On the subject of voter suppression we have a moment of clarity from the former co-chair of Mitt Romney's Wisconsin campaign lamenting their lack of voter ID.
Voter ID “absolutely” would have made a difference in the outcome of the election, state Sen. Alberta Darling (R) told Mike Gousha of WISN on Sunday. She suggested that voter fraud helped President Barack Obama win the state.
“We’re looking at all sorts of different precincts and all sorts of same-day registrations,” Darling said. “I know people will go, ‘We don’t have fraud and abuse in our elections.’ But why, why can’t we have voter ID when the majority of our people in Wisconsin wanted it, we passed it, the governor signed it? Why should one judge in Dane County be able to hold it up?”
First of all, if you're audibly and visually depressed because more citizens were allowed to register and vote on the same day therefor participating in the democratic process, you are un-American.
To answer Darling's question, the answer is because not everything should be left to popular vote, and in the case of Wisconsin's voter ID law, it was deemed unconstitutional.
Dane County Circuit Judge Richard G. Niess ruled that requiring otherwise eligible voters to show a government-issued photo ID before being allowed to cast their vote was an "unconstitutional burden."
In several cases across the country, voter ID laws were merely struck down for the purposes of the November election because states could not prove that they would be ready, leaving the door open for voter ID laws to make a return for future elections.
I expect voter suppression tactics that surface over the next four years will be more ambitious and egregious than anything we've previously seen.