The recent voter identification law passed by Wisconsin Republicans and signed into law by Republican Gov. Scott Walker contained a stipulation that residents without valid identification could get a free voter-only ID at any Department of Motor Vehicles location. To obtain the free version of the ID, voters must check a box saying that they are asking for a product “available for free issuance.” Otherwise, they would be issued an ID at its regular cost of $28.

The form, it seems, makes no specific reference to a free voter ID, and applicants are expected to know that the vote-only IDs are offered free of charge. And according to a memo, obtained by the Madison Capital Times, circulated by a top official at the state’s Department of Transportation, DMV staff has been instructed not to mention the free vote-only IDs to patrons unless they specifically ask for one:

Interviews conducted about the memo suggest the state is more interested in continuing to charge the fee, which is required for a photo ID used for non-voting purposes, than it is in removing all barriers and providing easy access to a free, photo ID.

“While you should certainly help customers who come in asking for a free ID to check the appropriate box, you should refrain from offering the free version to customers who do not ask for it,” Krieser writes to employees.

Krieser, who was recently promoted to executive assistant to the DOT secretary, instructs staff that customers should “self certify” their eligibility for the free ID. They can do that, he writes, if they meet the documentation requirements; if they are at least 17 years old; if they have checked the correct certification box on the new forms; and, most significantly, if they are “asking for a product that is available for free issuance.”

Steve Krieser, who wrote the memo, defended it when the Capital Times asked about it Tuesday. “If the person initiates that direction, then certainly, we will help them. We will not be coy,” Krieser told the Times. “But we still are not going to be selling it at the counter as a free ID.” According to Wisconsin officials, the state plans to launch a major education initiative later this year to let residents know about the free IDs, and in the meantime, Krieser said, the Dept. of Transportation will place signs letting people know about the IDs, though the signs have not yet been approved. More than 18,000 Wisconsinites have received new IDs since July 1, when DMV began offering the free version, and 59 percent of those were at no cost, though it unknown how many IDs were paid for that could have been obtained for free.

The problems with voter ID laws in Wisconsin and other states are already becoming apparent. In South Carolina, the U.S. Department of Justice has put a hold on the state’s new law until officials prove it isn’t discriminatory, and Gov. Nikki Haley (R) has promised to use state funds to drive any of the state’s 178,000 residents without an ID to DMV locations to get one. In Wisconsin, Walker planned to close 10 DMV offices, only to backtrack when he came under pressure.

To state Democrats and voting rights advocates, the memo is proof that the voter ID law was a clear Republican effort to disenfranchise Wisconsin voters (though not the first, as the GOP has admitted that its union-busting budget “fix” earlier this year was, at least in part, meant to curb unions’ electoral efforts). “It was clear to me from the beginning that people would be disenfranchised because of this law,” state Rep. Kelda Helen Roys (D) told the Times. “Now we have the proof that people are not going to be getting these IDs unless the say the ‘magic words.’”

At a trial that began in federal court this week in San Antonio, GOP presidential contender and Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) faces allegations of intentionally distorting a congressional redistricting map to dilute the power of the state’s burgeoning Latino vote. The state legislature’s Mexican American Legislative Caucus and other plaintiffs are accusing Perry and Republican lawmakers of warping the map to prevent Latinos from winning office:

The state has a four-decade history of violating minority voting rights that has required court intervention, Jose Garza, a lawyer for the Mexican American Legislative Caucus of the state Legislature, said today in federal court in San Antonio.

“Whether the Legislature was controlled by Democrats or Republicans, it didn’t matter,” Garza told a three-judge panel. “Redistricting was always done on the backs of minorities.” [...]

The majority-Republican Legislature redrew congressional district maps after the state grew enough to gain four seats in Congress, adding almost 4.3 million residents since 2000 according to the 2010 census. [...]

If the new map is approved, “the Legislature’s blatant racial gerrymandering will effectively prevent minority voters from having any meaningful impact on congressional elections for the next 10 years,” lawyers representing Travis County and Austin said in court papers.

Perry signed the bill with the electoral map in June, and a coalition of lawmakers, civil rights groups and county governments are suing to block it from taking effect. They accuse Perry and other Republicans of using “gerrymandering techniques such as packing and cracking of minority communities” to reduce the chances Latino candidates have of winning new seats.

