Posted on 08/06/2008 11:12:25 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Criminal investigations could be launched against at least six voter registration workers who tried to add dead, imprisoned or imaginary people to the voter rolls, according to the Milwaukee Election Commission and the organization that employed them.
Officials are reviewing some 200 to 300 fraudulent voter registration cards, Sue Edman, the commission’s executive director, said Wednesday.
And even though the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now caught the fraud and reported it before the cards were turned in, the incident revived a four-year-old partisan debate over the integrity of Wisconsin’s voter registration process, as political groups step up efforts to sign up voters for the Nov. 4 presidential election.
“One woman called us to complain because her husband has been dead for 10 years and a voter registration was submitted,” Edman said.
In about 12 cases, deputy registrars paid by ACORN were “making people up or registering people that were still in prison,” said Carolyn Castore, ACORN’s state political director.
And in other cases, workers used the same address for numerous voters or used driver’s license numbers that did not fit the voters’ birth dates, Edman said. But most of the fraud involved submitting duplicate cards for voters who were already registered, and forging the voters’ signatures, Castore said.
ACORN found the problems and fired a dozen workers, Castore said. Five of them appeared to be working together, she added.
But under state law, all of the voter registration cards collected had to be turned in to the election commission, even if they were clearly fraudulent or incomplete, Edman said. ACORN sent in all the cards its workers had submitted, but flagged the fraudulent or incomplete ones.
Edman said she has referred six individuals to the Milwaukee County district attorney’s office for investigation. More could be referred within the next few days, after the commission staff finishes its review of the registration cards, she said.
Castore said her group would cooperate fully with any official investigation. A prosecutor in the district attorney’s white-collar crime unit did not return a call seeking comment.
Another 1,500 to 2,000 voter registration cards were incomplete, and ACORN is trying to help the commission staff fill in the blanks, Castore said.
Castore said the incomplete and fraudulent cards were a small percentage of the 35,000 registration cards that ACORN turned in, and the suspect workers were a small percentage of 220 or so ACORN deputy registrars.
ACORN paid its workers by the hour, rather than by the voter, Castore said. No one was fired for signing up less than their goal of 20 voters a day, and no one was paid more for exceeding the goal, she said. In 2006, the Legislature banned the practice of paying registrars for each voter signed up, after problems in the 2004 election, when several groups paid workers that way.
The ACORN effort is part of a massive voter registration drive aimed at the fall presidential election, which is expected to pit Democratic Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois against Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona.
ACORN is one of five groups, all from the liberal side of the political spectrum, that sent either paid workers or volunteers to be trained as deputy voter registrars to sign up Milwaukee voters for the fall elections. Although exact figures are not available, Edman said the ACORN workers outnumbered those from Citizen Action of Wisconsin, Obama’s campaign, the Service Employees International Union and the Community Voters Project of the Fund for the Public Interest.
Castore said that ACORN alone turned in 35,000 cards and that other groups turned in 15,000 to 18,000 cards, not counting those from the Obama campaign. Edman said her staff was still processing and counting cards.
With so many registrars in the field, numerous duplicate cards showed up, Edman said. While some of those duplicate cards were fraudulent, ACORN found “probably 12 people who just delighted in registering to vote,” Castore said.
In the close presidential races of recent years, voter registration has been a hot issue, partly because of the perception that poor and minority voters are more likely to back Democrats and more likely to be discouraged by tighter registration rules.
Thus, Democrats and Democratic-leaning groups have pushed to sign up those voters and have opposed such measures as requiring photo identification to vote, while Republicans and GOP-leaning groups have campaigned for photo ID and raised concerns about voter fraud. Both sides say they are upholding the integrity of the democratic process.
Responding to the latest incident, Wisconsin GOP Executive Director Mark Jefferson said, “I’m glad that this was caught and turned in, (but) I still think that the system is ripe for abuse if our authorities don’t take this (vote fraud) issue seriously. . . . I’m not afraid of a high-turnout election. What I am afraid of is fraud and abuse. I just want the laws enforced.”
Jefferson said city and state officials have not implemented all of the state and federal reforms enacted after the 2004 presidential election.
In that election, Republicans raised concerns about voters registered from non-existent Milwaukee addresses, and a Journal Sentinel review found about 1,200 votes were cast from invalid addresses. The newspaper also found a large gap between votes recorded and people identified as having voted, among other problems.
Those stories spurred federal and local investigations that brought charges against a few people, including some felons who voted illegally.
But as Alec Loftus, spokesman for the state Democratic Party, noted in a written statement, “An investigation in 2004 by Republican-appointed U.S. Attorney Steve Biskupic concluded that there was no widespread voter fraud in Wisconsin. The fact is that this organization self-identified its own canvassers and reported it to the proper authorities.”
Castore added that ACORN knew the 2004 election had problems and the group had taken extensive steps to ensure its registration drive did not repeat those problems.
Do I really have to say it?
It’s way past the time the RNC started penetrating these organizations to find out how they commit voter fraud.
This is so widespread amongst the Demoncrats and their ilk that it threatens to undermine the fundamental integrity of our republic. In California, it is rampant, with illegals, dead people and dogs voting...a friend of mine talked to a poll worker who said a woman came in to vote, but her name wasn’t on the voter roll, so she left. The poll worker said the same woman came back with a different name several hours later (one that was on the roll) and voted. Of course in California, you’re NOT ALLOWED to ask for photo ID, so you could say you were Thomas Jefferson and vote as long as Jefferson was registered. Absolutely disgusting.
Acorn got money from the mortgage bailout.
Hmmmm — not voter fraud from the dimocrats? </sarcasm off
Thanks 2ndDivisionVet.
“Voter registration drives”=DEMOCRAP Voter registration drives.
If the GOP criticizes they say “what you don’t want people to vote?”.
Well I don’t. If you don’t care enough to register without being prodded then go enjoy your American Idol.
Folks who want welfare have no problem at all showing up at the welfare office.
ACORN should be aggressively investigated and prosecuted nationwide.... use ‘RICO’ statutes ‘cause they are organized interstate crime of the political left.
Obambi was one of their key lawyers and then ‘trained’ their organizers — he should be subpoenaed and deposed under oath about their activities.
They are the leading sponsor of vote fraud in the USA.
Any form of vote fraud should be a capital offense.
Absentee ballots should be limited to the military and to other people not physically in the country, absentee ballots are the easiest way to commit voter fraud. I vote absentee and like it but would gladly give it up in order to combat voter fraud. The main reason that CA is overrun by liberal politicians is voter fraud.
I lost all faith in the integrety of the vote a long, long time ago.
It’s a shame they stopped the “pay by registration”, or we could make a couple of ACORN slimeballs a whole lot richer, and the organization broke in a few weeks.
Paul
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.