"Christian" group upgrades from book-burning to dyslexic fraud advocacy

by folkbum

Remember a couple of years ago when the book-burners--literally! they demanded to burn a book!--descended on the West Bend Library because something threatened their worldview? One group in particular went even beyond just asking for books to be banned and burned, and actually tried suing the city of West Bend for "damages" because "their mental and emotional well-being were damaged" by the library's having Baby Be-Bop in the stacks. The was the Christian Civil Liberties Union.

[UPDATE: Here they are in action!]

So then today the flyer on the right showed up on the car of a friend of mine (click to embiggen). If you can't see the image or read the text, here's what it says:

ADOLPH HITLER SUPPORTS RECALL OF GOVERNOR SCOTT WALKER

"Mines for Wisconsin" encourage you to oppose the Scott Walker recall petition by signing "Adolf Hitler, 666 Hell Street (your city)"

WHY? The recall people don't want thousands of high paying jobs in the mining industry in northern Wisconsin. The president of "MFW" used to work for Kaiser Steel at an open pit mine. The area around the mine was not environmentally affected.

By signing Hilter's name you are sending a message to the recall people who oppose jobs for Wisconsin residents. Many of these potential jobs would be union positions.

It is not illegal to sign "Adolf Hitler" on a petition. Hitler was willing to destroy Germany in order to get his ideals in place. This is similar to what the recall people are doing in Wisconsin.

Though the flyer is signed "Mines for Wisconsin," the phone number and address listed traces back to the CCLU. (I don't know whether the "Bob" listed as a contact is one of the Roberts from the West Bend debacles.)

One wonders, first, what particular flavor of Christianity it is that promotes this kind of lying--certainly not any I know of. Second, though, one wonders why this group would advocate breaking state law, which prohibits signing a false name to a petition like this. (Wisconsin Republicans are trying to get that upgraded to a felony, even.) So no, CCLU, your flyer is wrong--it would be illegal to sign either as Adolf Hitler or Adolf Hilter.

I am not sure that flyering a parking lot advocating fraud like this is enough to get Assistant DA Landgraf investigating, but this kind of thing shouldn't just pass unnoticed.

(Further: Someone with more time to dig should look into Kaiser Steel's mining operations. I doubt that there was no environmental impact of any of their strip mines.)

Shorter Christian Schneider, NRO, WPRI, WTFDUDE?

by folkbum

Vote fraud is just like rape--underreported.

Paraphrasing Illusory Tenant there, citing the Brawler, and via Jonathan Bernstein, who reads "The Corner" so you don't have to.

Schneider's post does double-duty, both legitimizing GOP racism and sticking it in the eye of feminists. I bet he gets paid more for that. And it's also very exhausting to think that I've been fighting Schneider on his "vote fraud" BS for as long as I have. The boy just won't quit.

I'm thinking this could be a thing, you know a trending twitter topic, something like

#ChrstianSchneiderThinks vote fraud is just like rape--underreported.
#ChrstianSchneiderThinks vote fraud is just like bigfoot--hiding in the woods.
#ChrstianSchneiderThinks vote fraud is just like Area 51--real but blurred off of Google Earth.
#ChrstianSchneiderThinks vote fraud is just like Kenny G--everybody likes him but just won't admit it.

Or maybe

#ChrstianSchneiderThinks the McRib is just like rape--everybody's asking for it.

Now you--I'm sure you've got better ones.

Admitting Too Much

by folkbum

Scott Fitzgerald clearly believes the Republicans' sweep of the elections Tuesday was the result of widespread voter fraud.

Crickets

by folkbum

The righty blogs were all kinds of giddy over weekend revelations that a minor union cog stood outside a bar puffing himself up to a stranger about how he was almost single-handedly going to bring down the Walker campaign for governor. John-david Morgan couldn't even get the names or job titles of his alleged conspirators right, yet his drunk-talk was taken as gospel evidence of illegal coordination and a complex, interconnected web of operatives planning unspeakable horrors in the weeks to come.

So I waited with great curiosity to see how those same righty blogs would react to documentary evidence of actual coordination between the state Republican Party, Americans for Prosperity, and local Tea Party groups to engage in voter caging. In addition to, this time, the operatives getting the names and titles right, you have the people involved initially lying to the press to cover up what they had done.

You might be surprised to learn that all of this has been met, by the righties, with dead silence. Well, no, you're probably not surprised. I know I'm not.

