Posted on 11/04/2004 6:36:01 AM PST by machman
Party asserts that potential for fraud is too great in state
By STEVE SCHULTZE sschultze@journalsentinel.com Posted: Nov. 3, 2004
With the dust from the presidential race still settling - and Wisconsin barely dodging Florida's fate in 2000 - Republicans on Wednesday renewed calls for tightening voting laws to lessen the potential for election fraud.
State Republican Party Chairman Rick Graber and Assembly Speaker John Gard called for changing the law to require voters to show a picture ID card before being allowed to vote. They said that problems Republicans uncovered in Milwaukee underscored the need for the change.
GOP officials charged that thousands of voters in Milwaukee were registered to bad addresses, such as vacant lots, and also complained about a voter registration project with local jail inmates, some of whom were felons and not entitled to vote.
Gard, of Peshtigo, promised that lawmakers would consider a measure to require voter identification at the polls when the Legislature convenes in January.
"Democrats and Republicans alike should be concerned about the incredible problems we had across this state," Gard said. Barrett criticized
Gard blasted Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett's handling of the voter registration problems. "(He) has got to be embarrassed about what happened in Milwaukee," Gard said. "You've got thousands of addresses they know don't exist."
Barrett and Lisa Artison, executive director of the city Election Commission, said Wednesday that voting went smoothly, aside from some long lines at a few polling places. Barrett said those problems were largely confined to 35th Street School and a couple of other voting sites and were corrected by adding poll workers.
Milwaukee County District Attorney E. Michael McCann agreed that voting went well overall. His office is investigating one claim of double-voting and an instance in which a senior citizen who had already voted absentee was given another ballot when he accompanied his wife to the polls. The man didn't use it; instead, he turned it over to McCann's office. Poll observers credited
Hundreds of election observers, favoring either President Bush or Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, contributed to the smooth running of the election, McCann said. But the large number of observers were a function of the red-hot presidential race and shouldn't be counted on for patrolling future races, he said.
While Republicans continued to stress Wisconsin's vulnerability to election fraud, Democrats and others said the relative lack of problems in Tuesday's election suggested the laws needed no overhaul.
Barrett, Gov. Jim Doyle and McCann - all Democrats - said requiring a picture ID is unnecessary. Most people use a driver's license as their photo identification; those who don't have a license could be discouraged from voting, Barrett said.
Doyle remains staunchly opposed to the photo ID measure, a version of which he vetoed in the last legislative session. He said this year's election fears were "a lot more brouhaha than reality."
Doyle singled out long lines as the most serious problem. That can be rectified for future elections by implementing a planned computerized voter registration list and increasing the number of poll workers, he said. 2 reforms offered
McCann suggested two reforms: better funding for election officials so that well-trained poll inspectors can be hired and voter lists that are regularly updated.
"We are running elections on the cheap," McCann said.
He also said the state should make it illegal to pay a bounty for each new voter registration, a system that can encourage abuses such as ones discovered this year in Milwaukee and Racine.
Assembly Minority Leader Jim Kreuser (D-Kenosha) said Democrats plan to introduce a bill soon that would automatically register people who have a Wisconsin driver's license.
Charles Franklin, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist, said Wisconsin came close to becoming a legal battleground for a contested presidential election - something that likely would have happened had Kerry won in Ohio.
Given the high stakes presidential race, an Ohio win by Kerry might have prompted a post-election effort by Republicans to press charges of Wisconsin balloting problems and seek a recount here, Franklin said.
He said both sides in the presidential race hyped potential problems with the voting process as a way to gain some advantage. In general, Wisconsin's voting problems "aren't that serious," Franklin said.
Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker said most of the extra 277,000 ballots that were provided to the city at Barrett's insistence probably were unneeded, as Walker had argued.
Had Wisconsin turned into a battleground, those extra ballots might have turned into a hot issue, Walker said.
Patrick Marley and Stacy Forster of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.
You are correct. The fraud I witnessed in Racine was huge.
I was around the UW campus during move in week and overheard a couple of those "register to vote" people telling students to do just that... vote absentee at home and vote here in person.
As an interim, yes it would be nice if Driver's Licenses could be used to "fortify" proof of citizenship at the polls.
You wanna hear some irony? Take the tobacco companies offering special "miles" bonus gifts. Did you know, in order to use those "miles" and get those bonus gifts, one must send in a photocopy of their driver's licenses? Imagine that... more proof required here, than at our own election booths.
As an interim, yes it would be nice if Driver's Licenses could be used to "fortify" proof of citizenship at the polls.
You wanna hear some irony? Take the tobacco companies offering special "miles" bonus gifts. Did you know, in order to use those "miles" and get those bonus gifts, one must send in a photocopy of their driver's licenses? Imagine that... more proof required here, than at our own election booths.
As an interim, yes it would be nice if Driver's Licenses could be used to "fortify" proof of citizenship at the polls.
