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So. Let’s talk about voting rights.
1/ It’s a topic we barely see in the news. But in states like Wisconsin, voter suppression may have tipped the election.
2/ Wisconsin has one of the strictest voter ID laws in the nation. The 2016 election was the first time it was in place.
3/ @ariberman investigated how Wisconsin’s voting restrictions may have affected the election. Here’s what he found. bit.ly/2yAkGYe
4/ In 2016, voter turnout in WI was the lowest since 2000. It used to rank second in the nation.
5/ More than half of WI’s decline in voter turnout was in Milwaukee, home to nearly two-thirds of the state’s African American population.
6/ Minorities were disproportionately affected by the photo ID requirement: Black voters were about 50% likelier than whites to lack the ID.
7/ This is Andrea Anthony. She's voted in every major election since she was 18—except for the 2016 election. 
8/ Anthony had lost her driver’s license before the election. Poll workers wouldn’t accept her expired state ID and proof of residency.
9/ “I felt like the right to vote was being stripped away from me,” says Anthony.
10/ College students were also disenfranchised: the law required signatures on college IDs and a two-year expiration date.
11/ Only *3* out of 13 four-year schools in the University of WI system had IDs that met the law’s standards.
12/ According to one study, 11% of registered voters in Wisconsin's two largest counties cited the voter ID law as a reason they didn’t vote
13/ That means as many as 45,000 residents statewide were deferred from voting by the ID law.
14/ Trump won Wisconsin by 22,748 votes.
15/ Neil Albrecht, Milwaukee's election director, says the photo ID requirement “changed the outcome of the election” in WI.
16/ Voter suppression isn’t just happening in Wisconsin. It’s also taking place in the rest of the country.
17/ Since the gutting of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, states have seen an increasing rollback of voting protections.
18/ Republican-controlled statehouses have passed more voting restrictions in 2017 than in 2016 and 2015 combined.
19/ As Ari writes: “The lesson from 2016 is terrifyingly clear. If voter suppression can work in Wisconsin...it can work anywhere.”
20/20 “And if those who believe in fair elections don't’ start to take this threat seriously, history will repeat itself.”
