Wisconsin’s voter ID bill passed, 60-35; it now goes to the Senate, to be worked on next week.  The bill will require that voters show picture ID before voting: what really has Democrats in a tizzy about this is that to be valid a student ID will need “current address, birth date, signature and expiration date.”  This effectively removes all Wisconsin student IDs from consideration… and if they start adding that information it will become abundantly clear, very quickly, that a lot of students are not going through the hassle of changing their legal address every year to reflect their attending college.  Which is another way of saying that a lot of students are voting in districts that they’re not actually supposed to be voting in.

This is the real issue for Democratic party bigwigs, methinks – and for all that they pretend that it’s a minority voter issue.  The reality is, people will bend over backward to make sure that the urban poor get ID to keep from being disenfranchised: this country takes voting seriously; it’s the right thing to do; and – if the first two reasons aren’t enough – the federal government will come down like a hammer from orbit on anybody trying anything different.  But students being told that they can’t vote in Madison because they actually live in Sheboygan?  Yeah, that’s going to get less sympathy. – even if the Democratic party would rather have that vote count in Madison.

Which leads me to the next thought: do you think that there are any Wisconsin Democrats out there who wish that they hadn’t wasted their get-out-of-Wisconsin-free card on opposing labor union reform?  I kind of think that there are some Wisconsin Democrats out there who wish that they hadn’t wasted their get-out-of-Wisconsin-free card on opposing labor union reform.

Via @kevinbinversie, who is detecting a certain amount of protester fatigue from WisPolitics.com right now.  If so, they’re not the only ones…

Moe Lane (crosspost)