8 O’Clock Buzz host Brian Standing visits with Jenni Dye, research director at One Wisconsin Now, by telephone regarding U.S. District Court Judge James Peterson’s decision that nullifies much of the recent Wisconsin Republicans’ election reform laws.
Speaking on the state’s Voter ID law, the federal magistrate blasted what he called legislators’ “preoccupation with mostly phantom election fraud,” saying, “To put it bluntly, Wisconsin’s strict version of Voter ID law is a cure worse than the disease.” In his broad and far-ranging decision, Peterson threw out limits on early voting, minimum residency requirements for voters in new districts, and parts of the Voter ID law, ruling that they violated the First, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The ruling came in response to a lawsuit brought by the One Wisconsin Now Institute.