Voting rights organizations point to the fact that GOP lawmakers drew very uneven, bizarrely-shaped districts as proof that the map was politically motivated. Luis Vera, a lawyer for the League of United Latin American Citizens, described them as “ridiculous shapes, with lines weaving in and out of neighborhoods and splitting hundreds of precincts throughout the state, predominantly in Latino and minority communities.”

Unfortunately, the conservatives on the Supreme Court largely abdicated any responsibility for preventing partisan legislatures from drawing district lines purely to benefit their party, so a direct challenge to the GOP’s gerrymandering is doomed to failure. Nevertheless, the justices have yet to completely eviscerate the Voting Rights Act’s protections ensuring that minorities do not lose their ability to participate in representative democracy.

If the courts strike down these newest district lines, it won’t be the first time they find fault with a redistricting plan Perry signed. In 2003, Republicans led by then-Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) redrew election districts to engineer a Republican majority. Although congressional maps are typically redrawn after the census every 10 years, Democrats maintained their majority in the Texas legislature in 2000. So during the 2003 legislative session, with DeLay and Perry’s encouragement, the Republican majority began an unusual off-cycle redistricting.

In December 2005, “Justice Department lawyers concluded that the landmark Texas congressional redistricting plan spearheaded by Rep. Tom DeLay violated the Voting Rights Act.” The Supreme Court eventually struck down one of the Delay/Perry districts in 2006, although it left much of the map intact. Once this map went into effect, the Texas delegation shifted from a 17-15 Democratic edge to a 21-11 edge for Republicans.

Last month, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) became the first woman to win an influential Iowa Republican straw poll — a victory that would have been impossible before the many decades of feminist activism that proceeded Bachmann’s entrance onto the national scene. Yet, at a Tea Party event with the conservative Eagle Forum last July, Bachmann lauded Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly, who spent nearly her entire career fighting to make it impossible for women to participate equally in American society:

BACHMANN: If I could just say a couple of words about Phyllis Schlafly, she is my heroine and my example as a forerunner…She truly is the mother of the modern conservative movement. I think she is the most important woman in the United States in the last one hundred years. Whatever Phyllis Schlafly says, it’s important that we listen, because she’s there on every issue, on every front. She is our hero, our heroine, our stalwart and I absolutely adore her. So God Bless you, my dear mentor and the person I hope to be some day.

Listen:

Schlafly dedicated decades to transforming “feminism” into a dirty word. Viewing it as “the most dangerous, destructive force in our society today,” she insists that working mothers pursue “false hopes and fading illusions;” that men should not marry these “career women;” that “women in combat are a hazard to other people around them;” and that, by getting married, women agreed to have sex and thus cannot be raped. Schlafly also waged a successful battle against the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) — a constitutional amendment that states “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”

Yet, for all of Schlafly’s efforts to maintain women’s second class citizenship, her war on women’s rights was ultimately a failure. Here’s just a small sampling of the many women who made far more important contributions to American history than Bachmann’s “most important woman in the United States”:

1. Frances Perkins: Perkins was the first woman to serve as a cabinet secretary, and she remains one of the most influential figures to hold any job in government. As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labor, Perkins spearheaded countless protections for workers and unions, including the minimum wage and overtime laws. She also chaired the commission that produced Social Security.
2. Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Justice Ginsburg became the single most important women’s rights attorney in American history long before she joined the federal bench. While Schlafly was fighting to keep women from enjoying equal rights under the Constitution, Ginsburg successfully convinced the Supreme Court that the Constitution’s guarantee of Equal Protection applies to women.
3. Katharine Graham: After her husband’s suicide in 1963, Katharine Graham took control of the Washington Post Company, becoming the highest-ranking woman in American publishing to that date. Her courageous decision to publish the Pentagon Papers crystallized opposition the Vietnam War, and her backing of reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward during their reporting on the Watergate scandal (despite a warning from Attorney General John Mitchell that “Katie Graham’s gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer if that’s published.”) helped bring down a president.
4. Nancy Pelosi: Pelosi was not simply the first woman to serve as speaker of the House, she is also one of America’s most accomplished lawmakers. As minority leader, she led her party to almost universally oppose President Bush’s failed plan to privatize Social Security. As speaker, she presided over two of the most successful House sessions in American history, leading a divided caucus to enact the landmark Affordable Care Act despite unanimous GOP opposition.

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