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Milwaukee: Over 1,200 voters’ addresses found invalid
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel ^ | 1/25/05 | GREG J. BOROWSKI

Posted on 01/25/2005 6:48:24 AM PST by Jean S

Over 1,200 voters’ addresses found invalid

Some mistakes easily explained, but concerns raised about shoddy record keeping, poss

By GREG J. BOROWSKI
gborowski@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Jan. 24, 2005

A review of Milwaukee voting records from the Nov. 2 presidential election has found more than 1,200 ballots cast from invalid addresses in the city, including many cases in which the voter could not be located at all.

49061Invalid Addresses
One of hundreds of non-existent addresses that turned up is 107 E. Wright St., the site of this playground
Photo/Tom Lynn
One of hundreds of non-existent addresses that turned up on Milwaukee’s voter rolls for Nov. 2 is 107 E. Wright St., the site of this playground. A newspaper review found 1,242 votes coming from 1,135 invalid addresses.
The address listed on the city voter rolls for one person who voted is a lot and alley
Photo/Tom Lynn
The address listed on the city voter rolls for one person who voted in the November election is 945 N. 16th St., which is a lot and alley between 939 and 953 N.16th St.
One of the invalid addresses on the city’s voter rolls is 9875 W. Mill Road, which is the northeast corner of Menomonee Park
Photo/Benny Sieu
One of the invalid addresses on the city’s voter rolls is 9875 W. Mill Road, which is the northeast corner of Menomonee Park.
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1/14/05: Lawmaker criticizes voter verification process

The number is a result of a detailed computer analysis by the Journal Sentinel of the city’s voter records and represents about 0.4% of the 277,535 ballots cast in the city in the hard-fought election. Some of the problems may be due to flawed record keeping, such as transposed digits or incorrect street names. Many others, however, cannot easily be explained.

The newspaper’s review, the most extensive analysis done so far of the election, revealed 1,242 votes coming from a total of 1,135 invalid addresses. That is, in some cases more than one person is listed as voting from the address. Of the 1,242 voters with invalid addresses, 75% registered on site on election day, according to city records.

While the number is not enough to have determined the outcome of the statewide presidential contest, the revelation prompted renewed criticism Monday by state Republicans and raised concerns at City Hall about how well records were kept on and after a frenzied election day.

Already, the newspaper has reported that about 8,300 more votes were cast than the number of people recorded by the city as voting. This appears to be due to cases where cards from those who presented identification and registered on election day could not be processed, a gap that the city’s own estimates had put at more than 10,000.

In any case, those are not included in the city database and are not part of the paper’s review, which involved checking each voter’s address against two separate lists of properties in the city.

A spot check of addresses that came back as invalid found cases where the address in question is a park, a baseball diamond and at or near the W. Wisconsin Ave. bridge. In most cases, though, there simply was no building at that address.

“I suspect it’s just the tip of the iceberg,” said Rick Graber, chairman of the state Republican Party. “If there ever was a need for a full-blown, real investigation into what went on, this is enough evidence for it.”

He said the investigation should be done by an outside entity, not a task force such as the one appointed by Mayor Tom Barrett that includes only city employees.

Changes needed

Barrett Chief of Staff Patrick Curley said the newspaper’s findings underscore the need to improve the handling of elections, particularly large-turnout ones that strain the system.

Curley said he believes the problematic addresses - less than 1% of those who voted - are a sign of procedural problems in the Election Commission office, not widespread fraud.

“The process is what we’ve charged the election task force with,” Curley said. “Obviously, improvements are needed.”

Lisa Artison, executive director of the city Election Commission, said simply: “The results you obtained make it clear the new statewide voter system is very badly needed and long overdue.”

But that system, to be online late this year, will do little to safeguard against problems with same-day voter registration, or with the flood of registration cards the city received in the final days before Nov. 2.

While those who register on election day have to present valid identification, it is impossible to check on the spot if the address provided is valid.

Indeed, the city has been unable to process thousands of the registration cards, which officials say are illegible or are lacking required information, such as a birth date. Thus, those voters cannot be sent verification cards, as required under state law.

