Uppity Wisconsin

Clerical errors in voter registrations are not examples of voter fraud, as Wisconsin Attorney General J. B. Van Hollen and the GOP continue to propose. Comparing information across computer databases that were never intended for such use is not voter fraud.

Too bad Wisconsin elected officials, and others across the nation, are trying desperately to disenfranchise voters with this nonsense. Van Hollen may not get his way this November, but this issue will not be going away.

So, why is information about voters and voter name comparisons among incompatible computer database systems being sought by GOP operatives? The easy answer is because they're freaking out about their impending loses.

Because there are only two time-tested ways to win elections - 1) Register more voters than the other guys 2) Suppress voting rights and disenfranchise people voting for the other guys as much as possible.

Obama is doing #1. The GOP is banking on #2.

Meanwhile, here are real examples of voter fraud:

Here's an example of real voter fraud folks - Republicans misrepresenting an issue, standing in front of a grocery store asking people to sign a petition to strengthen child molestation laws when what they're really signing is a sheet to register as a Republican.

(hat tip America Blog)

UPDATE: This republican has been arrested for real voter fraud. Holy cow.

Forget ACORN (and here's a good article about how they've actually followed the law), here's the real case of voter fraud that no one wants you to notice - since 2004, as many as 13 million voters have been purged from the roles. This is the concerted effort being perpetrated on American citizens by elected officials like Wisconsin Attorney General J. B. Van Hollen, and those in 39 other states.

They're using clerical errors to suppress voter turnout, folks. This isn't a matter of "cleansing voter roles" for inaccurate information. This is a war on democracy. And it's being done today, illegally, within 90 days of the election.

13 million voters purged. Think about that. And naturally, it's heavily occurring in battle ground states.

The Brennan Center for Justice has the details in its latest report.

And, shock, even mainstream media outlets are beginning to take notice. Here's the latest from CBS.

UPDATE: Find out your voter status here.

The highly respected Brennan Center for Justice at New York University's School of Law, has a comprehensive, well researched and documented white paper by Justin Levitt on recent allegations of voter fraud allegedly occurring in Wisconsin and other states within the last eight years, entitled, "The Truth About Voter Fraud."

Once you read it, your eyes will be opened to the sham that is being perpetrated upon the U.S. voters. In fact, one could easily argue that the widespread rumors of voter fraud exist to confuse the populace and further deepen the cynicism of our electoral process. These efforts may also serve a larger agenda to keep real voting reform off the table, that is, extending the time people are allowed to cast votes; make it LESS burdensome for people to vote in the first place; and acts by political campaigns to buy votes, among many others.

Those who would like to reduce, inhibit, prevent, discourage and suppress the vote in Wisconsin’s urban (read Democratic) areas are in full cry over a Milwaukee Police Department report after investigating how the city conducted the November 2004 election.

Charlie Sykes and Brian Fraley were first to the hunt, but the pack of rabid right-wing commentators won’t be far behind. It has already made National Review online. (Sykes links to National Review, but it links back to his site to access the report. So guess where National Review got it.)

Sykes calls it “a bombshell,” and asks:

will the JS, the mayor, and Democrats in Madison continue to deny that we have a major problem with voter fraud?

We should certainly hope so, because the report from MPD’s Special Investigations Unit says nothing of the kind.

Saying “mistakes were made” does not equal “widespread voter fraud was committed.” Sykes and NR make much of this sentence, in the introduction:

Via MAL Contends - Old habits die hard for Republicans.

Unfortunately, for the GOP many African-Americans remain clueless as to their proper place in American society. A hint: It's not at the ballot box.

So the Republican Party believes.

The U.S. Supreme Court announced that it will hear a voter ID case stemming from an Indiana law targeting poor and minority Americans to keep them from voting.

The Court is likely to decide the case next spring in time for the 2008 presidential elections, thereby possibly delivering a death blow to the Republican Party's national program (administered through the DoJ, such as US Atty's Biskupic's voter fraud cases, and state laws) of suppressing black, elderly and poor voters who skew against voting Republican.

Judge Terence Evans of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in dissent (cases are Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, 07-21, and Indiana Democratic Party v. Rokita, 07-25) clarifies the issue:

McClatchy Newspapers ran a piece by Greg Gordon Monday noting that the DoJ had conducted the voter fraud witch hunts in numerous states. Some highlights:

 “Former lawyers in the Civil Rights Division, however, said the voter fraud campaign is a partisan effort to disqualify legitimate voters, as occurred in Florida before the 2000 presidential election.” 

"Aggressive purging of the voter rolls tends to have a disproportionate impact on voters who move frequently, live in cities and have names that are more likely to be incorrectly entered into databases," said Joseph Rich, a former chief of the Justice Department's Voting Rights Section who's now an attorney with the liberal-leaning Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights.

Today’s Capital Times’ piece by Judith Davidoff and David Callender reveals that Biskupic’s push to investigate alleged voter fraud was not limited to Milwaukee but also targeted the high Democratic-voting areas of the city of Madison and Southeastern Wisconsin. 

Biskupic, after publicly finding no evidence of any widespread pattern of fraud or voter irregularities as part of a bipartisan task force, launched the voter fraud investigations and subsequent prosecutions anyway, precisely in accordance with the national Republican program to suppress Democratic turnout.  

Writes Davidoff and Callender: