If you have been keeping up with these biweekly Point Counterpoint articles we put out in conjunction with the College Republicans, you have seen a lot of talk about voting. We have written articles about voter ID (multiple times), the dismantling of the Government Accountability Board and now campaign finance reform. The reason we need to keep writing about policy related to voting is because there has been a coordinated effort by Republican legislators in the Capitol to suppress the vote.
Our articles do not even begin to encompass all of the attacks on the right to vote in Wisconsin. There have been efforts to disenfranchise students, minorities and the homeless, a loss of local control over elections, banning of thoroughly investigating politicians for campaign finance violations and detrimental gerrymandering.
Every one of these policies is a crack, chipping away at access and the simplicity of voting. This time, your right to simple and correct information is under attack.
A new bill proposed by the ever-increasingly extreme Republican Legislature would allow unlimited donations to political campaigns, donors to be anonymous and coordination between campaigns and outside political groups. The implications of this bill would be enormous. University of Wisconsin political science professor Barry Burden called it “the most dramatic change to Wisconsin campaign finance laws in a generation or two,” and noted, “it will change how campaigns are run.”
Campaign finance reform moves Wisconsin elections in ‘direction of Wild West’
Now to give this some context: Every election season, remember your mailbox being stuffed full of mailers from candidates for political office. This is not random. Candidates and their campaigns know inundating you with information about them will increase your likelihood of voting for them.
This becomes problematic with anonymous donors, unlimited donations and coordination between campaigns and outside groups.
Campaigns would have access to the unlimited amounts of money donated to outside groups and be able to coordinate their efforts with these outside groups. This would mean outside groups could literally operate as a branch of a campaign, and it also means a lot more campaign advertising at your doorstep, on your television and online.
Take into account the anonymity. It would be nearly impossible to trace the origin of many of these advertisements. This means there is no way to understand the validity of information you are being told, and this becomes especially insidious if you are being told contradictory information by two different sources. This is voter suppression. Making the process so frustrating and complicated you lose the interest to vote at all.
It is not intuitive to think of campaign finance as a means of voting rights or voting suppression, but that is the nature of voter suppression in the age of Citizens United. The staggering influx of money into politics does, in fact, have an effect both on who you vote for and if you even vote at all. Voter ID may be the posterchild voter suppression, but it exists in a greater sphere of policy changes that are all working together to obliterate voter turnout.
It is not only hurting the physical access to voting, but it is just as harmful to the morale of American voters. These laws tell some Americans that if they do not have the right paperwork or go through the right channels, they are not enough of a person to vote. They are not enough of a person for their vote to count.
August McGinnity-Wake ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in political science and environmental studies.