Artison was to meet Monday with the district attorney’s office to discuss the cards that could not be processed, but the meeting was postponed. Artison said Mike Mahoney, the assistant district attorney in charge of election issues, asked for the meeting.

Under state law, verification cards that are returned as undeliverable must be sent to the local district attorney, though the Journal Sentinel has found spotty compliance statewide. Artison has said “several hundred” of the 73,079 cards that were sent out Jan. 6 have come back. Those have not yet been forwarded to the district attorney.

Questions about the accuracy of the city’s voter rolls, and whether adequate safeguards are in place to prevent fraud, were raised before the Nov. 2 election.

Six days before the election, the state Republican Party challenged 5,619 addresses on the city voter rolls as non-existent, including vacant lots, a billboard and a gyros stand. The challenge, though, was rejected by the city Election Commission, which said the GOP had not met the high legal standard for dropping names from voter rolls.

A review by the city attorney’s office found many cases where the addresses did exist, but could be explained by errors such as numbers from registration cards that were transposed. In other cases, though, officials agreed that addresses on the GOP list didn’t exist.

The city later agreed to have poll workers require identification from anyone attempting to vote from addresses on the GOP list.

At the time, the Republican Party acknowledged that it could not say whether anyone had voted from non-existent addresses in past elections - and since the election, it has made no specific allegations of fraudulent voting in Milwaukee.

Nevertheless, the Journal Sentinel filed an open records request Nov. 8 seeking a computerized list of all registered voters, including a notation of those recorded as having voted Nov. 2. The city provided the information Thursday.

In checking the list for invalid addresses, the newspaper used computer software to compare the addresses of all 269,212 recorded as voting against a U.S. Postal Service list of addresses. That process revealed 31,255 questionable addresses - but that was mainly due to apartment buildings, in which the software read a unit number as an unmatchable address.

Once those were taken out, about 2,900 addresses remained. Each was then entered into the City of Milwaukee’s own database of properties. At that point, about 1,100 non-existent addresses remained.

As an additional step, the newspaper sent reporters to 40 randomly selected suspect addresses. None of them existed.

At that point, reporters tried to match the names of a sample 300 of the listed voters against other public records, to determine if a clerical error was involved.

In about 20% of the cases, it appears as though a clerical error led to the invalid address. For example, one voter’s address was incorrectly listed as 3130 S. 15th St., which does not exist. That person does live at 3130 S. 15th Place, however. In other cases, digits in an address were transposed.

Shirley Dolgner, 73 and a first-time voter in November, was surprised to learn that what she had dutifully printed out on her card on election day was wrong in the city’s system.

Her S. 68th St. address, where she has lived for 20-plus years, went into the voter rolls as S. 63rd St.

“I wrote this myself. Why would this come up like this?” she said. “If this is the system, it’s not working very well.”

But for 80% of the other names in that sample list, no one with the name could immediately be found in other public record searches. That means there are potentially hundreds of cases in which a vote was counted for someone whose existence could not be confirmed, at an address that does not exist.

Graber said that points to the need for election reforms, such as requiring that all voters present photo identification at the polls.

“I think it’s probably premature to judge if it’s incompetence or fraud,” he said. “I think the answers will become clearer as more investigation is done.”

The state GOP filed its own open records request for election information Nov. 16. Graber said the party has not yet received the information it requested.

Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle has vetoed the photo identification requirement and says he will do so again. It is opposed by many Democrats, including Barrett, who say it could become an impediment to voting for some.

One safeguard against fraud is the quality of the list of eligible voters, which typically is purged only once every four years - after a presidential contest. Milwaukee is planning to update its list soon, in part to check its accuracy as it becomes part of a new statewide voter list.

Each state must have such a list in place under a federal law passed after the 2000 election. Wisconsin’s is to be completed late this year. It will be set up so that if a voter moves to a new community, that person’s name would automatically be dropped from the previous address.