CAVEAT: Since the story broke, Charlie Sykes hasn't been on the air. It's entirely possible that he will jump on this story later this morning, condemning the people involved in no uncertain terms (perhaps while getting their job titles wrong, too!), and then the herd will dutifully follow with their own critiques of the state GOP, AFP, and the Tea Parties. And if you believe that, I have some great lakefront property to sell that you may be interested in ...

Vote Fraud!

by folkbum

I expect the local conservatives to be all abuzz about it!

Fixing the Internets

by folkbum

Woman pleads guilty to election registration fraud
By Larry Sandler

Feb. 26, 2009 12:50 p.m. | A Milwaukee woman has pleaded guilty to election fraud for submitting dozens of fake names and addresses to city election officials the Community Voters Project, which turned her and the evidence over to the D.A. during a voter registration drive.

The hard work of fixing the internets will, apparently, continue indefinitely.

Van Hollen v. Lautenschlager: No Comparison

by folkbum

This is a slight follow-up to Michael's post below about Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen's plan to potentially intimidate voters using state Department of Justice agents in polling places.

A line of attack from Republicans this week has been that Van Hollen's predecessor, Peg Lautenschlager, did the same thing. Brian Fraley, in the comments to Michael's post, asks, "So, was it racist and suppression when Lautenschlager did the same thing 4 years ago?" Van Hollen's people have cited it in their own press releases, it's in the AP wire story, it's on Steven Walters's blog, and I fully expect it to be all over the conservative blogs by this afternoon.

However, I would just like to point out why this comparison is ridiculous. (I also hope the Lautenschlager comes out today with a statement to clarify herself, instead of relying on characterizations from the current DOJ of what her position was.) This is Lautenschlager's announcement four years ago (my emphasis):

Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager today announced that the Wisconsin Department of Justice will be sending forty assistant attorneys general and special agents from its Division of Criminal Investigation to polling places in various locations around the state on Election Day (Tuesday November 2, 2004) to ensure compliance with state laws governing elections.

All of the Department of Justice employees participating in this effort to uphold the integrity of the voting process in Wisconsin will receive training from the state Elections Board in the coming week. This training will focus on the rights of citizens to register and vote, as well as the rights of those entitled to observe the election process.

Early on election day, her office followed up with what they were already observing (again, my emphasis):

Wisconsin Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager announced this morning that the Wisconsin Department of Justice (DOJ) has already received several reports alleging polling place observers have illegally attempted to turn away Wisconsin voters with misleading and false information.

According to Lautenschlager, persons attempting to vote this morning in Kenosha and Racine were allegedly told by poll observers they are unable to register to vote at the polls on Election Day. Lautenschlager said this statement is untrue; in fact voting day registration is specifically allowed in Wisconsin and attempts, such as those reported, to obstruct the right to vote are illegal in Wisconsin.

"I want to remind all eligible Wisconsin citizens they have the right under Wisconsin law to register at the polls and vote today," Lautenschlager said. [. . .] Lautenschlager assigned Assistant Attorneys General and Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) agents into the field today at polling places in communities throughout Wisconsin, to protect the rights of voters.

It's clear that Lautenschlager's emphasis was on the rights of citizens to register and vote. It may well be that Van Hollen's crew will do some of that, I can't say for sure. However, compare the language Van Hollen is using now to what Lautenschlager's DOJ said four years ago (still my emphasis):

Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen announced today that as a part of his election integrity efforts the Wisconsin Department of Justice will be sending assistant attorneys general and special agents from the Division of Criminal Investigation to various locations around the state on Election Day (Tuesday, November 4, 2008), to ensure compliance with state laws governing elections. [. . .]

"An individual's right to vote and have that vote counted is the foundation of our democratic system," said Van Hollen. "Citizens also have a right to vote in fair elections, untainted by election fraud. The Department of Justice is committed to ensuring that every citizen's right to vote in a fair election is protected." The Department of Justice will be working with district attorneys, law enforcement authorities, and state and local election officials across the state on election day

The emphasis from Lautenschlager's office in 2004 was protecting the rights of voters. The emphasis from Van Hollen's office in 2008 is to guard against the imagined "vote fraud" that Republicans have been convincing themselves truly exists despite evidence to the contrary.

So when the excuse starts getting tossed around today--I bet Charlie Sykes already has it in his talking points pile for this morning's show--be aware that it's baloney. Van Hollen is playing the clearly partisan role of running down non-existent fraud at the urging of the Republican Party. Lautenschlager was trying to protect voters. Those are not the same, and I do not expect the agents this year to be doing the same thing the agents did four years ago. When you're protecting voters, you act differently than when you're tilting at vote-fraud windmills.

