SwiftVets.com

[shawa]

From: Boots and Sabers
Saturday, January 15, 2005

Milwaukee Vote Fraud - part 2
It occurs to me that some people may seek to discount the issue regarding ballots in Milwaukee as a GOP overreaction. Please allow me to explain why the issue is important and real.

In Wisconsin, people can register at the polls on election day. So if I move to a new city and fail to register prior to the election, I can show up on the day of the election, show proof of residence, fill out the registration form, and vote. When this happens, the municipality should then immediately send me a notification at my stated address to verify the address and add me to the list of registered voters.

The incompetent Executive Director of the Milwaukee Election Commission, Lisa Artison, failed to do her duty and mail out the confirmations until a full two months after the election. This is not the first time that she has shown rank incompetence. It is up to Mayor Barrett, who appointed her, to decide if it will be the last.

In Milwaukee, about 75,000 people went through the process of registering at the polls in the November election. Got that? 75,000 people in a city of 600,000 were not registered to vote on the day of the election, so they registered at the the polls. That, in and of itself, seems to be a remarkable number to me, but I have not compared it to other municipalities.

Of those 75,000 registrations, a full 13% of them, or about 10,000 registrations, are illegible. Presumably the identity of the registrant was checked on election day, but since the registration can’t be read, there is no way to verify the registration. Off of the bat, we have 10,000 votes that were cast in Milwaukee for voters whose existence can’t be verified.

Of the remaining 65,000 registrations for which confirmation cards have finally been sent, the Elections Commission says to expect that a full third of them, or about 22,000, will be returned undeliverable. This means that the address was incorrectly written or outright fictitious. Considering that most people know how to write their own address and the poll worker should have confirmed the address from identification produced at the polls, I would say that the majority of these addresses are just outright fictitious.

We are up to about 32,000 people who voted on election day who should not have.

Of the remaining 43,000 registrants, there will be some who gave a real address, but don’t actually live there. There will also be some who have moved since the election. I would say that we could conservatively estimate that 10% of the remaining registrants - at the minimum - will be invalid. That’s an additional 4,300 people.

All told, it looks like there were a minimum of 36,000 votes cast in the City of Milwaukee for which no voter can be produced.

The election in Wisconsin was decided by 11,384 votes.

In the City of Milwaukee, there were 198, 907 votes cast for Kerry/Edwards and 75,746 votes cast for Bush/Cheney. As you can see, the City of Milwaukee came out strong for Kerry/Edwards.

So what we have is an instance where there were an abnormal number of election day registrations were filed for which the voters can not be verified in a city that voted overwhelming for the Democratic candidate. In addition, the number of voters in question far exceeds the margin of victory of the Democratic candidate.
There is a strong indication that some massive voter fraud took place in Milwaukee. Although it appears that the Dems may have won Wisconsin through fraud, thank goodness it did not change the outcome of the race.

So what can be done?

The truth is that even if Lisa Artison had done her duty and sent out the confirmations on time, the votes would have still been counted. Once the vote is cast, it is anonymous. There is no way for anyone to match a particular vote to a particularly fraudulent voter and remove it. Plus, by the time it was known that the registrations were false, the votes were already counted.

The only thing that we can do is reform our elections so that something like this does not happen again. Here are two reforms that would greatly improve the integrity of our elections:

1) Stop allowing people to register on election day.

It is not hard to register to vote. It takes 5 minutes and you can do it by mail if you choose. There is no reason that a person can’t register to vote prior to an election except for sheer laziness. Even if you move into a new district the day of an election, you have not yet established residence and could vote in your old district (absentee, if necessary).

2) Require proof of identity at the polls.

This reform is just plain common sense. If you can’t establish your identity, then you should not be allowed to vote. There are many forms of identity acceptable and I would support free identification cards for those who do not have the wherewithal to obtain one on their own.

Voting is a serious affair that has far-reaching and dramatic consequences. It is long past time that we stop treating it as cavalierly as the decision to use paper or plastic.

