Okay, this one really is about fraud

The right half of Wisconsin's blogo-cosmos is all over the story of a new report from the American Center for Voting Rights Legislative Fund that makes Wisconsin--particularly Milwaukee--out to be the armpit of electoral fraud. Kevin--the Lakeshore Laments guy--has the story (I first saw it in his BBA post), gleefully linking to a state GOP press release. But none of them did their due dilligence, apparently.

Blog-neighbor Scott beat me to John Cole--perhaps the only sane Republican left--who did the research, and says, basically, that he's not buying it. I'm not, either; a Googling led me to BradBlog's page on ACVR, impeccably sourced even if BradBlog is biased: The ACVR is little more than a Republican front group.

At any rate, Milwaukee is the Number Two Election Fraud Hot Spot in America (behind Philadelphia), with absolutely nothing new in the report that hasn't already been discussed to death here (including the silly November 2000 incident of a New Yorker allegedly offering cigarettes to absentee voters). The righty bloggers and the state GOP are using the report's release, though, as an occasion to call again for a voter ID bill that, as we have discussed previously, would not have stopped any of the fraud--at least, not any better than actual enforcement of existing law would have.

At any rate, I wonder what the righty bloggers think about the wrap-up of the investigations into Ohio's 2004 fraud and intimidation (while Cleveland is number 5 on ACVR's list, it's all about problems caused by Democrats in that city!). Barbara O'Brien points us to this month's Harper's, which has a pretty good round-up of the Ohio story. (There's an excerpt up now at the Harper's website, though the whole story should be there eventually.)