As it stands now, names can be left on the list for years, leaving the door open for someone to fraudulently vote from the address or to identify himself or herself as someone else and vote. It is impossible to detect that sort of fraud through a computer review such as this one.


From the Jan. 25, 2005, editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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TOPICS: Breaking News; Politics/Elections; US: Wisconsin
KEYWORDS: democratscheat; howtostealanelection; milwaukee; votefraud; voterfraud; wistolenelection
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1 posted on 01/25/2005 6:48:27 AM PST by Jean S
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To: JeanS

I'm shocked!


2 posted on 01/25/2005 6:49:32 AM PST by RockinRight (Sanford for President in '08!)
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To: JeanS

Methinks the RATs were gnawing on the wiring someplace.


3 posted on 01/25/2005 6:50:14 AM PST by WorkingClassFilth (Let's arm all the "patriotic" Democrats and field a penal battalion...)
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To: JeanS
This should be a job for the FBI to investigate but they're busy with personnel issues.
4 posted on 01/25/2005 6:51:50 AM PST by Eric in the Ozarks
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To: WorkingClassFilth

And Wisconsin will continue to have election "errors"
and false validations until they do away with that
stupid practice of allowing the individual to register
on the very day of the elections!


5 posted on 01/25/2005 6:52:45 AM PST by Grendel9
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To: JeanS

The GOP needs to keep pounding away on this kind of fraud and not wait till the next election. Glad to see progress in several places.


6 posted on 01/25/2005 6:52:50 AM PST by ProudVet77 (Survivor of the great blizzard of aught five)
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To: JeanS

Same-day registration is a boon to the cheating Dems. They can bus Illinois residents into Wisconsin and have two states won for the Dem candidate instead of one. Someone needs to clean up this mess, send some Democrats to jail and institute registration reform so Wisconsin's elections may someday be more legitimate than those in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Washington.


7 posted on 01/25/2005 6:55:14 AM PST by kittymyrib
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To: JeanS
Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle has vetoed the photo identification requirement and says he will do so again. It is opposed by many Democrats, including Barrett, who say it could become an impediment to voting for some.

Yeah, some ... like those voting illegally. Someone in the Wisconsin legislature should read back all the blather about Ohio given in Congress and then conclude, "you might think they're talking about Ohio, but in reality they are talking about Wisconsin." In fact, that would make a great commercial to be used in places where election reform is a ballot issue.

8 posted on 01/25/2005 6:55:17 AM PST by NonValueAdded ("We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good" HRC 6/28/2004)
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To: Grendel9

Same problem in Minnesota. Personally, at this point I blame the Republicans for allowing such obvious corruptions to continue. In this confused state, all a RAT voter needs is to have another RAT in a precinct come and swear thaat his/her friend lives in the precinct - no ID needed. RATs set it up and continue to benefit, but Republicans seem to stand by with their thumbs up their @sses.


9 posted on 01/25/2005 6:56:33 AM PST by WorkingClassFilth (Let's arm all the "patriotic" Democrats and field a penal battalion...)
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To: JeanS
While the number is not enough to have determined the outcome of the statewide presidential contest

If the numbers can be extrapolated out, it might well be.

I'm not dumb enough to believe these are the only invalid votes in that state.

Now what was the margin again?

10 posted on 01/25/2005 7:01:13 AM PST by Howlin (It's a great day to be an American -- and a Bush Republican!!!!)
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To: JeanS
Several comments:

This appears to be due to cases where cards from those who presented identification and registered on election day could not be processed

While those who register on election day have to present valid identification, it is impossible to check on the spot if the address provided is valid.

I'm pretty certain it's not true that they have to present identification. Haven't I read that they can simply have "someone" attest for them? I'm pretty sure I read of instances where the van driver was attesting for each of his passengers.

Sheesh. Was there some kind of coordination between Milwaukee and WA state Rat election officials?! The similarities are eerie.

It looks to me like the GOP could FORCE the gov to sign voter I.D. requirments while the spotlight is on this. While they're at it, same day registrants should be required to bring a COPY of their photo I.D. with them if they want to register at the polls. The copy then must be stapled to their registration form so there can be no later claims that the info was "illegible" (fake).

