From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
Clear Channel Outdoor is taking down the "Voter Fraud is a Felony!" billboards that drew protests from community groups that labeled them efforts to suppress the vote in low-income and minority communities.Obviously, the client prefers to remain anonymous, and since that violates Clear Channel's policy the billboards are being removed.
And the billboard company also said that it's working with the City of Milwaukee Election Commission to do digital bulletins, digital posters and transit shelter totems as space becomes available to promote a positive election message that states: "Skip the Election Day Line - Vote Early."
Early in-person absentee voting starts Monday Jim Cullinan, vice president of corporate communications for Clear Channel Outdoor, said in a statement: "We reviewed the situation, and in light of the fact that these billboards violate our policy of not accepting anonymous political ads, we asked the client how they would prefer to work with us to bring the boards into conformance with our policy.
"The client thought the best solution was to take the boards down, so we are in the process of removing them."
...The billboards, which went up two weeks ago, state that they are paid for by "a private family foundation."
They are similar to billboards that went up in 2010 that warned about voter fraud and were also paid for by a "private family foundation," which also was not identified in that case.
..."The decision made by Clear Channel to take these voter intimidation billboard down and, in addition, put up positive billboards promoting voting gets us one small-yet-significant step closer to a stronger democracy," [Mike Wilder, director of the African-American Roundtable and a member of the staff of Citizen Action of Wisconsin] said.
That's fair. It's the client's choice.
What's not fair is to claim that the billboards were racist. They were not just located in minority neighborhoods.
It's not fair to claim that they were "voter intimidation" billboards.
If the billboards were to be seen as a voter intimidation tactic, then the law, that voter fraud is a felony, has to be considered voter intimidation. That, of course, is ridiculous.
