Sen Erpenbach on AB7

Wisconsin State Senator Jon Erpenbach's speech during debate on Assembly Bill 7 during the May 17, 2011 senate floor session. He discusses the absence of proven voter fraud in the state of Wisconsin addressed by this bill.

Thank you Mr. President. Unanimous consent to speak on the bill and the amendments.

If no objection...

Thank you very much, Mr. President. By the time, Mr. President, the senators in the outer ring are done with the session it's going to be easier to carry a concealed weapon that it will be to register to vote in the state of Wisconsin. That's a simple fact. Compare the two pieces of legislation. And by the way, I'm going to have an amendment up later Mr. President to make sure that you won't be able to carry a gun into a polling place. Uh, the voter suppression act—or the voter ID act, whatever you like to call it but it really is suppression—is not the way we do things in Wisconsin. It's a problem that has been created. It's a wag the dog type of a piece of legislation that plays on rumors, innuendo, and fear. That's all it does.

If you ask the question "where's the fraud?" we really haven't seen any. I would like to see real voter fraud here in the state of Wisconsin. We just don't see it. The attorney general investigated, two year investigation, and in the 2008 elections found eleven cases, eleven cases, of fraud and eight of those cases were felons who shouldn't have been voting. My guess, if you ask the felons, they probably were off paper but didn't know that the felony stays with them. We all know that convicted felons, unless you've been pardoned, can't vote.

The three other cases were people who voted twice, or voted improperly. So we're essentially down to three cases out of three million votes that were cast. Three cases. As a result of that we're going to be disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of people throughout the state of Wisconsin in the election process. Legislative reference bureau said basically about twenty percent of the people who vote in elections right now won't qualify to vote under this include 178 thousand senior citizens. Who have better things to do than knock on your office door and lobby for these changes that we're trying to make, but believe me, you know they will. Everybody who is here legally has the right to vote. But you're taking that away.

You're taking it away based on the fact that you're hearing things, whether it's on talk radio or you're hearing things in an echo chamber that aren't true. That are not true. Show me the busloads of people who are being bussed into districts to vote illegally. I've heard that one, show it to me. Where is the fraud? There isn't any. Hundreds of thousands of people will stay home because of this legislation, because you're going after essentially three cases after a two-year investigation by the Attorney General's office.

The whole idea in the state of Wisconsin when it comes to vote is to make it—obviously to have our elections be legitimate, no doubt about that—but to make it as easy as possible to vote. To make sure that if you do want to engage the political process you can, but do so legally. We have a pretty good system right now.

Legislation like this and others that we're going to be dealing with and have dealt with based on the lowest common denominator in this state, based on nothing more than fear, based on nothing more than creating a problem, is wrong. There will be some people who will refuse to get a government ID. You're taking them right out of the process. There'll be other people who can't get a government ID, because they can't get someplace during normal business hours. So you're taking them out of the process. People who live in their home for 27 days can't vote where they live. As a matter of fact, I have a question for the senator from the ninth if he'd yield to a question.

Will the senator from the ninth yield to a question?

Leibham: I will yield, Mr. President.

Erpenbach: We had a little bit of debate in our caucus about this, and we're trying to figure it out. It says you need to be in your residence 28 consecutive days.

Leibham: That's correct.

Erpenbach: Does that mean I need to be there 28 days, if I go aways for a week and a half...

Leibham: It needs to be your place of residence for consecutive 28 days.

Erpenbach: So I need to be in my house for 28 days. So in other words...

Leibham: No.

Erpenbach: ...the legislature, Mr. President, is grounding me for 28 days, in order to vote in an election where I am a legal resident. It makes absolutely no sense, Mr. President.

Leibham: A response, Mr. President. That's not what the bill...

Erpenbach: I'm sorry, I've got the floor Mr. President. And I, yeah, you answered the question. So I have to stay in my house for 28 consecutive days. That doesn't make any sense at all. If I live in the senator from the twenty-fifth's district and I move to the senator from the fifteenth's district, in order to vote legally before 28 days I have to go back to the senator from the twenty-fifth's district, where I legally don't live. But my vote will count there. It makes no sense at all. Absolutely no sense at all.

This legislation is designed to do one thing and one thing only Mr. President, and it's to go after people who don't vote for Republicans. It's pure and simple. You can see it in other pieces of legislation too, Mr. President.

I've no idea how this is constitutional. I'm not a lawyer but I'm sure the lawyers on both sides of the aisle are going to have a good time with this when it ends up in court.

The bill's going to cost seven million dollars even though we're broke. Even though we're broke it's going to cost seven million dollars. I don't know where the governor's going to come up with seven million dollars. I don't know. But we're broke, remember? That's why we had to have all this other onerous legislation before us, because we were broke, yet this is going to cost seven million dollars. In the substitute amendment, Mr. President, we provide six hundred and fifty thousand dollars to educate people. Because at the very least, if we quiz the state senate, none of us would pass the test on what this legislation actually does. It is so confusing.

So we're supposed to throw this legislation on the governor's desk, he's going to sign it. Some of it is going to be implemented before the recall elections, and it's guaranteed mass chaos at the polls. We all know that, it's kind of designed to do that. At the very least we can include six hundred and fifty thousand dollars just for general education as to what it means. What this legislation does, what ID works, what ID doesn't work.

Well, it sounds good to say well—as the senator from the sixth pointed out—you need an ID for blockbuster, you need an ID for the library, you need an ID to get on the plane, and so on and so forth. For the most part, the IDs that you need, they're all corporate policy, when you're dealing with credit card companies, whatever the case. That's their policy. That's what they decide to do.

As the senator from the sixth so happily pointed out, this is my vote, this is your vote. And the majority party, Mr. President, is setting a policy that you're going to have to jump through a lot of hoops. This legislation affects people who are not the majority of this body. This legislation affects people who are not the average, in the state senate. Yet we are supposed to vote on legislation that's going to take them completely out of the game. I don't know why we have the right to do that. Where did we get our oath of office, where do we in our constitutional obligations, where did we when we were sworn into office gain the right to take away somebody's ability to vote? Someone's right to vote? You show me where we have the authority to do that. Because we don't, we simply don't.

As the minority leader pointed out, the substitute amendment corrects a lot of problems. It makes a very, very bad bill based on rumors, based on innuendo, based on lies, based on things that people have heard on talk radio and makes it better. I don't know what the majority party is afraid of, Mr. President, I really don't. And again, I'm going to ask somebody, somebody who supports this legislation, anybody who supports this legislation, to show me the widespread fraud across the state of Wisconsin. Show me where elections are being stolen. Show me. We're not going to see any, Mr. President. Eleven cases, in a two year investigation, eight of them felonies, people with felonies who shouldn't have votes, three other improperly cast votes. That's it, after two years of the Attorney General's time. So I beg the majority party, you show me where the fraud is.

Right now, Mr. President, if there is a lack of confidence in our election cycle and our election system it's sitting in Waukesha county. It's not throughout the state of Wisconsin. That people doubt what's going and "Oh, the campaigns are rigged" and stuff like that, it's not because of somebody who showed up illegally to vote, voted.

I would really hope, at the very least, the majority party would seriously consider our amendments. Obviously we don't like the bill, we've never supported the bill, we don't like the idea of putting up roadblocks for someone's right to vote here in the state.

Video posted to youtube by @nicknicemadison.