A second judge has declared Wisconsin’s voter ID law unconstitutional, further guaranteeing that the ID requirement will not be in place for elections this fall.
Dane County Circuit Judge David Flanagan wrote Tuesday that the state’s requirement that all voters show photo ID at the polls creates a “substantial impairment of the right to vote” guaranteed by the state constitution.
In March, Flanagan issued an injunction temporarily blocking the law because the plaintiffs – the Milwaukee branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera – were likely to succeed in their arguments. Flanagan made that injunction permanent in the 20-page decision he issued Tuesday.
The immediate effect of his ruling is limited because another Dane County judge, Richard Niess, permanently blocked the voter ID law in March in a case brought by the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin. Having a second ruling against the law makes it all the more difficult for voter ID proponents to get the law reinstated because they would need to get both orders lifted.
Dane County Circuit Judge David Flanagan, who granted a temporary injunction against Wisconsin’s new voter identification law, signed a petition urging the recall of Gov. Scott Walker.
Walker, an ardent supporter of voter ID, signed the legislation creating the requirement last year.
Records show Flanagan signed the Walker recall petition on Nov. 15. The petition lists Flanagan’s wife, Maureen McGlynn Flanagan, as the one who circulated the petition.
Contacted Tuesday, McGlynn Flanagan – a former assistant attorney general – confirmed that she had gathered signatures in hopes of recalling the first-term Republican governor. She also confirmed that her husband had signed one of the petitions that she circulated.
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