You Can Fight Van Hollen's DOJ Obstruction Efforts

Update: Gov Doyle, Sheboygan DA criticize Van Hollen plan for agents at polling places

Sheboygan County District Attorney Joe DeCocco, a Democrat, called Van Hollen's plan to use state agents and lawyers to monitor polls Tuesday a 'dog and pony' show. DeCocco said his search of state law 'did not locate any mandates of providing prosecutor coverage at polling sites, or any authority to do so.'
'The attorney general has no authority in this state to supervise elections,' Doyle told reporters. He again said the move by Van Hollen is part of a national effort by Republican Party leaders to try and raise questions about the voting process - questions that they hope keep some voters from casting ballots.

by Michael A. Leon

We are faced with our own government preventing us from exercising our right to vote. It's anti-American but it's also a fact that Republicans have no respect for the victories of the civil rights movement.

Father Groppi, Dr. King, Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney? Attorney General Van Hollen could not give a damn about these heroes and 10,000s more. In Wisconsin, in this election, Milwaukee is ground zero.

[Special Note: See http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/wioffices for a list of Obama offices.]

Fight back on Election Day against Van Hollen's "election integrity efforts."

If you witness any obstruction or intimidation on Election Day by any of Van Hollen's people, call: 1 866 OUR VOTE and report it, and call Obama's people.

Don't back down and don't take NO for an answer for your right to vote. Fight! Bring a friend. Reach out and bring a neighbor or co-worker.

If you have a cell phone and see Van Hollen's hacks harassing or intimidating a voter, document it discreetly on your cell phone camera, and call 1 866 OUR VOTE right away to get the incident aired and rectified.

Or simply take notes, gather facts and report them, and get the ward number and time of day.

Obama's people have 1,000s of lawyers prepared for Van Hollen's last-minute dirty tricks. And polling places throughout the state are filled with numerous Obama supporters working as election inspectors dedicated to the rule of law and the right to vote.

Find your local Obama headquarters and let them know what is happening, especially in Milwaukee where those uppity blacks insist on voting.

See http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/wioffices for a list of Obama offices.

McCain's only shot at winning Wisconsin is to suppress Milwaukee blacks, and they know this fact well. Fight back!

Competing Views on PA

by folkbum

It's going to be an early night November 4, unless we want to stay up to check the series of tubes for updates on the fate of Ted Stevens.

How do I know? John McCain is betting the farm on Pennsylvania, where polls close at 7 PM our time. At about 7:03 our time, the AP and everyone else is going to call PA for Barack Obama, and we can all start drinking (for one reason or another). The pollster.com average for PA as I write this shows Obama with a 15-point lead.



I've read two theories on why McCain is making PA his last stand. One, from Tim Dickinson, is that McCain is just doing it for show, to "create the appearance that he’s still playing offense." That's not a bad way to look at it--McCain is jiggering the optics to suggest that he's not really toast yet.

But I think that's wrong. I agree with dday, here:

Pennsylvania does not have early voting, and absentee voting is restricted. Unlike Minnesota and Wisconsin, Pennsylvania doesn't have same-day registration. So voting is concentrated on Election Day, and the state GOP is trying to make the election illegitimate [through attacks on ACORN and so forth].

I've written about this over and over again: All the cries of "fraud" that we have seen (note--these are only cries, not evidence of wide-spread voter fraud) are not designed to insure the purity of the election process. They are designed to delegitimize the inevitable Obama victory. McCain can't win states like PA, but he can raise a fuss that his loss was fraudulent. And if McCain loses by less than PA's 21 electoral votes, then Republicans and their media enablers have an excuse for the next four years to pretend that Obama is not the president.

Personally, I think a 20-EV loss would be a miracle for McCain at this point, but Republicans may still be able to construct the fantasy that the election was stolen across multiple states--like Wisconsin. Which is why it is important that we turn this into a rout. You can help, please. Click on the thermometer and contribute to Obama or some of the local Democrats, please.

OMG! ACORN has taken over SCOTUS!!!!!!!

by folkbum

Someone needs to peel back Antonin Scalia's head to make sure he hasn't been replaced by an ACORN-programmed cyborg from the future:

The Supreme Court sided Friday with Ohio's top elections official in a dispute with the state Republican Party over voter registrations.

