Wisconsin Republicans map, disenfranchise their way to victory

Wisconsin Republicans win elections the old-fashioned ways: gerrymandering districts and disenfranchising voters unlikely to support them.

Let’s start with politicians picking their voters instead of the other way around.

In 2010, the GOP skewed the political maps of the state so effectively that, in 2012, they won 60 of the state’s 100 Assembly seats by receiving only 48.6 percent of the vote.

Neat trick.

Their gerrymandered map is so blatant that it’s become the first ever to be struck down by a federal court because of its extreme partisanship. The U.S. Supreme Court will determine the ultimate fate of this scheme.

That Republican gerrymander helped the GOP win state legislative and congressional seats. But they needed a different tactic to ensure they’d win statewide races as well.

To win senatorial and presidential elections, they needed to prevent likely Democratic voters from casting ballots. So they created a voter ID law that disproportionately targets Democratic constituencies.

The law requires voters to present a driver’s license, state ID, passport, military ID, naturalization papers or tribal ID to vote. Student IDs are acceptable only if they feature the date the card was issued, a signature and an expiration date two years or fewer from issuance — and even then, students must bring to the polls a separate document that proves enrollment.

The law’s effect was exactly as intended.

An estimated 200,000 to 300,000 otherwise eligible Wisconsin voters lacked the required credential in 2016.

Donald Trump won the state by only 22,000 votes.

A recent AP story on voter disenfranchisement featured the story of Alvin Mueller and his wife Margie, 85. The couple never had trouble voting in Plymouth, where they’ve lived since getting married 65 years ago.

Margie Mueller had quit driving and let her license expire in 2010. Last November, for the first time, she was told that to vote, she’d have to get a new state-issued ID. The closest place to do that was a DMV office about 15 miles away in Sheboygan.

But Alvin Mueller said his wife was battling cancer and the prospect of making the trip to Sheboygan was overwhelming. In the end, neither of them voted. Margie Mueller died in March.

The Brennan Center for Justice has estimated that — in the 10 states with voter ID laws in 2012 — more than 10 million eligible voters lived more than 10 miles from a state ID-issuing office open more than two days a week.

Keeping only a relatively few people from voting can make all the difference.

Trump prevailed in the Electoral College by about 80,000 votes — cast in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

But all the restrictions Wisconsin and other states have created to limit voter access apparently aren’t enough for Trump.

He recently signed an executive order creating a commission to investigate voter fraud. Without any evidence, Trump apparently believes he’d have won the popular vote if not for fraud. Democrats and voting rights groups said Trump’s commission is merely a front for Republican state officials to enact even tougher registration and voting requirements to further restrict the ability of minorities and the poor to cast ballots.

In the past few years — and particularly the past couple of weeks — Republicans have shown they’ll do anything to win, even if it means throwing democracy itself under the bus.