UPDATE: After writing this, I found a story in the paper about it that has slightly different numbers. It does not alter the argument or seriousness of the issue. Also, take note how the newspaper begins the story with, “A Republican lawmaker who advocates a voter ID requirement is criticizing...” Did I not tell you that they would try to dismiss the story as a GOP overreaction?
See related posts:
Massive Vote Fraud in Milwaukee
Milwaukee Vote Fraud - Part 3
--------------------------------------------------------

Story from Milwaukee Journal Sentinal
http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/jan05/293225.asp

Lawmaker criticizes voter verification process
Cards could not be sent to addresses of 10,000 who registered at Milwaukee polls on election day

By GREG J. BOROWSKI
gborowski@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Jan. 14, 2005

A Republican lawmaker who advocates a voter ID requirement is criticizing the Milwaukee Election Commission's handling of voters who registered at the polls Nov. 2, saying some 10,000 could not be sent
cards to verify their address.
State Rep. Jeff Stone (R-Greendale) said Friday the number reflects cases where registration cards filled out by voters were illegible or, in some cases, duplicates.
City officials, though, said late Friday there may be other explanations, such as voters who registered at the polls even though they had registered in advance, or filled out cards to update flawed ones they had submitted earlier.
At the center of the issue is a process by which those who register on election day are sent postcards to confirm the address before they are entered onto permanent voting rolls.
By law, Stone said, the process was to begin right after the election, though he says the cards were not sent until Jan. 6. Of the 83,000 or so same-day registrations, a number city officials acknowledge, Stone said he was told only 73,079 cards could be mailed.
That leaves a gap of about 10,000, which he argues is evidence of serious problems.
"The one fail-safe you have on these people is to the addresses on the cards," he said. "We have 10,000 of them that can't be verified."
It is unclear how many of the cards have been returned as undeliverable.
Lisa Artison, executive director of the Election Commission, declined to comment on Stone's claims Friday night, saying she was not in the office and could not respond until Tuesday. City Hall is closed Monday for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
Patrick Curley, chief of staff to Mayor Tom Barrett, said the matter will be sorted out but questioned why Stone issued a news release before asking for more information.
Curley took a similar view of a state Republican news release issued earlier in the day that accused the Election Commission of foot-dragging on an open-records request.
"Putting out a press release is easier than sorting it out," Curley said.
Meanwhile, Citizens for Responsible Government said it will call for an independent outside audit of all election functions, said Chris Kliesmet, a leader of the group.
Barrett recently appointed a task force to review election processes.
That group, which is to hold its first business session Friday, has been criticized for being made up of city employees and officials.
Two staffers in the city comptroller's office, independent from the administration, have been added to the panel.
Artison and the Election Commission have faced major criticism for the Nov. 2 election, which featured massive registration drives and a surge in absentee ballot requests and early voting.

Among the problems: up to 20,000 registration cards that were not processed in time; some people who requested absentee ballots did not receive them before the election; and 238 absentee ballots that were not delivered in time to be counted on election day.
At the city's request, the state later allowed those ballots to be counted.

Nevertheless, a review of the election released this week by the Election Protection Coalition, which had monitors at many polling places, declared poll workers "did a remarkable job." It also said that while many procedural problems existed, there was no indication of fraud.

Mod note: URL converted to hypertext

[srmorton]

It seems to me that if the Dems really cared about the election process
they would agree to a bipartisian bill that would call for uniformity among
the states as to how close to the election voters are allowed to register.
I know that traditionally decisions like this have been left up to the states,
but apparently some states can not be depended upon to conduct their
elections properly.

It is important that, as much as is humanly possible, every vote be
counted in order to have a fair election. It is just as important that
someone who took the time to register by the deadline, went to the
correct polling place, stood patiently in line, and marked his ballot
correctly not have his vote cancelled out by a dead person, a felon,
a person who voted more than once, or an entirely fictitious person
whose address can not be verified.

Even though NC has a Democratic governor and a Democrat-controlled
legislature, we traditionally vote Republican for POTUS and US Senator
(John Edwards being one recent mistake in that category). Even so,
voters had to be registered to vote by the middle of October. Thanks
to a recent change in the law, we do allow provisional ballots, but they
apply only to voters that were registered prior to the deadline. IMO,
allowing people to register on election day or counting provisional
ballots before they can be verified provides the opportunity for fraud
to occur, just as it did in Washington, and, according to this thread, in
Wisconsin. This can and should be stopped!
_________________
Susan R. Morton

[coldwarvet]

Wisconsin went blue by the margin of fraud. Even with the voter fraud for good measure the democratic machine thought they best slash the tires of the republican volunteers that were going to assist with getting people out to vote.