The justices overruled a federal appeals court that had ordered Ohio's top elections official to do more to help counties verify voter eligibility.

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, faced a deadline of Friday to set up a system to provide local officials with names of newly registered voters whose driver's license numbers or Social Security numbers on voter registration forms don't match records in other government databases.

Ohio Republicans contended the information for counties would help prevent fraud. Brunner said the GOP is trying to disenfranchise voters.

In a brief unsigned opinion, the justices said they were not commenting on whether Ohio is complying with a provision of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 that lays out requirements for verifying voter eligibility.

Instead, they said they were granting Brunner's request because it appears that the law does not allow private entities, like the Ohio GOP, to file suit to enforce the provision of the law at issue.

That sound you hear is a thousand conservative bloggers' heads exploding in unison.

Charlie Sykes: Delusions of Pander

by folkbum

I don't have a job that lets me listen to Charlie Sykes in the mornings. I'm not sure, anyway, that after teaching one bunch of adolescents all day I would want to listen to another on the radio anyhow.

But I am glad there are others out there who can keep an ear on Sykes. The Brawler, for example, caught Sykes saying that he believes Democratic "vote fraud" will be the deciding factor in the November election.

(Pause for laughter.)

All of this is hooey, of course; the whinging about ACORN and fraud are all designed to do one thing, which is to delegitimize a Barack Obama presidency. Charlie thinks he can convince himself, and enough of his listeners, that but for the likes of ACORN and "voters" named "Mickey Mouse," John McCain would be our next president--and that would make anything Obama says or does illegitimate despite what may look like a landslide and a mandate.

Has Charlie seen this? That's pollster.com, not ACORN, showing (as I type this) a nine-point composite lead in the polls for Barack Obama. Obama's at a majority, 51.2%, meaning if every undecided voter broke for John McCain in the next two weeks, McCain would still lose by a greater margin that Al Gore and John Kerry combined. pollster.com also estimates that Obama has 320 safe electoral votes right now, 50 more than needed to win the presidency.

How on earth does Charlie Sykes think that ACORN is skewing the polls? Could he really believe that every media organization on the planet is being played by Democratic fraudsters to show an overwhelming Obama lead? Does he think that the polls today are somehow being gamed as cover for the massive fraud that we have planned to execute on election day?

Or, more likely, is he just delusional? Maybe bitter and angry over the fact that this country has clearly left him behind? That Wisconsin will vote more strongly for Obama than for Gore or Kerry?

My vote is the latter--Charlie Sykes is losing it. He is, as a famous man once said, rejecting reality and substituting his own. The polls are meaningless. The truth is meaningless.

Well, here's news for you, Charlie: If that's the way you feel, you're the one who's meaningless.

Blind squirrels don't find ACORNs this time, either

by folkbum

The right is in high dudgeon again because of ACORN, the community organizers who, as part of their mission, identify non-voters and register them so that those traditionally voiceless in the electoral process might find a voice--the vote being guaranteed in the Constitution and whatnot.

Most recently, there's the raid of an ACORN office in Nevada by state officials looking for evidence of fraud. Problem is, ACORN had been sending state officials evidence of fraud--no search warrant needed!--for months and officials ignored it:

As part of our nonpartisan voter registration program, we have reviewed all the applications submitted by our canvassers. When we have identified suspicious applications, we have separated them out and flagged them for election officials. We have zero tolerance for fraudulent registrations. We immediately dismiss employees we suspect of submitting fraudulent registrations.

For the past 10 months, any time ACORN has identified a potentially fraudulent application, we turn that application into election officials separately and offer to provide election officials with the information they would need to pursue an investigation or prosecution of the individual.

Election officials routinely ignored this information and failed to act. In early July, ACORN asked to meet with election officials to express our concerns that they were not acting on information ACORN had presented to them. ACORN met with Clark County elections officials and a representative of the Secretary of State on July 17th. ACORN pleaded with them to take our concerns about fraudulent applications seriously. One week later, elections officials asked us to provide them with a second copy of what we had previously provided to them. ACORN responded by giving election officials copies of 46 "problem application packages," which involved 33 former canvassers.

On September 23, ACORN had received a subpoena dated September 19th requesting information on 15 employees, all of whom had been included in the packages we had previously submitted to election officials. ACORN provided our personnel records on these 15 employees on September 29.

