Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) is tempering his previous support for a proposed plan to rig the Electoral College in favor of Republicans, saying that he has “real concern” about the idea.

The proposal would entail shifting the state’s electoral votes from a winner-takes-all system, as 48 states use, to a per-congressional district apportionment. The result would be that a blue state like Wisconsin, which gave its 10 electoral votes to President Obama in 2012, would instead split its votes evenly between both candidates.

Though Walker had previously said the idea was “interesting” and “plausible”, Walker seemingly backed off those comments in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. His major concern was that the shift would make Wisconsin far less relevant in future presidential campaigns.

“You concede it would have a dramatic impact on the targeting of the state?” Walker was asked.

“Right. Exactly right … That’s why I qualified (my earlier statements) … I just said I hadn’t ruled it out. I’m not embracing it,” said Walker.

“The most important thing to me long-term as governor on that is what makes your voters be in play,” said Walker, voicing the concern that ending “winner-take all” would make the state “irrelevant” in presidential campaigns.

“You would agree it would have that effect?” he was asked.

“Yeah. I think that’s a real concern,” he said.

Even if Walker ultimately backs off the electoral rigging plan, another prominent Wisconsin Republican, RNC Chair Reince Priebus, still supports it.

A new study by Wisconsin’s Government Accountability Board, the non-partisan board that oversees the state’s elections, suggests a proposal to eliminate the state’s vaunted same-day voter registration system would carry a massive price tag. The plan — proposed by members of the Republican majorities in the state legislature and backed by Gov. Scott Walker (R) — would initially cost approximately $5.2 million and would not reduce the workload for local clerks, the report found.

The Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel notes:

Wisconsin has allowed people to register at the polls since 1976. Because of the state law allowing election-day registration, Wisconsin is exempt from aspects of the federal Motor Voter Act of 1993 and the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002. Eliminating election-day registration would make those provisions kick in and require people to be given voter registration forms at Division of Motor Vehicles offices and public assistance offices.

Even if lawmakers repeal the election-day registration law, those who moved within the same jurisdiction between elections would still be able to update their voter registrations at the polls under federal law. Federal law would also require Wisconsin clerks to keep names on their poll lists for longer periods of time. Removing voters from the list would be a more costly, cumbersome process that would require sending mail to all voters in an effort to weed out those who have moved, died or otherwise should come off the rolls.

Under the current system, Wisconsin has one of the highest voter participation rates in the country. But beyond suppressing voter turnout, elimination of same-day voter registration would mean millions in new costs for a state that, according to Walker, required a massive “budget repair bill” in 2011 to cut $1.25 billion in aid to education and local governments.

Local clerks and citizens groups have strongly opposed the proposed change. Among those who took advantage of the state’s same-day voter registration last month was Walker’s own son, whom Walker personally accompanied to the polls.

Even though he once supported the idea of having a Wisconsin version of Arizona’s anti-immigrant law, Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) said this week that he hopes state legislators avoid passing a harmful state immigration measure this year:

“I think that would be a huge distraction for us in the state,” he said. “There’s our niche and our priorities. I don’t think that falls into one of those priorities, so I would certainly hope that the legislature didn’t spend time focusing on that, instead focused on the economy.”

Walker declined, however, to say whether he would veto an immigration bill.

“I’d push to make sure it wouldn’t come up,” he said.

Two years ago as a gubernatorial candidate, Walker said he would sign a version of Arizona’s SB 1070, which aimed to make the state so hostile to undocumented immigrants that they self-deport. “The federal government has failed to secure the border, and states have a right to protect their law-abiding, legal citizens,” Walker said in a May 2010 statement. “The 10th Amendment gives states the right to act as Arizona has with the immigration law.”

But after a Supreme Court ruling struck down much of Arizona’s law and mass deportation policies have harmed state economies, Walker has backed away from his previous statements.

Walker is also one of several Republicans backing away from anti-immigrant measures after Latino voters, who strongly oppose the laws, overwhelmingly backed President Obama in November’s election. Six percent of Wisconsin’s population is Latino, but that number is growing nationally. Even conservative radio host Sean Hannity said he had “evolved” on immigration after the election. “It’s simple to me to fix it,” Hannity said. “I think you control the border first. You create a pathway for those people that are here — you don’t say you’ve got to go home. And that is a position that I’ve evolved on.”

