If the cops conducting the arrest are expressing this much skepticism about the charges, you can surmise how a random jury pool would react. These charges were patently frivolous from the very start but setting that aside they don't even make sense from the political grandstanding perspective. Bewildering.
I'd propose that Walker is "Making His Record" for a dispute about voter-id that will happen sometime in the next year or two.
The basic anti-voter-id argument starts with two claims:
There's no proof that anyone votes illegally
Requiring ID will stop some eligible voters from voting; perhaps the number is small but every vote is sacred.
If Walker does nothing, his opponents can run with those two claims and he has to make some abstract argument about how secure elections are essential to get the losing side to accept their loss as legitimate. And that argument is going to suck for him.
If I were in Walker's position (and allowed to influence prosecutions) I'd tell the prosecutors to quietly offer some amazingly generous plea-deals. Let the felons go in front of a judge, admit that they voted illegally and pay token fine. Then the prosecutor can give a press conference where she blames election officials for giving her a hard-to-win case via their bad information.
Once that happens, Walker can claim that he uncovered and prosecuted dozens of cases of election fraud and that this proves the need for more robust and rapidly-updated systems for verifying voters. Now, his opponent's argument morphs to:
Dozens isn't very many people; there's no proof that illegal votes shifted an election and anyway half of the people accused of voting illegally plead down to some other offense.
Requiring ID will stop some eligible voters from voting; perhaps the number is small but every vote is sacred.
The political advantage is that position #1 ("We don't care very much about tens of votes" / "This only matters if if shifts an election") now exists in tension with position #2 ("Every vote matters").
p
I'd propose that Walker is "Making His Record" for a dispute about voter-id that will happen sometime in the next year or two.
The basic anti-voter-id argument starts with two claims:
There's no proof that anyone votes illegally
Requiring ID will stop some eligible voters from voting; perhaps the number is small but every vote is sacred.
If Walker does nothing, his opponents can run with those two claims and he has to make some abstract argument about how secure elections are essential to get the losing side to accept their loss as legitimate. And that argument is going to suck for him.
If I were in Walker's position (and allowed to influence prosecutions) I'd tell the prosecutors to quietly offer some amazingly generous plea-deals. Let the felons go in front of a judge, admit that they voted illegally and pay token fine. Then the prosecutor can give a press conference where she blames election officials for giving her a hard-to-win case via their bad information.
Once that happens, Walker can claim that he uncovered and prosecuted dozens of cases of election fraud and that this proves the need for more robust and rapidly-updated systems for verifying voters. Now, his opponent's argument morphs to:
Dozens isn't very many people; there's no proof that illegal votes shifted an election and anyway half of the people accused of voting illegally plead down to some other offense.
Requiring ID will stop some eligible voters from voting; perhaps the number is small but every vote is sacred.
The political advantage is that position #1 ("We don't care very much about tens of votes" / "This only matters if if shifts an election") now exists in tension with position #2 ("Every vote matters").
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