You wanna hear some irony? Take the tobacco companies offering special "miles" bonus gifts. Did you know, in order to use those "miles" and get those bonus gifts, one must send in a photocopy of their driver's licenses? Imagine that... more proof required here, than at our own election booths.
Don't get your hopes up. We have control but what Republicans in the House or Senate have the (you know whats) to use it.
They are even going to let Specter run the judiciary committee.
I swear, they must all be afraid of their FBI files. Either that or they just really are that "nice."
Net is bubbling here today; kept getting "error pages". FR caught all three times I tried to post.
They should be required to get NH residency including switching their DL and car tags to NH from a different state (like MA) before being allowed to register to vote.
SOURCE: http://www.conservativeaction.org/resources.php3?nameid=votefraud
How Democrats Steal Elections - Top 10 Methods of Liberal Vote Fraud
1. Over-Voting. In Democrat strongholds like St. Louis, Philadelphia and Detroit, some precincts had 100% of their registered voters voting, with 99% of the ballots going to Gore. Clearly, multiple voting resulted in extra tallies for Gore in the 2000 election. (New York Post, 12/09/00).
2. Dead Voters. This classic Democratic method of vote fraud goes all the way back to 1960 in Chicago and Dallas. The 2000 election was no exception. In Miami-Dade County, for example, some of the 144 ineligible votes (those which officials actually admitted to) were cast by dead people, including a Haitian-American who's been deceased since 1977 (Miami-Herald, 12/24/00).
3. Mystery Voters. These "voters" cast votes anyway but are not even registered to vote. In heavily Democratic Broward County, for example, more than 400 ballots were cast by non-registered voters. (Miami-Herald 1/09/01)
4. Military ballots. Many of these votes were disqualified for the most mundane and trivial reasons. At least 1,527 valid military ballots were discarded in Florida by Democratic vote counters (Drudge Report, 11/19/00).
5. Criminals. Felons are a natural Democratic voter and they're protected on voter rolls across the country. In Florida at least 445 ex-convicts - including rapists and murderers -- voted illegally on November 7th. Nearly all of them were registered Democrats. (Miami-Herald 12/01/00)
6. Illegal aliens. These voters have long been a core liberal constituency, especially in California. In Orange County in 1996, Rep. Bob Dornan had his congressional seat stolen from him when thousands of illegal aliens voted for Loretta Sanchez (Christian Science Monitor, 9/2/97).
7. Vote-buying. Purchasing votes has long been a traditional scheme by Democrats, and not just with money. In the 2000 election in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Democratic workers initiate a "smokes-for-votes" campaign in which they paid dozens of homeless men with cigarettes if they cast ballots for Al Gore (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, 11/14/00).
8. Phantom Voters. These voters don't really exist, but their ballots do. In the 1996 Lousiana Senate race, GOP candidate Woody Jenkins had the election stolen from him when he discovered that 7,454 actual votes were cast but had no paper trail to authenticate them (Behind the Headlines, F.R. Duplantier, 4/27/97).
9. Dimpled chads. Those infamous punch-cards were a ballot bonanza for Al Gore. Democratic poll workers in Palm Beach, Dade and Broward counties tampered and manipulated thousands of ineligible ballots and counted them for Gore, even though no clear vote could be discerned. (NewsMax.com 11/27, 12/22, 11/18, 11/19/00).
10. Absentee ballots. Normally it's assumed that Republicans benefit from absentee ballots. But in the case of Miami's 1997 mayoral election, hundreds of absentee ballots were made for sale or sent out to non-Miami residents. Fraud was so extensive in the race that the final results were overturned in court (FL Dept. of Law Enforcement Report, 1/5/98)."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=votefraud
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=electionfraud
EVERY VOTE COUNTS . . . INCLUDING FRAUDULENT ONES!!
Good job, useful info in there.
Wisconsin doesn't have motor voter. We have, show up at your polling place, register & vote.
Right, many other states do, peoples repulic of Kalifornia is a biggie.
I am convinced that the margin of fraud was at least 4% statewide. Registration with utility bills, library cards, and discount club cards has to go. Even worse, once you are registered in this was, you can vouch for as many other voters as you want so that they can be registered without any ID at all. The state GOP attorney I spoke with yesterday said the Dems were stationing these "vouchers" at polling stations all day in parts of Milwaukee and Madison to vouch for anyone who comes through. In this way, a large groups of fraudulent voters could vote dozens of times at different polling sites with untraceable fake names that could never be prosecuted.
We have to fix this system or we will permanently loose this state. Just as we Wisconsin Republicans organized our GOTV like never before, the Dems did the same with their voter fraud. Look to our southern boarder with Illinois: once the cheaters win they institutionalize the corruption to install themselves forever.
Yup, repubs organize, and work on GOTV, rats organize, and work on GOTFV, get out the fraudulent vote, which seems to be so much easier.
Yep.
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