Since Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) announced last month that eliminating the ability of residents to register on Election Day would be a top priority for his administration next year, opposition to the plan has sprung up across the state.

Immediately after Walker made public his desire to scrap Election Day Registration, which has been in place in the Badger State since the 1970s, he ran into unexpected opposition from the election clerks he claimed would benefit. “There’s no way we’d be in favor of that,” said Diane Hermann-Brown, communications chairwoman of the Wisconsin Municipal Clerks Association, noting that eliminating Election Day Registration would make their jobs more difficult.

Citizens have also begun to organize and rally against Walker’s plan to suppress the vote, including a large rally in Milwaukee this week featuring election officials, lawmakers, and other community figures. Neil Abrecht, executive director of the City of Milwaukee Election Commission, summed up what is so troubling about the proposal in his speech:

“Same day registration has been occurring in the State of Wisconsin for the last 36 years. The practice of administering this process is tightly woven into our election worker training and our Election Day procedures. A change to this practice would have tremendous ramifications to voters, particularly students, renters, and people in poverty; and would create confusion, frustration, and a disillusionment with the democratic process at our voting sites. There are numerous other opportunities to improve election systems and increase the efficiency of voting sites. I would hope that anyone interested in changing this state’s election laws would look at those opportunities before implementing a change that would reduce voter access to the ballot and actually create, not alleviate, a burden to election workers,” said Neil Albrecht, who is the executive director of the City of Milwaukee Election Commission.

Nearly 1 in 5 Milwaukee voters registered on Election Day this year. Statewide, hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites were only able to vote because of Election Day Registration, leading to an astronomical 70.1 percent turnout rate. This was the fourth highest level in state history, according to the Government Accountability Board.

Wisconsin Republicans are exploring other avenues to make voting more difficult as well. Incoming Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R) wants to eliminate the Government Accountability Board, which has been lauded as a “model for nonpartisan election administration,” and replace it with political appointees. In addition, House Speaker-elect Robin Vos (R) has professed his desire to alter the constitution to allow voter suppression after a state judge ruled that the state’s voter ID law was an unconstitutional violation of the right to vote.

Two weeks after Barack Obama and Sen.-elect Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) carried the state of Wisconsin with the support of minorities and young voters, Gov. Scott Walker (R) announced one of his major policy proposals for the upcoming session: ending the state’s 40-year old law that allows citizens to register to vote on Election Day.

And with Republicans now back in control of the Wisconsin state legislature, Walker may well get his way next year.

In 2008, Wisconsin enjoyed the second highest turnout of any state in the nation (72.4 percent of eligible voters cast a ballot), due largely to the fact the Badger State law allows residents who aren’t registered or have recently moved to register at the polls. That year, approximately 460,000 people used Election Day Registration, 15 percent of all Wisconsinites who cast a ballot.

Walker pressed his case for ending same-day registration during a speech at the Ronald Reagan Library in California on Friday:

“States across the country that have same-day registration have real problems because the vast majority of their states have poll workers who are wonderful volunteers, who work 13 hour days and who in most cases are retirees,” Walker said. “It’s difficult for them to handle the volume of people who come at the last minute. It’d be much better if registration was done in advance of election day. It’d be easier for our clerks to handle that. All that needs to be done.“

Wisconsin was the first state to enact Election Day Registration in 1971, followed soon by states like Minnesota and Maine. Today, eleven states have laws allowing citizens to register at the polls. These states enjoy the highest turnout in the nation not by chance, but because Election Day Registration boosts turnout by 7 to 14 percentage points. In addition, studies show that minorities, poorer voters, and students benefit the most from being permitted to register on Election Day.

Republican legislators in Maine attempted a similar move last year, repealing the state’s 40-year-old Election Day Registration law. However, a citizen backlash erupted, sending the matter to a statewide referendum where voters rebuked the legislature and restored the law by a 2-to-1 margin.

The last time Walker and his Republican allies won complete control of the legislature in 2010, they immediately passed a discriminatory voter ID law that would have disenfranchised people like 84-year-old Ruthelle Frank had it not been blocked by a state judge.

Now, with Wisconsin State Republicans riding high, they appear to again be setting their sights on chipping away at voting rights.