Patrick Marley

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Madison – Gov. Scott Walker’s administration wants to stamp “voting purposes only” on the free IDs the state makes available, making it harder for people to use them to open bank accounts or prove their identity when they pick up their children from day care.

The Division of Motor Vehicles also wants the free IDs – born of voter fraud fears – to be cheapened in quality, with some fraud protections removed.

State officials believe the changes would prompt more people to pay for IDs that can be used more widely, thus increasing transportation funding by nearly $1 million over two years.

“I don’t think the elderly and low-income people who don’t drive should be the state’s target for boosting revenue for transportation spending,” said Jon Peacock, research director for the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families.

He said the proposal would create confusion because the state would begin issuing two types of IDs – ones that could be used only for voting and ones that could be used more broadly – as well as driver’s licenses.

“Do state lawmakers want a pharmacist to tell my 80-year-old uncle that he can’t get his heart medication because he has the wrong kind of ID?” Peacock asked.

The voter ID law Walker signed in 2011 required people to show photo ID at the polls, but also made state IDs free to those who said they needed them for voting purposes.

The result: Very few people pay the $28 fee for state IDs these days, according to budget documents.

In fiscal 2015, the state took in $437,000 from ID sales – 86% less than the $3.2 million it received in fiscal 2010.

In the DMV budget request filed last week, officials noted the free ID cards have value beyond their ability to be used for voting.

“If free ID cards were marked for ‘Voting Purposes Only’ this may discourage people from obtaining a free ID for purposes in addition to voting,” they wrote in the budget request.

The DMV submitted the proposal to the Republican governor last week and he will decide in the coming months whether to include it in the budget he submits to the Legislature in February.

Walker spokesman Jack Jablonski said the governor had not made any decisions about whether to make changes to the voter ID law.

"Free identification cards were part of efforts to make it easier to vote but harder to cheat," he said in a statement.

DMV officials estimate about 30% of those seeking IDs would begin paying for them if the free ones were eligible for voting only.

That would generate $970,000 over two years. However, some of that new money would be offset by $164,000 in costs because the state would have to update its computer systems to accommodate the new type of IDs.

Sherrie Tussler, executive director of the Hunger Task Force, said the free IDs have been helpful to low-income people who need them for a wide-range of purposes, such as proving their identity when they pick up their children from day care.

“The only people who get hurt in this are poor people who don’t have $28,” she said of the proposal. “The government is supposed to be there to help us.”

DMV spokeswoman Patty Mayers said the the law requires the state to provide free IDs for voting, but to "charge all citizens for ID cards and driver's licenses who will continue to use them in many ways as proof of identity."

"In an effort to be more efficient with limited resources, and to help clarify the intent of the Legislature, we’re encouraging ID card applicants to choose the ID card they need," she said by email.

Under the proposal, the state would save money on the IDs it provides for free by using a lower-quality cardstock that does not include anti-fraud features currently in place.

That raises the risk the cards could be more easily altered for fraudulent purposes, but Mayers said the DMV believed the free IDs would have sufficient security features.

The budget documents do not say how it could enforce the provision limiting how the free IDs could be used. Presumably, banks and other private businesses would have the ability to recognize the IDs for other purposes if they wanted, even though they were marked as for voting only.

Julie Lund, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Health Services, said because the DMV proposal has not been adopted, it is too early to say whether the state would prevent people from using the voter IDs to access food stamps or health care programs for low-income people.