By Patrick Testin, Special to the City-Times

Last week, in an act of desperation, State Senator Julie Lassa wrote an editorial falsely asserting that Republicans don’t want you to vote.

In reality, Lassa’s baseless claims couldn’t be further from the truth. The fact of the matter is Governor Walker & our Republican legislature have been hard at work for you – the hardworking voters and taxpayers of this state – to defend and protect your right to vote. But when it comes to Sen. Julie Lassa and checking the facts, to use her words, “a troubling pattern emerges.”

Lassa claimed that upwards of 300,000 citizens would be prevented from voting. But on October 1, two days before Lassa wrote her editorial, the results of the most recent Marquette University Law Poll were released revealing that over 62% of registered voters are in favor of showing a government issued photo ID in order to vote.

The same poll also revealed that 98.7% of registered voters already have a valid photo ID. Don’t have an ID? You’re in luck – you can get a free ID from the Department of Motor Vehicles. So if a majority of registered Wisconsin voters favor the Republican backed voter ID law and have a valid ID, it’s clear that Sen. Lassa’s claims are not rooted in fact.

Lassa’s lies are no better than the Democratic Governors Association, who in 2011, when the voter ID law was first introduced, earned a notorious PolitiFact “pants on fire” rating for stating that Gov. Walker “is denying Democrats the right to vote.” It’s apparent that Lassa and fellow Democrats have resorted to lies, false accusations, and the
demonizing of Republicans as a last ditch effort to come out victorious in November because they simply don’t have the facts on their side.

Sen. Lassa went on to further claim that conservative groups have “dismantled” our state’s clean campaign laws by allowing candidates to accept unlimited amounts of money from Political Action Committees (PACs). What Lassa fails to mention is the more than $600,000 in PAC money she’s received since first elected to office, according to
her campaign finance and Federal Election Commission (FEC) reports. It’s explicitly clear that Lassa only has an issue with PAC money when it’s not her campaign receiving the checks.

I, for one, am disgusted by Sen. Lassa’s tactics of sheer trickery and blatant attempts to deceive the voters and taxpayers of the state of Wisconsin. Voting is surely one of our most precious rights as citizens of this state and of this nation, and I encourage you to exercise that right that so many are working to defend and protect.

Come Election Day on November 4, let’s put the petty political tactics aside. Let’s all get out and exercise our right to vote.

Patrick Testin
Chairman, Republican Party of Portage County