Sen Jauch's Speech

Text of Wisconsin state senator Robert Jauch's comments near the end of the May 9 Joint Finance Committee meeting on 2011 Assembly Bill 7.

Thank you very much Madame Co-Chair.

Let me just give you a few examples of how difficult it is to get a voter ID from DMV.  If you live anywhere between, if you live in Poplar, you can go to Superior.  But if you're in Iron River, it's from eleven to two on the second Wednesday of every month.  So if you're in Port Wing, you've got to find a way to get down there and be lucky enough.  Ashland: 7:45 to 5:15.  Hurley, it's only open the second day, the second Wednesday of the month.  Interesting; if you're in Hurley, or  Siren: second Wednesday of the month.  It's possible that you get a provisional ballot because you don't have a voter ID, but you may have to travel sixty to eighty miles one way in order to get your voter ID and then have to return that round trip.  Because there is not access, unlike Indiana that has far more DMV centers than we do.  Spooner: 8:45 to 3pm first Wednesday of the month.  Port Falls, second and fifth thursday.  Now it was Ellsworth, in Pierce County, third tuesday of January, March, May, July, September, and in November.

Now, just the other day Senator Leibham offered a sensible ammendment, we all voted for it, that would expand the opportunity for individuals to get driver's licenses.  Because DMV is overscheduled, there aren't enough DMV centers, there aren't enough staff.  So if there aren't enough staff already to provide driver's license services how are we going to make sure that we provide something as basic as a voter identification card to individuals who don't have drivers' licenses but that is the only means by which they can get it?

The fact is that we're taking the most sacred of rights, the right to vote, and burying it.  This is nothing more than an attack on voters in Wisconsin.  In April of 1970 I was arrested in Kiev.  I was arrested for taking a picture of an egg line.  And I and three other, two other individuals were taken to a police station surrounded by military and police officers and then we were transferred in different vehicles to a jail where we spent three hours interrogated by an individual in Russian.  Now you say, why is he giving us this whole story?  Because I have the same sick feeling in my stomach today that I had in Kiev in 1970.  I can't distinguish the Soviet Union from Madison, Wisconsin.  Because of what this body is doing to make voting more difficult.  I went to Vietnam.  I served there for a year.  I came back with the emotional and physical scars of that war.  You bring shame to my service.  You do dishonor to what I did, in protecting the rights of citizens.  And the amazing thing is that you're, that some of the members are gleeful about it.  They don't think about the consequences.

Should it be difficult?  Should it be necessary to prove who you are?  Yes, when you get in on it, we all agree on that.  Should it be difficult for you to get that proof?  No.  And yet that's what this bill does.

So we had a staff person tell us earlier that her 91 mother, 91-year-old mother, is not in a community-based center.  Is not in a nursing home.  Is not in an assisted living center.  She happens to be living in her apartment, but she doesn't get out much.  So it'd be up to her daughter to make sure that she gets her down to the DMV office, get that voter ID, get a copy of that voter ID, because she always votes absentee.  Why?  Why? Why are you requiring that 80, 90-year-old woman to have to go through those hoops?  There are some states that have an age limit.  They don't really, they aren't frightened by 65-year-olds and 70-year-olds that have voted for forty years, and take democracy more seriously that those of you who make a joke out of it.  They vote each and every year, but now they have to go through another hoop.  They don't have a driver's license.  Someone's got to drive them to Superior or Iron River where they have to wait for how long?  To go through another hurdle, to go through another barrier.  Why?  Was there some investigation that showed that we've got a gang of senior citizens who are out to vote twice?  You're making it hard for them to vote once.

I'm disgusted by what you're doing.  I am absolutely... I'm embarrased by what you're doing.  And you should be too.  Because it doesn't make Wisconsin a better place.  It doesn't improve the integrity of our elections if in fact people are disenfrachised.  If in fact legitimate voters are denied simply because they don't follow all the hoops.  They've lived in the state 10, 28 days, they just don't have the right card.  They can prove who they are.  The clerk knows who they are.  And that's not good enough for you.  You want to hide behind that poll.  Explain to the person, who... explain to the person that in fact we're really making it harder for people to vote.  Because when they have the card, it's just not the right card. 

History... history is going to judge us more than the next election, or the next two elections, or the next three elections.  Or, or more with a greater degree of measuring our real impact on life in Wisconsin, than people who answer the poll: "should somebody have an identification card?"  History is going to judge us on whether we strengthened democracy or weakened it.  Today you're weakening it.  And history's going to lump the Republicans in Wisconsin, and in the other states where this has been done, along with a long line of public officials who have used their power and in fact abused their power to deny people of the right to vote.  And it started a long time ago when a bunch of rich men thought that you had to own land in order to vote.  Then it went on to a bunch of men who thought that women shouldn't be able to vote.  Then it went to those folks in Mississippi and Alabama and other places that didn't think blacks ought to vote.  And they too put restrictions.  There's no different in what you're doing an apartheid.  You say "Well, we're not racists."  Has nothing to do with color.  It has nothing to do with color.

Darling: Senator, I would ask you to watch your comments because you're crossing the line by inferring that we're being racist.  So could you please...

Jauch: I'm going to explain that, I don't think you're racists.  I'm going to say I don't think it's racial.  The common theme between all of the examples I used is that you had individuals who used their power to deprive people of the right to vote because they wouldn't vote the way they wanted them.  That's what's in common.  It's not because you're racists.  It's because you're using your power to, you're exceeding your power.  And that's wrong.  And it's unnecessary.  And it's shameful in a state like Wisconsin that has been a model for the rest of the country.  This isn't the Wisconsin we know and love.  It doesn't need to be where we're at.

One individual... let me and I'll conclude.  At one of the public hearings a gentleman with a strong accent explained that he had been in Wisconsin for eight years.  Said "I've been a citizen for five.  I love Wisconsin.  I'm a Waukesha firefighter."  He grew up in Germany.  He grew up in East Germany.  And he said "I knew when the Berlin Wall went down.  I know what democracy didn't look like."  And this isn't what democracy looks like.