I stupidly thought it was going to give us some concrete information on how we could rearrange the voting sites and make it easier for folks in wheelchairs to get in and vote.
Instead, this guy who happened to be maybe the most bitter person I have ever met went into a litany of how we could and should sign up people and not verify if they were legal to vote. Examples included "you can't ask if someone is a citizen" and "you can't ask if a person has a felony conviction." He blistered the Republican party at every turn claiming that the GOP was keeping people from voting and that if we got more people voting it would balance things out.
His message didn't exactly go over very well. There were a lot of disabled vets in the room and the idea of folks who were not citizens voting did not fly.
Volunteer — after reading your post, it sounded all so familiar that I had to look up your location on your home page. Aha! Just as I thought. WISCONSIN. I am an election judge in Wisconsin and what you say is entirely true. We cannot ask if the registrant is a citizen. We cannot ask to SEE their ID if they are using their DL or their SS# number to register. The registrant is supposed to SAY their number and we write it down — taking their word for it. Nobody knows if it is a real number until it fails to come up when the County clerk tries to enter it into the permanent list. Of course, by then the new voter’s vote has already been cast and counted.
It doesn’t matter if a voter is kicked off the poll list between elections because everybody can re-register at the polls at the next election.
In 2008, I got reamed out by a voter and reported to my city clerk because I made a sign that said the new registerents had to provide their DL number is they had one, and the last 4 numbers of the SS # if they didn’t have a DL number or a State ID #. I had double checked the content of my signs IN ADVANCE of the ELECTION 4 times to make sure that they were legal, but I was told to remove the signs while the Democrats smirked.
I complained to the State Board that I was required to sign off on each new registration and that, in my view, that made me responsible for false information. THeir response? I’m not responsible.
In my view, the Wisconsin voter laws are a sham and have so many loopholes in them (put there by Dems) that they are worthless. Many, many people lbrag that it’s “OK” for students to vote at home and at school; for vacation home owners to vote at botheir their winter residences and their summer residences.
We have a law that was supposed to have closed those loopholes by 2008, but it is not even near to implementation. I’m close to quitting, but I’ll go one more round in 2010.
Oh, yes — felony convictions. At least now the county clerk provides us with a list of convicted felons from our municipality to cross check — but they wouldn’t show up in another county.