Voting Rights

Important information for college students in Wisconsin: take steps now so you can make your voice heard at the ballot box in 2020.

“It’s transparent. This was a power play,” Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin, told the Prospect. “Everyone knew what was going on.”

As Jay Heck of the nonpartisan Common Cause of Wisconsin noted to Urban Milwaukee, “Walker feared that a special election held in the 1st State Senate District and the 42nd Assembly would have produced Democratic victories which, in turn, would bode ill for his own re-election prospects.”

In the legislative session this year, Republicans voted to oust the heads of the state’s ethics and elections commissions, who helped lead an investigation into Walker’s fundraising from corporate interests. The executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin told HuffPost it was “one of the most grotesque abuses of power that has occurred in Wisconsin in its history.”

As a result of Wisconsin's strict voter ID law, college students are treated differently, facing unnecessary barriers to voting. This deliberate disenfranchisement is wrong and must be addressed; we should be encouraging civic participation by young voters, not preventing it.

The former head of the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board met with members of Common Cause in Wisconsin to talk about the state of campaign finance, elections and ethics.