Although obviously a citizen by birth, and although she’s served on the Brokaw Village Board since 1996, Ruthelle Frank is now disenfranchised:
Ruthelle Frank was born Aug. 21, 1927, in her home in Brokaw. It was a hard birth; there were complications. A doctor had to come up from Wausau to see that she and her mother made it through.
Frank ended up paralyzed on the left side of her body. To this day, she walks with a shuffle and doesn’t have much use of one arm.
Her mother recorded her birth in the family Bible. Frank still has it. A few months later, when Ruthelle was baptized, her mother got a notarized certificate of baptism. She still has that document, too.
What she never had — and in 84 years, never needed — was a birth certificate.
Without a birth certificate, however, Frank cannot get a state ID card. And without a state ID card, according to Wisconsin’s new voter ID law, she won’t be able to vote next year.
She’s not alone:
A 2005 study by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Employment and Training Institute found an estimated 177,399 Wisconsin residents 65 and older do not have a driver’s license or state photo ID — 23 percent of that population. The study estimated that another 98,247 residents ages 35 through 64 lack IDs. Disparities were especially pronounced among racial minorities.
Ruthelle Frank has lived longer, and served in government longer, than most of those who passed a law the clear consequence of which is to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of citizens. They did this with the professed motivation to assure the “Integrity of Our Elections: Voter ID.”
Ruthelle Frank and hundreds of thousands like her never were a threat to our elections. Of the vast number like her, though, many were inclined to reject the now-majority party, and exercise a constitutional right to vote against it.
That’s why — so obviously and transparently — Wisconsin has this new law: so that the majority might weaken its political opposition, and continue in office perpetually.