Poor for a Reason

I voted Tuesday in the year’s most important election anywhere in America. The most consequential contest turned out how I hoped. But that’s not what has me pounding the keyboard. While electing to change the makeup and direction of the state’s highest court, four out of five Wisconsin voters also approved a nonbinding referendum declaring that able-bodied childless adults should have to work in order to qualify for public assistance.

It was nonbinding for good reason. That’s already state policy. Republicans who control our state legislature didn’t put the referendum question on the ballot to change anything. They put it on the ballot because it’s catnip for their base. They put it on the ballot to reinforce the fable that poverty is a personal failing, that the poor are lazy and only need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. They put it on the ballot to divert attention from the exploitation that plunges so many people into poverty and keeps them there.

Nearly a quarter of Ameri…