print story

Van Hollen hinted at voter lawsuit at GOP convention (with audio)

Steven Elbow  —  10/07/2008 8:44 pm

Promising to fight for "one person, one vote," state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen promised a group of delegates at last month's Republican National Convention that the Department of Justice would act to eliminate voter fraud just days before filing a lawsuit to get the state Government Accountability Board to cross-check voter IDs.

"You'll be hearing much more from the Department of Justice in the coming months about doing what we can to make sure that those people who have illegally and illegitimately registered to vote don't have the opportunity on election day to show up and take away your vote by showing up and casting one that is illegal," he told a group at the early September convention.

Van Hollen sued the Accountability Board on Sept. 10, seeking to have the board verify voters registered since Jan. 1, 2006, when the federal Help America Vote Act, which requires the state to cross-check voter registrations with transportation, death and criminal records, went into effect. The board has said it will cross-check voter registrations from Aug. 6, when the voter registration database was up and running.

The case is scheduled to be decided in Dane County Court on Oct. 23.

Audio posted here on wispolitics.com features Van Hollen telling a group, "We are going to do our best as the lawyers for the state of Wisconsin, as the defenders and protectors of the law of the state of Wisconsin ... to defend your right to have your vote matter."

Republicans have called for the GAB to conduct the voter checks. Democrats have charged that Van Hollen, a Republican and co-chair of the state campaign to elect GOP presidential candidate John McCain, filed the lawsuit for partisan purposes.

After filing the lawsuit, Van Hollen told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he didn't discuss the lawsuit with Republican Party leadership prior to taking action. But the GOP's Wisconsin chair, Reince Priebus, later told the Wisconsin State Journal he had spoken with the attorney general's top aide several times about the matter before the suit was filed. The newspaper also said Priebus talked about his frustration with the Government Accountability Board in Van Hollen's presence at the Republican Convention, though he denied "strategizing" about the lawsuit.

"If J.B. Van Hollen is claiming this lawsuit isn't political, then why did he discuss it with the RPW chair at a partisan political convention and then send signals to fellow Republicans that he was mobilizing the Department of Justice to take action?" said Joe Wineke, Wisconsin Democratic Party chair, in a press release.

Steven Elbow  —  10/07/2008 8:44 pm