Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI), spilled the beans on Wisconsin's voter ID law Tuesday, when he admitted that the new voter ID law in the state would help Republicans win it in November. Now a former top Republican legislative staffer says that was an intent of the law. Todd Allbaugh, who served as chief of staff for state Sen. Dale Schultz (R) until he retired, first made the claims in a Facebook post. TMP followed up with an interview in which Allbaugh, now a coffee shop owner, unloaded on the Wisconsin Republicans.
"It just really incensed me that they started talking about this particular bill, and one of the senators got up and said, 'We really need to think about the ramifications on certain neighborhoods in Milwaukee and on our college campuses and what this could do for us,'" Allbaugh said. "The phrase 'voter suppression’ was never used, but it was certainly clear what was meant." […]
"It left a pit in my stomach to think that a party that I had worked for for years and years and years was literally talking and plotting to deny someone, a fellow citizen, their constitutional right," Allbaugh said.
Allbaugh told TPM he was stirred to write the initial Facebook post after one of his young employees, who had moved from California to Wisconsin, was unable to vote Tuesday. Albaugh said that because the employee's California ID did not meet the state’s requirements to vote, he was told he needed to show his California birth certificate, which the employee was not going to be able to produce in time.
"When you see the real world ramification, it just sickens you," Allbaugh said. "I have to tell people what’s going on."
Allbaugh doesn't want to name names about who was in that room in 2011, but since Grothman "outed himself," he did confirm to TPM that Grothman "was one of those that was saying these things." These things that aren't supposed to be said out loud.
Anyone who's paid even a modicum of attention knows that this isn't about the integrity of the vote and never has been. In-person voting fraud, the thing voter ID laws are supposedly counteracting, just does not happen. Since 1867 reactionaries in this country have been doing everything in their power to retain political control by preventing all the citizens of this country from voting. The Republicans of this day are even worse than those reactionaries. A century and a half of political evolution should have advanced them to the point where they believe in the key tenet of our democracy—one person, one vote.