A bill that would require Wisconsin residents to show a photo ID at the polls has overcome another hurdle to becoming law.

The Wisconsin Senate passed the photo ID bill by a vote of 21 to 12 Wednesday.

The bill is essentially the same as the one passed by the state Assembly in February, according to Michael Pyritz, legislative assistant to Rep. Jeff Stone (R-Greendale), a co-author of the bill.

An addition was made so that senior care centers would be exempt, according to Pyritz.

The bill will now go before Gov. Jim Doyle, who vetoed a similar bill in 2003. Melanie Fonder, spokeswoman for Doyle, said he plans to veto this bill as well.

The Senate is one vote short of the number needed to override the governor's veto.

Sen. Jeff Plale (D-South Milwaukee), one of the two Democrats who voted for the bill, said he viewed it as part of the process of streamlining elections.

"To me, it's a first start," Plale said. "I think it'll assure that the person who's voting is the person who's voting."

The bill requires that voters show a form of photo ID at the polls to vote.

This ID could be a Wisconsin driver's license, a state Department of Transportation identification card that is issued for free or a military ID card.

Pyritz said there are some 122,000 people in Wisconsin without this type of necessary ID, according to some initial numbers from the Wisconsin Legislative Resource Bureau, a nonpartisan legislative support and research group.

Plale said he tried to add an amendment to the bill that would allow college students to use their student IDs with some piece of verifying information to vote. The amendment failed by an 18-15 vote Wednesday.

"It would've provided that flexibility to vote at" either home or school, Plale said.

The student association of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee approached Plale with the request for the student ID amendment.

Grant Culp, a junior in the College of Arts & Sciences and the former state chair of Students for Bush, said he signed an online petition for the student ID amendment.

"All they're asking for is an ID," Culp said. "I think it's not asking a lot."

The photo ID bill would help create a clean and efficient election system, Pyritz said. "It streamlines the system for the workers."

In the 2004 presidential election, the city of Milwaukee had 7,000 votes that were unaccounted for, and about 1,200 votes cast from invalid addresses.

"One of the nice things about the bill is it is going to make it harder to perpetuate fraud," Pyritz said. "It's not aimed at fraud, but it will make it harder."

Doyle points to South Carolina, the only other state with a voter ID measure this restrictive, where turnout in the November election was at 50 percent, according to Fonder.

That was one of the lower turnouts in the nation, while the 75 percent turnout in Wisconsin was among the highest.

"We should be looking for ways to find another 25 percent turnout instead of turning to the South Carolina model," Fonder said.

Plale said the governor has rolled out many proposals to help the election process, such as those for maintaining databases and training poll workers, and this bill is a part of that movement.

"It'll add some integrity to the process," Plale said.

This article appeared in The Marquette Tribune on April 19 2005.