Sen Coggs on AB7

Comments by Wisconsin State Senator Spencer Coggs during final debate on Assembly Bill 7 on May 19, 2011.  He points out the racist effects of the bill.

Thank you Mr. President and members.

AB7 is a suppression of the vote in the state of Wisconsin.  Today, there's an attempt to suppress the voice in the state of Wisconsin.  Mr. President and members, I have something to say and I'm gonna say it today.  When we debated last we talked about some really, really hot-button words like "apartheid", like "Jim Crow", and like "racism."  And so let's examine if there is some racism in this bill.  In 1968 the Turner commission came up with a definition of racism.  There's two kinds.  There's overt, intentional racism and there's benign: not caring enough for whether you are committing a racist act or not.  Now, AB7 will affect all of us in the state of Wisconsin.  But I have to tell you it's going to affect others more than some.  This bill has a chilling effect on the vote of the majority of the state of Wisconsin.  But when the majority gets the chill, the African-American community in the state of Wisconsin gets pneumonia.

Let me give you a personal example.  Recently, my wife and I want to go vote early.  And through no fault of hers, or mine, or any citizen in the state of Wisconsin they dropped her—my wife—off of the polling list.  Okay?  They told her she couldn't vote.  Now, we have provisional ballots, but the poll worker wasn't trained well enough to give her that option.  I was voting, and I had to go back in line and corroborate the fact that she was my wife: we sleep in the same bed, she lives in my—our house, get that straight—and where she says she lives, she lives.  And so she was allowed to vote because I corroborated the fact that she is who she is and she stays where she stays.  And this bill, they take out the ability for people to vouch for each other.  Something that the clerks begged to be put back into this bill, yet they didn't do it.

I take it personal.  I take it personal.  But let me not be too personal here.  Let me give you the example that really sticks me.  And it's someone that we all know in this body, it's Representative Robert Turner from Racine.  Robert Turner was born in Mississippi.  And he didn't want to stay in Mississipi, so he joined the military and went to fight in Vietnam.  He had a distinguished career, came back into Mississippi and there were hurdles for him to vote in the 60's.  Bob Turner must be sitting in his office, right now.  State Representative Bob Turner must be sitting in his office right now, saying "those of us who forget history are doomed, are condemned to repeat it."  Now, you're not going to see Bob Turner making a fuss.  But Bob Turner is the epitome of the black voter who has seen that if you came from down South to up North for a better life, to get away from the Jim Crow and the apartheid of Mississippi, and you come to this state hoping that you would get a better shake.  And now you, your children, and your grandchildren will have hurdles put in front of you.  This make no sense.

Now you want to talk about big picture, let's talk about big picture.  Is there fraud in the state of Wisconsin.  Well, oh my god, eleven people were convicted of voter fraud.  Felons who voted when they were still on probation and parole.  And they should not have voted.  We had 3.8 million people who voted.  So now you have eleven people holding hostage millions of people.  And so now you put in AB7 and it doesn't even address felon voting.

So what we've done is we have dropped an atomic bomb on a boll weevil hoping to protect the cotton.  Makes absolutely no sense at all.  When you drop a bomb like that, there's going to be collateral damage.  Oh yeah, collateral damage.  You might want to call it friendly fire.  But let tell you say something: there's nothing friendly about something that kills innocent people.  And this bill kills the spirit, kills the will, and kills the resolve of an electorate who only wants to exercise its constitutional right to vote.  And we take it away.  We take it away.

Mr. President, members of this august body: when the smoke clears you will remember this day.  Because you will recall—no, we will recall...

Video posted on Dailymotion by @nicknicemadison.