11 posted on 01/25/2005 7:04:24 AM PST by Timeout (What's the chromosome, Kenneth?!)
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To: WorkingClassFilth

Yes, but such a change has to take place in the State
Legislative bodies. And the states involved are
Democrat Party controlled. The only avenue open is
to convince the voters to overthrow the Democrat
majority in those states.


12 posted on 01/25/2005 7:06:58 AM PST by Grendel9
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To: JeanS

National voter i.d. cards anyone?


13 posted on 01/25/2005 7:07:17 AM PST by sarasota
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To: JeanS

Perhaps they should do this in Seattle? The Times and PI are sleeping on the job....


14 posted on 01/25/2005 7:11:26 AM PST by Drango (To Serve Man.....IT'S A COOKBOOK!)
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To: sarasota

I've always been a little agnostic on national I.D. cards...similar to a passport. And I don't think there's much hope of passing it anyway.

But two things have caused me to lean more towards such a provision: voter fraud and illegal immigration. I'm becoming more convinced a national I.D. card is the way to go.


15 posted on 01/25/2005 7:15:14 AM PST by Timeout (What's the chromosome, Kenneth?!)
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To: Grendel9
Wisconsin's Assembly and Senate are controlled by Republicans. The RATS are completely dependent on fraud to maintain any power. The city of Madison is just as corrupt as Milwaukee.
16 posted on 01/25/2005 7:15:51 AM PST by Koan
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To: JeanS
Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle has vetoed the photo identification requirement and says he will do so again. It is opposed by many Democrats, including Barrett, who say it could become an impediment to voting for some.

Despite all the DUmmyWailing, Democrats will fight voting reform tooth and nail if it contains provisions to really eliminate fraud. The bottom line is that every single one of these quick-and-easy and/or election-day registration procedures need to be trashed. Voting is a serious thing and the process to validate voters should be thorough, but that's exactly what they DON'T want. To them, voter reform is being able to drag homeless ex-cons directly off the street and into the precinct where a poll worker can instantly help them cast their vote.

The good news on this issue, however, is that their positions won't stand the light of day. These issues aren't complex and loaded with ways to cloud the core elements of the debate. The masses can understand the issue of proving who you are in order to vote, and the Democrats' typical subterfuge is gonna reveal their true motives pretty quickly.

MM

17 posted on 01/25/2005 7:26:15 AM PST by MississippiMan (Americans should not be sacrificed on the altar of political correctness.)
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To: JeanS
Of the 1,242 voters with invalid addresses, 75% registered on site on election day, according to city records.

Tells ya a little something about instant registration, doesn't it? Sheesh...

My position is that it's important to count everyone's vote. So important, that precautions must be in place to ensure that only valid votes are counted!

18 posted on 01/25/2005 7:33:11 AM PST by Chemist_Geek ("Drill, R&D, and conserve" should be our watchwords! Energy independence for America!)
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To: JeanS
Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle has vetoed the photo identification requirement and says he will do so again. It is opposed by many Democrats, including Barrett, who say it could become an impediment to voting for some.

Each state must have such a list [new statewide voter list] in place under a federal law passed after the 2000 election. Wisconsin’s is to be completed late this year. It will be set up so that if a voter moves to a new community, that person’s name would automatically be dropped from the previous address.

As it stands now, names can be left on the list for years, leaving the door open for someone to fraudulently vote from the address or to identify himself or herself as someone else and vote. It is impossible to detect that sort of fraud through a computer review such as this one.

Impossible to detect that sort of fraud through a computer review, but rather easy to detect that sort of fraud with a photo ID requirement.

Hmmm, wonder why the dems don't want that, to the point of vetoing it every time it comes up. . .?

19 posted on 01/25/2005 7:34:17 AM PST by T. P. Pole
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To: JeanS

The Republicans need to expose this and get the laws set up so that Rats cannot steel the election.


20 posted on 01/25/2005 7:34:29 AM PST by Sprite518
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