The horror of getting ID to vote in Wisconsin.

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/04/02/3765448/wisconsin-primary-voter-id/

Republican Gov. Scott Walker signed Wisconsin’s voter ID law in 2011, but it was tied up in court battles until 2015. While some federal judges held that the law unconstitutionally burdens low-income people of color like Helem and Barksdale, the Supreme Court eventually allowed the law to stand. Tuesday will be the first presidential election in the state’s history where a photo ID will be required at the polls.

Walker and other Wisconsin Republicans have asserted that the law is necessary because the state is “riddled” with voter fraud. Yet independent studies have found such fraud to be virtually non-existent in the state. The Brennan Center for Justice found just seven cases of voter fraud out of three million votes cast in Wisconsin during the 2004 election — a rate of 0.0002 percent. When voters challenged the ID law in court, Walker’s lawyers were unable to offer a single instance of known voter impersonation as evidence. After hearing the arguments for and against the law, U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman wrote that “no rational person could be worried about” voter fraud, and held that the law presented an unconstitutional “denial or abridgment of the right to vote.”

After filling out a series of forms at Milwaukee’s DMV and posing for a picture, Barksdale was able to obtain a state ID he can use to vote on Tuesday. Helem was not, because she did not have a copy of her birth certificate. Though she presented her Social Security card, proof of residence, and Illinois State ID, the DMV staff said it would take them at least three weeks to find and verify her birth certificate.

Helem, who during the car ride had gushed about her excitement for Hillary Clinton, sunk into a plastic chair after she learned the news. She told ThinkProgress she was “a little upset” and “kind of disappointed.”

“But the law is the law,” she sighed. “I can’t break the law just because I feel like voting. At least I’ll be ready next time.”

Silent airwaves, confused voters

Johnson says she has encountered many people who, like Barksdale and Helem, were confused about or unaware of the voter ID law. More than a dozen states have passed such laws over the last five years, a feat made easier by the Supreme Court striking down a key section of the Voting Rights Act. This year, 33 total states will have such a law in place. Yet Wisconsin’s law is an outlier in its stringency, accepting a narrower list of acceptable IDs and providing fewer avenues for voters who face barriers to acquiring one.