Thursday, August 23, 2007

The Very Forgetful Michael Zore

Double voter Donovan Riley, disgraced Democrat candidate for the Wisconsin state Senate, has company.

Another Wisconsin man has been convicted of voting twice in the same election.

Both claimed forgetfulness. In both cases, the jury didn't buy it.

From The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Sure, Michael Zore told police, he'd voted twice in last November's election, using the city hall polling stations of two different Milwaukee County suburbs in the space of six hours.

The evidence against him included him signing up to vote using a false address in West Allis, after he'd already voted in Wauwatosa.

But Zore, 44, told a jury Wednesday there was a good reason he shouldn't be convicted of felony counts of double voting and giving a poll worker false information:

He forgot.

This guy didn't just vote twice. He registered to vote using a false address.

We're supposed to believe that Zore is so forgetful that he forgot his address and made one up?

That's not forgetfulness. That's fraud.


...[Zore's lawyer Raymond M.] Clark's "stress defense" claimed Zore was so tense - from his sister's death a week before, from the garnishment of his wages to pay back taxes, from his divorce a year before, and from the cancellation of a master's degree class on election day - that when he found himself, after an errand, in West Allis across the street from City Hall, he forgot he'd already voted.

No way.

If Zore was so tense and stressed out, why would he even concern himself with voting at all?

If the man was really so distracted by his troubles, there is no way that he would have bothered to vote.

And if you buy that he forgot he had already voted that day, it's impossible to buy that stress caused him to fabricate an address in order to vote again.

Notice Zore had a master's degree class cancelled?

What sort of master's? The man supposedly doesn't remember his address. Not the brightest bulb.

...[Assistant District Attorney Bruce] Landgraf derided both a psychological assessment that indicated Zore was liable to forget things - a tendency stress can exacerbate - and what Landgraf said was an ever-growing set of reasons Zore claimed he was stressed.

...Landgraf said Zore would have had to be "in something of a fugue state . . . with his own personal reality" to forget that he'd voted in the space of a few hours.

A psychologist's assessment, done as part of Zore's defense efforts, hadn't noted that Zore was disassociated with reality, Landgraf said.

"He's as sane as you or I," the prosecutor said.

We're talking about voting here.

Isn't it a bit odd to be arguing that Zore was so out of it that he didn't have knowledge of what he had done only six hours earlier in the day?

How could he be capable of remembering the candidates or anything about them?

His attorney was claiming that Zore was voting while mentally incompetent, so impaired that he registered to vote using a false address.

Not exactly a model informed voter.

In Zore's defense, Clark tried to convince the jury they couldn't read intent into the actions of a man whom friends called forgetful and who was stressed by both his life's woes and a $22,000 income, which, Clark said, was low enough that "it generates stress" for Zore.

So low income can generate so much stress that it causes one to vote twice?

That "stress defense" is handy. Why not use it to marry twice? It could be used as justification for forgetting to follow the speed limit or feed a parking meter or anything. Yes, very convenient.

"I don't make much money so I can't be held accountable for what I do. Too stressed."

I don't think so.

The jury got it right.

__________________________

Zore's undoing: SVRS

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