Got that? Nevada officials have known for months that some ACORN workers had been turning in forms for, to name one example, the Dallas Cowboys. Nevada officials knew this because ACORN told them about it. And yet the Secretary of State there (a Democrat, no less) waited until a month before the election to stage a high profile media stunt and to accuse ACORN of engaging in fraud when, in reality, it was ACORN who tried to stop the fraud in the first place.

More locally, we have Republicans freaking out that ACORN used former felons in its voter registration drives, despite a ruling by the Government Accountability Board in April that such people were ineligible to act as registrars. Did you hear about that ruling in April? Neither did I, and neither, apparently, did the City of Milwaukee, whose job it was to deputize the registrars. They were going by the text of the law which says (.pdf) that "[a] qualified elector of the state may apply to any municipal clerk or board of election commissioners to be appointed as a special registration deputy for the purpose of registering electors of the municipality prior to the close of registration" (6.26(2)a). Since former felons may vote in this state (they are "qualified electors"), the statute clearly permits former felons to be special registration deputies, something the GAB apparently changed without legislative approval and without making sure that every municipality--like Milwaukee--knew.

So once again, ACORN is trying to follow the law both here and in Nevada, and trying to cooperate and coordinate with state and local officials to make sure the law is being followed and that anyone breaking the law is punished for doing so. And yet the right sees ACORN as the bad guys. I don't understand why; it seems like merely attempting to give minorities and the poor a greater say in the election is enough to earn a group like ACORN constant and undeserved scorn.

Many Risked Lives for Voting Rights

by Michael A. Leon

As the GOP and its allies disparage and even ridicule efforts to fight voter disenfranchisement efforts led by our own Attorney General, it's worth honoring those who risked their lives for seeing voting rights won for all Americans.

Below is a video of Madisonian Jim Zwerg, a Freedom Rider in 1961, giving an interview from his hospital bed after he was beaten in a Montgomery, Alabama bus terminal.

People like rightwing blogger Jim Wigderson (I won't link to the ignoramus) think this sort of civil rights stuff is funny, the fare of those Madison liberals. Many know better.

What goes on the minds of those hostile to seeing that as many people as possible get to cast their vote? I don't even want to know.

I do know that fools like Wigderson need to acquaint themselves of recent American civil rights history though I'm not sure it would engender an appreciation for those who often gave their lives to make the American dream a living reality for all, including blacks and even those who might not have a drivers license.

ACORN

by folkbum

If you read the right-wing blogs or listen to talk radio, I'm sorry you have to put up with that. Also, you probably heard about this story, that the "activitst" community organizing group ACORN noticed that a dozen or so of the 220 people it hired to register voters in Milwaukee were turning in voter registration cards that were either incomplete in some way or outright phony:

Criminal investigations could be launched against at least six voter registration workers who tried to add dead, imprisoned or imaginary people to the voter rolls, according to the Milwaukee Election Commission and the organization that employed them.

Officials are reviewing some 200 to 300 fraudulent voter registration cards, Sue Edman, the commission’s executive director, said Wednesday.

And even though the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now caught the fraud and reported it before the cards were turned in, the incident revived a four-year-old partisan debate over the integrity of Wisconsin’s voter registration process, as political groups step up efforts to sign up voters for the Nov. 4 presidential election. [. . .] ACORN found the problems and fired a dozen workers, Castore said. Five of them appeared to be working together, she added.

But under state law, all of the voter registration cards collected had to be turned in to the election commission, even if they were clearly fraudulent or incomplete, Edman said. ACORN sent in all the cards its workers had submitted, but flagged the fraudulent or incomplete ones.

Edman said she has referred six individuals to the Milwaukee County district attorney’s office for investigation. More could be referred within the next few days, after the commission staff finishes its review of the registration cards, she said.

Castore said her group would cooperate fully with any official investigation. A prosecutor in the district attorney’s white-collar crime unit did not return a call seeking comment.

Another 1,500 to 2,000 voter registration cards were incomplete, and ACORN is trying to help the commission staff fill in the blanks, Castore said.

The righties, predictably, flipped out. It was "attempted voter fraud," or "just a little vote fraud." "ACORN [is] making it up again," one said. One referred to ACORN's "fraudulent techniques," one called ACORN "America's favorite voter fraud organization," and another implied that ACORN was "out there [. . .] actively trying to undermine the system." Flipping out, I tell you.

