“This is nothing less than a power grab by Republicans,” said Catherine Vaughan of Flippable. “It flies in the face of what voters decided in November and obstructs the democratic process by circling the wagons around systemic conservative efforts to gerrymander Wisconsin and restrict voter access.”
In an highly contested move, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed a Republican-backed legislative package into law Friday that works to weaken the political power of the Democrat, Tony Evers, who beat him in November’s midterm elections. Critics argue these new laws undermine the sanctity of American democracy.
The new legislation would lessen the power of Wisconsin’s new Democratic governor and attorney general by shielding Republican policies put into place under Walker.
The package would limit early in-person voting to two weeks before an election (the current standard is seven weeks in some large, blue-voting cities) and shield the state’s job-creation agency from Evers’s control until September. The laws would also block Evers’s ability to withdraw from a current lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act, and would make it impossible for Evers to end a restrictive work requirement for BadgerCare health insurance recipients.
The rules shutter the Department of Justice’s Solicitor General’s office, which means that incoming Democratic DA Josh Kaul would be unable to reverse any laws written by Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel.
