Plain Talk: Republicans know they can’t win unless they make it harder to vote

As usual, the Republican lawmakers alibied that their changes are only aimed at preventing vote fraud, a blatantly false claim. Incidents of fraud in elections are so small you can count them on one hand and, of those, most have been perpetrated by Republican voters.

Now they want to piggyback off Donald Trump’s claims that the election was rigged — charges that were dismissed time and time again by the courts. No matter — it’s too easy to vote, they cry.

The worst of the bunch is, not surprisingly, our former Gov. Scott Walker. Always the hypocrite, Walker advised his former legislative colleagues that absentee voting should be restricted to people in nursing homes and those who are serving in the military. He apparently thinks we couldn’t check that he himself has voted absentee in six of the last eight elections. His cynical posturing continues as it was when he was governor.

But, even worse, Walker thinks the state ought to enact a system that verifies signatures on the voting register. Now that would be a real opening for fraud as partisans, acting as if they’re handwriting experts, squabble over whether signatures match.

State Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, hit the nail on the head when she commented, “The package of bills … will collectively make registering to vote and voting more difficult, expensive, inconvenient and time-consuming for every Wisconsinite. They’re admitting that they don’t believe in democracy, just further rigging the game for themselves.”