But that's because all those people apparently can't read. I'll quote some of that story again, this time with bold print:

Criminal investigations could be launched against at least six voter registration workers who tried to add dead, imprisoned or imaginary people to the voter rolls, according to the Milwaukee Election Commission and the organization that employed them. [. . . T]he Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now caught the fraud and reported it before the cards were turned in [. . .]. ACORN found the problems and fired a dozen workers [. . .]. ACORN sent in all the cards its workers had submitted, but flagged the fraudulent or incomplete ones. Castore said her group would cooperate fully with any official investigation. [. . .]

Another 1,500 to 2,000 voter registration cards were incomplete, and ACORN is trying to help the commission staff fill in the blanks, Castore said.

Got that? ACORN identified their own workers breaking the law and fired them. ACORN turned over the evidence of the lawbreaking to the city officials. ACORN is trying to help city officials straighten out the mess, and ACORN will cooperate with the criminal investigation that rightly will follow.

(UPDATE: To make it more clear, here is the AP article on the story: "ACORN [. . .] employees reviewed forms turned in by canvassers before submitting them to the commission, Castore said. She said about 96 percent of the forms turned out to be legitimate. 'If there was any suspicion of either fraudulent activity or just really sloppy work, we terminated them, and we informed the elections commission,' Castore said. 'We were catching it.' [Milwaukee election commissioner Sue] Edman agreed the group uncovered most of the problems.")

But who are the rightie-tighties blaming for all of this? ACORN, of course--and many of them are not mincing their words at all in accusing the group of purposely perpetrating fraud. That's not only factually inaccurate, it's probably actionable libel. Too bad they couldn't bother to read what actually happened to see that ACORN here is doing the right thing, the legal thing, the ethical thing. Those who lie about what ACORN is doing are the ones who are frauds.

Vote fraud investigation costs $700,000 of our tax money per fraudulent vote uncovered

by folkbum

Outsourcing the story to Josh Marshall:

Two years ago Texas' Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott declared war on what he claimed was rampant vote fraud in Texas. He set up a special vote fraud unit and got a $1.4 million grant from the feds for the work.

Now, two years on, courtesy of the Dallas Morning News, we have a run-down of what Abbot came up with--26 cases.

The details tell the story: All 26 cases involved Democrats, and almost [all] were either blacks or Hispanics.

Of the 26, 8 appear to have been genuine cases of fraud, two of which were cases of people actually casting fraudulent ballots, as opposed to bogus registrations.

Republican Attorney General in a Republican state with stricter voting laws than Wisconsin using $1.4m in federal tax money found, of the millions of ballots cast in the last two years, two--two!--that were bogus. TWO. And yet I am willing to bet that the comments thread below fills up with conservatives from across Badgerland averring with no evidence whatsoever that vote fraud is The Most Serious Issue Ever and that We Must Have Voter ID Laws NOW.

It makes my head hurt just thinking about it.

US Supreme Court Finally Cracks Down on Boss Tweed

by folkbum

And it's about damn time, I say! Boss Tweed's reign of terror has ruined New York City politics for far too long:

States can require voters to produce photo identification, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, upholding a Republican-inspired law that Democrats say will keep some poor, older and minority voters from casting ballots. [. . .]

Several critics pointed to a footnote in [Justice] Stevens' opinion to show how far back he went — 140 years — to describe the corrosive effects of widespread fraud at polling places, a reference to Boss Tweed's influence in New York's municipal elections in 1868.

Unfortunately, at the same time as the high court clamped down on Tamany Hall, it found a solution to a problem that just does not exist. As I have documented time and time again here (just read down), there is a concerted, genuine, partisan effort by Republicans going on across the country to erect barriers to voting among groups that traditionally vote for Democrats. In state after state, Republicans have stood in legislative chambers, in front of homes, behind podia, anywhere they could find room to stand, really, and repeated the same lies: In-person voter fraud is real, rampant, and destroying the integrity of our elections.

It's the same. Damn. Speech. Everywhere across the country. The Republicans hold retreats and pass around talking points for how to get it done. And it has nothing--nothing--to do with protecting the vote. (If it did, the most common form of voter fraud, which is fraud by absentee ballot, would be at the top of the priority list. It is not--most absentee voters tend to vote Republican.)

The number of contemporary cases of in-person voter fraud the law's supporters were able to present to the court? One. Out of hundreds of millions of votes cast in the last couple of decades. One.

Yet SCOTUS validates the lies. Welcome to John Roberts's America.

