Vote Fraud Update

I believe this is a good thing:

In the aftermath of an election with hundreds of fraudulent votes and a knot of other lingering problems, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett on Thursday appointed a 28-year police veteran to the city's top elections job.

Capt. Sue Edman would bring no election experience to the post, though she made a run for an open council seat in 2002. Instead, Barrett highlighted Edman's management experience in the Milwaukee Police Department, including assignments overseeing extensive records.

Edman, 51, would replace Lisa Artison, who resigned March 1 amid heavy criticism of how the city handled the Nov. 2 presidential election. [. . .]

Several aldermen noted that, as a police officer, Edman is likely to take a harsh view of any efforts to defraud the system. She was described as bright, direct and businesslike, but not characterized as gruff or as a harsh taskmaster.

Artison was clearly not up to the task (a mere four months lead time before the September federal primary didn't help), and made what was probably a mess into a disaster.

In other news, the state's contract with Accenture is still on:

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Madison) and others sued the state over the $13.9 million contract, saying that Elections Board Executive Director Kevin Kennedy did not have the authority to sign the Accenture deal without the board's explicit approval.

Circuit Judge William C. Foust concluded that [Kennedy could not commit the board to that deal alone, but he found that the board's eventual ratification of the contract was adequate approval of the deal.

Kennedy signed the contract last year. The board voted to affirm the deal in January, just weeks after being sued.
Foust also found that the board had given proper public notice of its plans for the statewide voter list, which under federal law must be operational by Jan. 1. [. . .]

Although the case focused on the narrow legal issue of Kennedy's authority, the critics who brought the case have charged that Accenture has a history of missing deadlines and overrunning its budgets. Accenture is seeking to reopen negotiations with the state to extend deadlines.

"I can't think of a greater sign we need to stop this now," Pocan said of Accenture's request. "Kevin Kennedy has made a bad decision, and the only decision worse would be to stick by that."

A month or so back, I wondered aloud about how "a single, unelected official can direct millions of dollars to an Enron-accounting, off-shore tax-evading, under-FEC-investigation, Apartheid-supporting, Wisconsin-ripping-off company to compile that most precious of resources, our state voter lists." I still wonder all of those things, even if it is technically legal.

You want to talk about a mess turning into a disaster? This will be it.