Has anyone heard what happened to the tire slashers?

CWV - Sheboygan, WI
_________________
Defender of the honor of those in harms way keeping us out of harms way.

"Peace is our Profession"
Strategic Air Command - Motto

USAF 75-79 Security Police

[Me#1You#10]

Wisconsin fraud story appears to have legs...

[mtboone]

Gentlemen and Ladies, the ELECTION is over. Why is Wisconsin and Ohio still being talked about on each others sites? Put your efforts to the present and the future.
_________________
Terry Boone PCF 90
Qui Nhon 68-69

[Arty Guy]

These things don't matter for the election just completed, but they matter a great deal for future elections. It is extremely important that elections be conducted in a manner that reflects the reality of legal voting participation. Some parts of the USA, including parts of California where I live, are more closely resembling a banana republic when it comes to the integrity of the elections.

The importance of the story about Wisconsin in particular is that it turns around the argument against the left about who is really cheating.

[srmorton]

This to mtboone - you might ask the Dems that question. They were the
ones that were trying to say that Kerry might have won Ohio were it
not for voter fraud, even though the difference between the two
candidates was well over 100,000. They even went so far as to object
during the certification of the electoral college vote - certainly an exercise
in futility.

What the Dems did to literally steal the election in Washington state is
a matter of public record. This is their MO. The deal with Wisconsin is
that no one from either side objected - even though the margin of victory
was only 11,000 votes - because John Kerry won Wisconsin. Now, it
seems that there was enough fraud in that state to have actually affected
the outcome.

As I said in my previous post in this thread, this type of activity by the
Democratic party must be stopped. If not, they may be able to steal
an election that affects the entire country - either for POTUS (which they
came within a hair's breath of doing in 2000) or a US Senate seat.
_________________
Susan R. Morton

[mtboone]

This to mtboone - you might ask the Dems that question. They were the
ones that were trying to say that Kerry might have won Ohio were it
not for voter fraud, even though the difference between the two
candidates was well over 100,000. They even went so far as to object
during the certification of the electoral college vote - certainly an exercise
in futility.

What the Dems did to literally steal the election in Washington state is
a matter of public record. This

It does not matter, the election in over. Do you or anyone expect the election process to change? The flaws in the process will exiest, but do not sound like the Democrates, Kerry was defeated or was there something else in your agenda? If so, then you have joined a website that is not political, it was to defeat Kerry.
_________________
Terry Boone PCF 90
Qui Nhon 68-69

[Arty Guy]

No election will ever be perfect, but ours can be greatly improved. This whole business of "provisional ballots" is an invitation to voter fraud and needs to be reconsidered. It is not too much to ask citizens to register on time, to attempt to understand the ballots presented to them, and to provide ID when they show up to vote. However, these things are not PC today. The slogan "count every vote" should be modified to "count every vote that is legally cast". Right now we are slipping away from that standard in some parts of the country. I think it is St. Louis where there are more registered voters than the census shows as population legally entitled to vote.

[srmorton]

I would remind mtboone that this portion of the website was created
for "off topic" subjects that had nothing to do with defeating John Kerry
and members are free to post anything that is not offensive or untruthful.

I don't understand why any American, Republican or Democrat,
would not be outraged if any party or group condoned fraud to win an
election, whether it was for POTUS or city council. That is the kind of
thing that happens in third world countries and that almost happened
in the Ukraine last year.

Don't you see that if the Republicans had not gotten their act together
and gotten their voters to the polls, John Kerry WOULD be POTUS?
With a nation as closely divided as ours is, a few thousand votes in
a couple of states would have given him the presidency.

No voter who follows the rules deserves to have his/her vote cancelled
by someone who votes twice or who was not really eligible to vote or
who was a completely fictious person who cast a fraudulent absentee
ballot. What about absentee ballots for the military that were not
mailed on time or were not counted due to the expectation that they
would vote for a certain candidate? I would be just as upset if the
Republicans gave the appearance that they condoned such a thing!
_________________
Susan R. Morton

[margie]

[Me#1You#10]

Update on the Wisconsin story... (emphasis mine)

[coldwarvet]