Case in point

by folkbum

Number of predictions by wingnut hacks that the Wisconsin Democratic presidential primary would riddled with voter fraud: Countless
Number of complaints by the Democratic campaigns of vote fraud: Zero

The Fallacy Behind Voter ID

by capper

It's another election year, and the calls for voter ID have been ringing out like never before. This din has only increased when the Special Investigations Unit of the Milwaukee Police Department came out with a report that basically said that they couldn't find any specific cases of fraud, but that there still should be something done about it. For further examination of this report, I would suggest going to look at Xoff's analysis, as well as that of the mighty Brawler. The Brawler takes another look at it and finds that not even the Milwaukee Police Department refuses to take an official stand on the report that it's own members created, raising even more suspicions about the validity of said report.

Now, I haven't chimed in on this subject, since the notable and worthy gentlemen, among many others, have already done a far better job of covering the report than I could. But there is something that bothers me.

The right claim that voter fraud is rampant and that the only way to stop it is through voter ID. But I recalled that good old grandpa capper, when he was alive, voted via absentee ballot. They would mail him the ballot, and like the wise old man he was, he would dutifully check off his choices (usually democratic, hence the wisdom) and I would sign off on it as a witness, and write down my address.

This always struck me as odd, since there was no way for them to readily verify who grandpa was, or even who I was. (Even more so for me, as that I am unlisted and unpublished.) It always seemed to me that it would be very easy to commit fraud, either by faking signatures, or by someone tricking or coercing someone to sign off on the ballot, even though they didn't do the voting.

So I poked around a little and found this article, written by Garrett Epps. Epps covers the issue of voter ID in general and gives us some history, including the fact that voter fraud is not a recent crisis, as those on the right would have us believe, but actually has been around for generations:

Folklore pervades the history of voter fraud in the United States. During the era of "live voice" voting, when voters shouted their choices in front of their neighbors, there was rampant bribery, intimidation, miscounting and voter impersonation. Roving gangs of ringers, plied with whiskey and $2 bills, voted in multiple locations under false names.

During the Gilded Age and the Progressive era, as Alex Keyssar documents in his monumental study The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, the idea of the fraudulent voter coincided with social anxiety among the "better sort" about the political influence of the uneducated and recent immigrants. Whether or not they were legally entitled to vote, their votes were seen almost as fraudulent per se. In the turn-of-the-century South, voter restriction was a keystone of the burgeoning segregated system. "Voter fraud" meant votes cast by black and poor white voters. In the West, fraud meant voting by Native Americans.

Epps also succinctly agreed with my own suspicions regarding the real area of voter fraud:

No one on either side of the issue disputes that voter fraud occurs. But study after study has made clear that documented fraud is almost exclusively confined to absentee ballots. Absentee voting is one area where Republicans have traditionally out-organized Democrats; the new voter ID laws make almost no reforms to the absentee-vote system.

The voter-fraud argument comes down to a kind of duel over common sense. Voter ID proponents dismiss the lack of evidence; it stands to reason, they say, that if requirements are not strict, ineligible people will vote. Opponents counter that if it's hard to vote, some legal voters won't go to the polls. Whose votes matter? In recent years, conservative groups have insisted that precedence should go to "legitimate" voters, the kind of people who have ready access to ID. After all, Posner notes, "try flying, or even entering a tall building such as the courthouse in which we sit, without one." The roughly 18 percent of Americans who have never flown on a commercial airline are less worthy of concern.

Even conservative writers like John Fund at the Wall Street Journal note that there is a high potential for fraud with absentee ballots:

It's certainly true that voters like no-excuses absentee voting for its convenience. "Forcing voters to go to the polls to cast their ballots is an antiquated, outdated, absurd practice," says Oren Spiegler, a Pennsylvania voter. But it comes at a price. Simply put, absentee voting makes it easier to commit election fraud, because the ballots are cast outside the supervision of election officials. "By loosening up the restrictions on absentee voting they have opened up more chances for fraud," Damon Stone, a former West Virginia election fraud investigator, told the New York Times.

It's so easy to cheat you'd be surprised who's been caught at it. In 1998, former congressman Austin Murphy of Pennsylvania, a Democrat, was convicted of absentee-ballot fraud in a nursing home, where residents' failing mental capacities make them an easy mark. "In this area there's a pattern of nursing home administrators frequently forging ballots under residents' names," Sean Cavanagh, a former Democratic county supervisor from the area, told me. He says that many nursing home owners rely on regular "bounties" from candidates whom they allow to enter their facilities and harvest votes.

