Last May, Wisconsin Governor and ALEC Alum Scott Walker signed Act 23 (aka AB 7), a voter ID law that also counts ALEC affiliated legislators among its sponsors. Thanks to the NAACP/Voces and LWV court challenges, voters in Tuesday’s recall election were not legally required to produce ID in order to vote – but that doesn’t mean Election Day was problem free.
Still in force was a new requirement for 28 days of residency for new and updated voter registrations, as opposed to the previous 10-day requirement. While proof of duration isn’t required, many attempting to register and vote on Tuesday reported having been asked to provide such proof anyway. And students had a terrible time with the longer window.
College students were hampered by a new voter residency requirement that says a citizen must live in one location for twenty-eight days in order to register to vote. Before the 2011 law went into effect, the requirement was only ten days. Many students graduated in mid-May, went home from campuses to live with their families and thus were affected by the twenty-eight-day rule.
Between the residency requirement, erroneous requests for ID blocked by the court, True the Vote challengers, and a host of other incidents leading up to and on Election Day, the Election Protection Hotline received over 2,000 calls.
For more information, check out The Right to Vote under Attack: The Campaign to Keep Millions of Americans from the Ballot Box, a Right Wing Watch: In Focus report by PFAW Foundation.