Wisconsin Republicans Look To Limit Voting, Help Lobbyists
Wisconsin Republicans voted to end weekend voting before an election and to allow lobbyists to have expanded time to make donations.
Under one bill, approved by a one-vote margin, early voting in clerks’ offices could occur only on weekdays between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. Clerks would not be able to hold early voting during all of that period, however, because they would be limited to allowing a total of 45 hours of early voting a week.
Democrats told Republicans they saw the move as an effort to suppress voting by their supporters.
“I feel like I’m in 1906, fighting the fights that people who came long before me had to fight,” said Sen. Lena Taylor (D-Milwaukee), who is African-American. “I would argue it screams of backward-thinking mentality, all the way back to Jim Crow, and you should be ashamed.”