Absentee voting also corrupts the secret ballot. Because an absentee ballot is "potentially available for anyone to see, the perpetrator of coercion can ensure it is cast 'properly,' unlike a polling place, where a voter can promise he will vote one way but then go behind the privacy curtain and vote his conscience," notes John Fortier, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, in his new book, Absentee and Early Voting.

If the right is so genuinely concerned about voter fraud, why are they consistently demanding an expensive, immoral and unconstitutional version of a poll tax, instead of going after the area where the highest level of voter fraud is committed? Oh yeah, because of which side usually votes which way. But there's no effort to disenfranchise voters--yeah, right.

The Rorschach Reports

by folkbum

The last couple of days have seen two "big" reports released that at the same time tell us nothing we didn't already know and provide all sides with new stores of ammunition. I doubt anyone's mind changed about anything as they read these reports; their reactions almost certainly reflect what they already believe rather than anything about the reports themselves. They become mirrors, or Rorschach tests--what people say about the reports tells us more about those commenting than about the content of the reports.

The first is the report out on the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, or the Voucher Program, as it's usually called. The report notes that comparable samples of students from the Milwaukee Public Schools and from voucher schools perform about the same. There's one reaction from people who dislike the voucher program, such as this conservative MPS teacher who, like me, has seen the effects of these schools on MPS first-hand. He writes,

So the kids are not doing better, but you are hurting the big schools on a number of factors. Bigger schools have more money and therefore have more programs and more opportunity. You have all these kids going to small schools all over Milwaukee with the bare minimum. And obviously they are not learning more. Cut cut cut cut cut is what happens all over MPS, so kids can leave and parents can pretend their kids are getting a better education.

On the other hand, you get a predictable reaction from people who support the voucher program; Owen Robinson comments, "So… same performance for a fraction of the cost of MPS. Sign me up." (We've talked before about how specious the doing-more-with-less argument is.)

A third predictable reaction was Mayor Tom Barrett's jumping all over the reports notes about the funding flaw. Barrett claims the flaw costs Milwaukee taxpayers $47 million extra this year. I think that number may be high; apparently, the mayor is basing the figure on the researcher's belief that perhaps 90% of the students currently taking a voucher would be in MPS without the program. That number seems high to me based on recent data from the Public Policy Forum. I wrote about the 2006-2007 PPF report here, and noted that almost 60% of the new voucher users that year were not new to the schools the attended; i.e., they were students who would be in private schools regardless of voucher availability. The 2007-2008 report confirms this trend, noting that this year 44% of new voucher students were already enrolled in voucher schools before joining the program. (I meant to write more about this when the PPF report came out earlier this month, but I did not; you can hear an enlightening interview with Anneliese Dickman of the PPF on "Lake Effect.") Barrett still has a point; whether Milwaukeeans are being screwed out of $47 million or $24 million, we're still getting screwed.

The second report was the long-awaited Milwaukee Police Department investigation into the 2004 election in Milwaukee and allegations of "vote fraud." The report confirms what everybody already knew--the Milwaukee Election Commission in 2004 dropped a massive turd of a mess. Sloppy record keeping and incompetent (or willfully blind-eye-turning) poll records cast doubt over the whole affair and likely allowed a few bad seeds--felons or out-of-state ACORN volunteers--to cast votes illegally. The number of bad votes that could have been prevented by a photo ID law seems minimal, and the report reaffirms US Attorney Steven Biskupic's previous assertion that there were no organized attempts at fraud.

But a quick tour around the blogs this morning will show you, again, that those commenting have had their previously-held views firmly reinforced by the release of this report. Liberals and liberals like Bill Christofferson and the Brawler point out--rightly so, I think (I'm not above being a part of the Rorschach crowd)--that requiring an ID at the polls would solve virtually none of the problems in the report and likely cause more disenfranchisement than bad votes it would prevent. Conservatives see justification for such draconian measures.

To an extent, I think these reports encourage the Rorschach response in their refusal or inability to take any kind of a firm stand. The voucher report is very cautious about how this is the first year and we can't make any judgments yet. The voting report does nothing but identify what we already knew about the Election Commission three years ago--and much of that has changed since with the installation of a new boss and a crackdown on sloppiness. At least Biskupic took a stand on vote fraud, saying in the face of right-wing pressure that there was no organized fraud--but, then again, that almost got him fired. Maybe there's something to that . . .

Content-Free, Self-Amusement Blog Alliance

by folkbum

Is there a single sentence in this post that has even an ounce of truth in it?