Wisconsin's Voter Fraud Report Ought To Be National News

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

In the massive report on voter fraud in Wisconsin in 2004, the trail leads back to state officials, and "a major political party." (Guess which one.)

Here's a neat trick: louse up the recordkeeping so badly that there's not enough evidence to prove fraud:

"It should be noted here that it was the intention of the Task Force to seek charges on many more of the felons that voted, however, both prosecuting units found that the poor quality of the records maintained by the Milwaukee Election Commission provided enough reasonable doubt to make it nearly impossible to obtain convictions, and further federal indictments or state charges were not pursued."

This report gets worse. Five Election Commission employees were convicted felons - two had been charged by the Milwaukee County District Attorney's office of election fraud in 2003, and pled guilty. Three worked the polls on Election Day, and voted illegally.

"Assistant City Attorney Melanie Swank, who was a member of Mayor Barrett's Election Review Task Force, informed the Task Force that 2,597 persons were registered and sworn in as Deputy Registrars during 2004. [The report later says that was five times as many as 2002.] The reviews lead the Task Force to find that 18 persons were sworn in as Deputy Registrars that were convicted felons and under Department of Corrections Supervision. Of the 15 felons who listed a sponsoring organization, eight named ACORN as their sponsoring agency.

They detail a "major political party" that had staffers from Chicago, Washington D.C., Santa Monica, California, Los Angeles, England, and Texas.

The report states, "It is difficult for the investigators to believe that paid professional campaign staff members, who were tasked with assisting in the registration of new voters... would not have had a working knowledge of the voter eligibility requirements in the State of Wisconsin... The belief of the investigators is that each of these persons had to commit multiple criminal acts in an effort to reach their ultimate goal of voting... Neither of the prosecutorial entities involved in the investigation chose to prosecute. Although the investigators do not agree with this decision, it is certainly understandable given the lack of confidence that all involved with this investigation have with the accuracy and reliability of Election Commission records."

02/26 12:06 PM Share