Partisan fighting over voter fraud continues

Steven Elbow  —  8/13/2008 12:07 pm

In 2000, it was smokes for votes. In 2004, there were more votes in Milwaukee than Milwaukee voters.

This year, voter registration workers in Milwaukee submitted forms with made-up voters, kicking off this year's episode of "Voter Fraud."

"Here we are in 2008 and it's early August, and we're already seeing problems," said Mark Jefferson, executive director of the Republican Party of Wisconsin. "I'm very concerned that we're going to see more problems throughout 2008."

An election year in Wisconsin just wouldn't be complete without a good partisan battle over voter fraud. This year's installment promises to be particularly testy. Wisconsin's status as a battleground state is solidifying as GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain closes the gap on Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama. And both parties are gearing up for a donnybrook over control of the state Assembly, which Democrats think they can win after 14 years in the minority.

This year's fraud fracas started last week when the progressive group Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now fired about a dozen of its Milwaukee election registration canvassers for registering voters multiple times as a way to avoid having to actually register new voters to reach their performance goal of 20 voters a day.

"I think they were just lazy," said ACORN state political director Carolyn Castore. "They wanted to go out and get 20 cards in an hour and just be done with it."

Three ACORN workers have been referred to the Milwaukee County District Attorney's office for possible felony charges. So have two other workers from the Community Voter Project, which bills itself as a nonpartisan group that registers minority voters, as well as a canvasser whose employer hadn't been determined last week. More ACORN workers are under review by the Milwaukee Election Commission.

Republicans are predictably calling foul.

"This is the very reason I have fought for photo ID in order to receive a ballot," Rep. Jeff Stone, R-Milwaukee, fired off in a press release the day the ACORN story broke.

Stone has repeatedly tried to get his voter ID bill signed into law, only to see it fall victim to Gov. Jim Doyle's veto pen. Last year he sponsored a constitutional amendment, which passed in the Republican-led Assembly but died in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

"We have added more names on the voter rolls, and we still have no idea if the person that is handed the ballot is truly that person," Stone said.

More names indeed.

ACORN registered 35,000 voters in the Milwaukee area, most of them from the inner city, before it shut down its voter drive last month. So far this year, 136,000 new voters have registered statewide, bringing the number of registered voters to 3.4 million.

Most of the newly registered were signed up by Democratic, left-leaning or minority groups. Most of the new voters, according to conventional wisdom, are not likely to vote Republican.

And that, Democrats say, is the motive behind Stone's call for photo IDs.

"Unfortunately, the GOP will use any excuse to call for the use of voter ID," said state Rep. Joe Parisi, a Democrat from Madison whose former life as Dane County clerk makes him the only lawmaker in the state who has actually overseen elections. "If it rains too hard, they'll say it's because people aren't required to show their driver's licenses when they vote."

PARISI said the situation in Milwaukee is evidence that the system is working.

"Someone tried to game the system, and those people were caught," he said.

ACORN fired its errant workers, then flagged the fraudulent registration cards when it turned them over to the Milwaukee Elections Commission, as is required by law. Castore pointed out that the problem employees were a mere fraction of the 220 canvassers the group hired for the election drive, most from the economically depressed inner city where they were dispatched to sign up voters.

"Part of our mission was to hire out of that community," she said. "So you tend to get people who are a little less educated."

She said all the workers were put through training, a large part of which was dedicated to the legal implications of submitting phony registration cards.

But Republicans are skeptical about ACORN's motives.

"While ACORN may have reported it themselves, I don't think there's any question that they felt like eventually they were going to be caught, so maybe it would be better to report it now and throw themselves at the mercy of the authorities," said the Republican Party's Jefferson.

Stone contends that Democrats want to capitalize on unchecked fraud.

"The reality is the Democrats, I think, believe they benefit more from people who potentially wouldn't be eligible to vote being under less scrutiny," he said.

He accused ACORN of being one of several out-of-state groups willing to flout state election laws. "I'm hoping the U.S. Attorney will pursue this."

But Parisi said the Republicans' attempts to discredit registration efforts and push for voter ID are thinly veiled attempts to suppress Democratic votes. People who don't have up-to-date state-issued IDs, he said, tend to be younger people, minorities, senior citizens and students, who sometimes move several times a year.

"It's usually people who tend to vote Democratic," he said.

Jefferson contended that the GOP is not trying to take the vote away from anyone.

"We're not concerned about large turnout," Jefferson said. "We look at the rules as they are, whether we like them or not. We wish there was a photo ID requirement; there isn't. We wish that there were other reforms to the system that we don't have."

Alleged voting irregularities in 2004 in Milwaukee prompted a federal investigation, but U.S. Attorney Steve Biskupic said despite isolated instances of suspected fraud -- including up to 200 felons who may have voted, and another 100 people who may have used false names, voted twice or otherwise falsified their registration forms -- he found no evidence of widespread efforts to swing the election.

The Milwaukee Police Department earlier this year provided Republicans with more ammunition when it released a report on the 2004 elections, calling for an end to same-day registration and requiring photo identification.

But Democrats point to a new voter registration database designed to weed out felons who try to vote, and people who try to vote twice or under the names of dead people.

"With the systems of checks and balances in place, including our statewide voter registration, anyone who tries to do something like that will get caught," Parisi said.

Jefferson said Wisconsin's same-day registration system creates a vast pool of voters who can cheat because they won't be entered into the system until after their votes are cast.

Kyle Richmond, spokesman for the state Government Accountability Board, said more than 414,000 voters took advantage of Wisconsin's same-day registration in 2006. All registration information for same-day voters will eventually be entered into the system, and if they vote illegally, they will be caught, he said, adding that the threat of felony voter fraud charges provides a powerful disincentive.

He pointed out that a man was caught and prosecuted in after voting twice in 2006.

"We have a great level of participation in Wisconsin because of Election Day registration, and many states are following our lead," he said. "We believe in voter enfranchisement. We think it's a good thing."

Republicans are not convinced, and they argue that the system does not keep bad apples from voting.

"They don't intend to flag those voters," Jefferson said. "We still have that issue out there."

WISCONSIN'S partisan battle over voter registration and voting irregularities has been a colorful one in recent years.

In 2000, Republicans called for a criminal investigation after New York Democratic donor Constance Milstein was caught handing out cigarettes to homeless men in Milwaukee after getting them to cast absentee ballots. She was not found to have told the men how to vote.

In 2004 Milwaukee recorded more votes than registered voters due to sloppy bookkeeping. The election was further marred by several young men who flattened the tires on 25 vans rented by the state Republican Party to ferry voters and poll monitors to the polls.

Jefferson said he fears that last week's episode was just the "tip of the iceberg."

"We're concerned that it could be," he said. "And the reason I say that isn't because I've got a whole bunch of proof to throw in your lap today. The reason I say it is the historical trends here in presidential races in the last three cycles."

According to Stone, he's held hearings at which people have testified that when they showed up to vote, someone had already voted in their name. He said prosecutors have told him that they can't prosecute such crimes because the people who cast the illegal votes didn't have to show an ID, and so could not be positively identified.

In a battleground state like Wisconsin, such a concerted effort to steal votes could bear fruit, he said.

"If you have a total swing of 4,000 or 5,000 votes, that could make a difference in a statewide election," he said.

Requiring voters to show an ID would eliminate the problem, he said.

To Parisi, it's more election year hooey.

"I would challenge anyone making that claim to show me actual cases in which people actually did vote fraudulently," he said. "That's like saying we should outlaw driving because someone might speed."

Steven Elbow  —  8/13/2008 12:07 pm