EXCLUSIVE: This April, Wisconsin Voters Must Mandate Photo ID to Save Elections
By passing a photo ID amendment, Wisconsin voters can make their voter ID law permanent, shielding it from the left-wing Supreme Court
On January 14, the Wisconsin Assembly approved—without a single Democrat vote—a constitutional amendment requiring photo ID before voting. The photo ID requirement to vote is the most fundamental election protection after the secret ballot. If the Wisconsin Supreme Court maintains its liberal majority in the April 1 election, it will imperil that protection, which would open the state up to rampant electoral fraud and mistrust in elections.
The proposed amendment changes nothing about the current law, stating, "a qualified elector may not vote in any election unless the elector presents photographic identification issued by this state, by the federal government, by a federally recognized American Indian tribe or band in this state, or by a college or university in this state, that verifies the elector’s identity." If passed, voters will send a clear message to Madison and Washington that they demand secure elections, while also barring tyrannical liberal judges from striking down the state's standing photo ID law.
"Most Wisconsinites think it's common sense," Liberty Initiative Fund (LIF) president Paul Jacob told Restoration News. Jacob worked on voter ID measures in Michigan and Maine in 2022 and recently helped pass citizen-only voting amendments in 8 states, including Wisconsin.
"A benefit Republicans have is that we just ran a campaign to pass the citizen-only voting amendment in November," he added. "There's no better way to solve this issue than to let the voters decide."
Wisconsin voters passed that amendment—which prohibits non-citizens from casting a ballot in any election—last November by a stunning 70–30%, winning by more than 1.3 million votes. Before that, Wisconsin voters banned "Zuck bucks"—private funding for the offices that count their ballots—in April with Question 1, which passed 54–46%. Restoration News called it a "devastating blow" to progressive elites who meddled in the 2020 election.
Now the threat comes from Wisconsin's hyper-politicized Supreme Court, which leftists captured in April 2023 with far-left Justice Janet Protasiewicz. Since then, the nominally non-partisan high court has shown a disturbing willingness to legislate from the bench, and always to the left. Democrats hold a 4–3 advantage on the Court, and the seat held by retiring liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley is up for election on the same ballot as the photo ID amendment.
(READ MORE: There Are No Sound Arguments Against Requiring Photo ID to Vote)
Essential to Democracy
Wisconsin is one of 22 states that allows voters to register to vote and cast a ballot on Election Day, a policy called same-day registration. Without the protection of a photo ID requirement, that opens the door to non-citizens casting illegal ballots—as happened with a Chinese college student who voted last year in Michigan—even if the offending party is discovered and prosecuted. Photo ID requirements are the most fool-proof way to prevent noncitizens from voting and preventing Americans from voting illegally out-of-state or voting twice within the state.
Wisconsin Democrats' objections to the amendment mask their real motivations: Removing clarity in elections. Keeping the law as is would allow an activist Supreme Court to strike it down on a whim, giving Democrats future grounds to argue that a photo ID requirement would violate the state's constitution based on the court's loose interpretation of it.
Senate Democrats claimed the proposed amendment is redundant because photo ID is already required, it's a poor use of the upper chamber's time, and it's not a priority to voters.
The proposed amendment is not redundant and completely necessary, because the state's Supreme Court already overturned its prior decision to ban ballot drop boxes as soon as it gained a liberal majority. In that same activist vein, the court also showed a willingness to arbitrarily overturn an 1849 law criminalizing the killing of an unborn child by anyone other than the mother. Liberal Justice Rebecca Frank Dallet even suggested the law shouldn't apply today because, when passed, only white, property-holding men had the right to vote.
Faced with this level of ignorance from liberal Justices, Republicans saw no other alternative than to speed up the process of protecting the state's voter ID law, which a continued liberal majority would endanger.
A lot hangs in the balance with another April election: The battle between conservative Brad Schimel and liberal Susan Crawford for the vacated Supreme Court race. Paul Jacob believes the amendment will also "have a big impact on the judge's race."
"It's one of the key issues on judicial temperament," he said. "The idea a judge could overturn a law because he doesn't like the policy—the sort of judge who's opposed to voter ID on a partisan basis—that's going to hurt [liberals] with voters. That's going to make them want to vote against that person."
Senate Democrats also objected to Republicans making voter ID a priority. Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) argued Republicans should instead spend their time addressing issues like gun violence, public school funding, and health care costs.
Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine), the amendment's Senate co-author, said the upper chamber passed it because it was the only thing already introduced. He also reminded Democrats that lawmakers "can do more than one piece of legislation at a time."
Democratic opposition does not really center on priorities. It's easier for Democrats to accuse the other side of misplacing priorities and to change the subject to issues they prefer to address than try to win an argument against 80 percent of the public—the percent that supports photo ID.
Rep. Lee Snodgrass (D-Appleton) called it “offensive” that Senate Republicans made this their first considered proposal, because voters allegedly don't consider it a priority. “I knocked a bunch of doors this summer," she said. "Not one person said to me, ‘I really want to make sure that we enshrine voter ID into the constitution.'"
But if Snodgrass talked to Democratic-leaning voters, it's understandable they didn't see voter ID as a priority. It likely wouldn't be Republican voters' top priority either, as the state has required photo ID for nearly a decade. But Republican legislators are making it a priority by bringing to voters' attention the pervasive judicial activism of the Court's liberal Justices that endanger the law.
Although some Democratic politicians want to table the photo ID debate, leftist special interest groups can always be relied on to stick to their ideology in the face of public opposition. One such group is the League of Women Voters (LWV), which continues to push the tired argument that requiring voters to provide photo ID disenfranchises people.
Senate President Mary Felzkowski (R-Tomahawk) reminded her followers on X/Twitter that getting an ID to vote in WI is FREE at over 90 DMV locations across the state."
League executive director Debra Cronmiller argued that although obtaining a state voting ID doesn't require a fee, the process of getting one requires people go to the DMV, thereby allegedly creating a barrier to vote. That same logic demands universal vote-by-mail and automatic voter registration, which the league argues Republicans should pass instead if they're interested in electoral reform.
Wisconsin voters should vote on April 1 to enshrine their voter ID law into their state's constitution to protect it from judicial usurpation. This would protect their state from potential fraud and give voters peace of mind that their elections are secure.
(READ MORE: Radical Leftist League of Women Voters Fakes Nonpartisanship)