John Nichols: Vote 'no' on Walker's power grab
It is no secret that Scott Walker and his legislative errand boys have made it their mission to diminish democracy in Wisconsin. They have made it harder for voters to cast ballots, while at the same time making it easier for out-of-state billionaires to flood election campaigns with the infusions of crooked cash that former U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold correctly refers to as “legalized bribery.”
They changed the state’s partisan primary date from September, when schools and universities are in session and everyone’s back from summer vacation, to August, when turnouts are low and insiders can call the shots. They reorganized the Supreme Court so that the most-experienced jurist no longer serves as chief justice, and encouraged the rejection of recusal laws so that hyper-partisan jurists who are aligned with out-of-state special interests can literally legislate from the bench.
This year, Walker is refusing to call special elections to fill vacant state Assembly and state Senate seats, leaving hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites without representation as the Legislature wrestles with fundamental questions of criminal justice reform and school violence.
But that’s not the worst of it. Now, the foes of democracy seek to abolish a statewide elected post — a constitutional office that has existed since the founding of the state and that should serve as a watchdog on governors and legislators of both parties. Walker is supportive of the move, which has been advanced by his legislative allies.
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