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 …
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