The Nation is out with a new piece highlighting Koch Brothers puppet, Tea Party Governor Scott Walker’s (R. WI) record on voter suppression. But this particular piece highlights Walker’s newest strategy to keep voters away from the polls:
As the onetime Republican star who crashed and burned as a contender for the party’s 2016 presidential nomination prepared to deliver his annual State of the State message, Republican state senators denied the confirmations of the directors of Wisconsin’s ethics and elections commissions and Senate majority leader Scott Fitzgerald, a close ally of the governor, said he wanted to force out employees of the commissions who had participated in investigations of Republican wrongdoing.
After Walker’s Republicans effectively voted to oust Ethics Commission administrators Brian Bell and Michael Haas and began talking about reclassifying positions at the commissions as part of a partisan purge of nonpartisan oversight agencies, Democratic state Representative Jimmy Anderson blasted his Republican colleagues for undermining “the integrity of our electoral process as well as the vital role that these watchdogs play in regulating lobbying and campaign activity. Wisconsin has a long-standing tradition as a leader in nonpartisan election administration.”
Anderson is right. But nothing the legislature has done so undermines the integrity of the electoral process as what Walker is doing personally.
The governor is deliberately denying Wisconsinites representation in the legislature by refusing to call special elections to fill open seats in the State Assembly and the State Senate.
In doing so, he is rejecting the clear intent of Wisconsin’s statutes, which declare: “Any vacancy in the office of state senator or representative to the Assembly occurring before the 2nd Tuesday in May in the year in which a regular election is held to fill that seat shall be filled as promptly as possible by special election.”
The piece highlights not only Walker’s long record of voter suppression (voter ID laws, gerrymandered, getting rid of early voting) but also how Walker’s latest move was reactionary to Democrats’ big Special Election win for a State Senate race in a district that heavily went to Trump. Walker is running scared and will do anything to violate the foundations of our democracy just to stay in power. This is why we have to make him a top target this year. Below we have a number of candidates running for the Democratic nomination. Click below to donate and get involved in their campaigns:
Tony Evers
Andy Gronik
Dana Wachs
Kathleen Vinehout
Paul Soglin