outright that the right to vote belongs to adult citizens, then why are these Republican politicians so intent on making this change?
Voter suppression.
That’s their real aim.
We’ve seen this movie before. Not that many years ago, Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin and other states across the country successfully pushed for laws requiring voters to show government-issued photo identification in order to cast a ballot. They said photo ID requirements were needed to stop identity fraud—voters casting ballots under a name other than their own. They had no evidence that identity fraud was actually happening, but their zealous pursuit of photo ID laws in the name of election integrity was not simply a knuckleheaded attempt to solve a nonexistent problem. They had a real aim.
They had noticed their side did better in low-turnout elections. The higher the voter turnout, the less likely it was they would win. They knew that not all voters have valid driver’s licenses, the most common form of photo identification. They knew those least likely to have licenses tended to support their opponents. They figured requiring voters to produce photo identification at polling places would make voting harder, especially for those least likely to support them. Every once in a while, one of them would let slip their true motivation for pushing photo ID requirements. Most of the time, they stayed on script, insisting their aim was to stamp out identity fraud to enhance election integrity.
The next voter suppression frontier is proof of citizenship. Mark my words, if a majority of Wisconsin voters approve the November 5 referendum, legislation will be written soon thereafter requiring citizens to have a valid passport or an original birth certificate before being allowed to register to vote or cast a ballot. They have a template at the ready, proposed federal legislation called the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed it in July.
Republican state legislators in Wisconsin who will rush to put forward bills similar to the federal SAVE Act know not all citizens here have passports, and not all have their original birth certificate handy. They know requiring such documentation will make voting harder. They know they benefit when voting is discouraged and turnout is low. They assume that if they succeed in enacting such a law, it will be legally challenged on constitutional grounds. They figure their case in court will be stronger if the state constitution says only a United States citizen age 18 or older may vote rather than every United States citizen age 18 or older.
That’s why they boobytrapped November’s ballot in Wisconsin. If they can trick enough people into voting yes for a constitutional change done in the name of safeguarding voter eligibility, that vote will trip a wire setting off a chain reaction—legislation making voters jump through still more hoops, upheld in court thanks to a voter-approved legal argument leaving judges little choice but to bless the ruse.
These politicians have an aim and it’s not election protection. It’s power.
If the state constitution already says "US Citizen" then what is the change? I understand your claim of INTENT to be voter suppression but you do not clearly identify the change in proposed wording