Because he wants to make it harder for black people to vote, Scott Walker wants to kill same-day voter registration.
Rep. Robin Vos, whose soon-to-be-ex-wife voted fraudulently, in a manner that would not have been caught by voter ID, wants to kill it too.
Sen. Glenn Grothman does as well.
As does the increasingly unhinged Sen. Alberta Darling, drifting gently into a racist haze in which Mitt Romney lost because of voter fraud.
Thing is, once upon a time, Republicans had no problem with same-day voter registration, which has been on the books for more than 30 years. That is, until it was demonstrated that the Democrats could mount a superior ground game.
The turning point was 2004. Karl Rove, the evil not-really-a-genius behind Bush, was very excited about the GOP's ability to mobilize the troops on election day.
From a reporter's notebook at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, covering Rove giving a pep talk to Wisconsin GOPers (date: 9/3/04):
Rove talked about the campaign he envisions playing out in Wisconsin, crisply, I might add, since he's playing town crier all across this vertical jungle in his drive to see the president elected to four more years in office.
Referring to the campaign, he said: "You're going to be sick and tired of seeing us by the time it's over. You're going to see more TV ads and more of the president than you want to see.
"We are going to win Wisconsin, no ifs, ands or buts," he said.
Sounding like a national sales manager, Rove told a friend to tell a friend to tell a friend to vote Bush-Cheney.
"What's going to win is person-to-person contact," he exhorted. "It is the power of grass roots. It is the power of identifying and getting out the vote."
Since Wisconsin has same-day voter registration, activists need not worry about signing up people for voting privileges 30 days before balloting. He said the worry is the 60 days between now and Nov. 2.
As it happened, the Dems did a better job of identifying and getting out the vote -- because Wisconsin as a whole leans Democratic -- so Team Bush lost that race, narrowly. Obama crushed McCain in 08 and beat Romney decisively in '12.
So ever since then, Republicans have been howling about how they've been undermined by voter fraud and Wisconsin became the front line on the Republican jihad for voter suppression. (Note: if Dems were as good at voter fraud as Republicans shamefully suggest, Scott Walker never would have been elected County Executive.)
The people who register on election day skew young, they skew Hispanic, they skew black. It's not surprising that Walker wants to do what he can to prevent them from voting. That doesn't make it any less contemptible or anti-democratic.
Craig Gilbert had a great backgrounder on same-day registration, and the costs of doing away with it, last year.
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