Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Editorial Board and Voter Fraud

This certainly wasn't unexpected.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Editorial Board declares that the "Report of the Investigation into the November 2, 2004 General Election in Milwaukee" is "A case not made."

A Milwaukee police investigation of a badly managed general election in 2004 describes a litany of, well, bad management.

This is old news. The Journal Sentinel has reported extensively on this, and, shortly after the 2004 election, a city task force noted many of the same problems.

But here's what you should consider if you agree with the report's recommendations to eliminate same-day registration and create a voter ID requirement. The city and the state have had at least two major elections since 2004. There was the 2006 November election and the state primary election earlier this month. Both had good turnouts, and both went swimmingly.

"No significant issues" arose, says Kevin Kennedy, legal director of the state Government Accountability Board.

The reasons: The database the City of Milwaukee used in 2004 was independent of a statewide voter database. It is no longer.

Also, as both Kennedy and Mayor Tom Barrett note, much more training has occurred for those who work the polls. The city, Barrett says, has increased the Elections Commission budget by $600,000 over the past 2 1/2 years.

This new report specifically points to "the inability of election inspectors to check the eligibility of voters" and "in other cases, the reluctance of election inspectors to check the eligibility of a voter . . . on the day of the election."

It then recommends eliminating same-day registration, and, if that doesn't occur, requiring "the presentation of a government-issued identification card." Almost as an afterthought, the report recommends, "in the absence of any substantive change," that election inspectors be given "adequate training and resources" to do their jobs well.

Fortunately, cooler heads already moved that final and best recommendation to the front of the line a while ago. They did so because, as the report seems to document, true incidences of voter fraud were few. Simply, they do not warrant disenfranchising those eligible voters who might have difficulty securing the documents needed for government ID. And the statewide voter registration system has eliminated many of the bad records at the root of the problem.

How does the Board define "true incidences of voter fraud"?

I don't think the report reveals that cases of voter fraud were few.

How does the Board define "few"?

The editorial is nothing but spin to prop up the Democrat position against a photo ID requirement.

The Board attempts to gloss over the soiled election results of November 2, 2004, by citing "bad management."

According to the Editorial Board, those management problems are history, because now elections in Milwaukee are going "swimmingly."

I don't know how the Board can state with certitude that the election of 2006 and the February 19, 2008 primary were clean.

As long as there is same day on-site registration and no photo ID requirement, there is no way one can know that. The potential for fraud is there.

Furthermore, Wisconsin's statewide voter registration system has not been a panacea for the management problems.

The LEGISLATIVE AUDIT BUREAU report from November 2007, "An Evaluation: Compliance with Election Laws," reveals things aren't going along as "swimmingly" as the JS Editorial Board asserts.

From the report:

The federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 requires all states to have a centralized statewide voter registration system. To identify individuals who are ineligible to vote, the Elections Board planned to match data in the system with data maintained by the departments of Corrections (DOC), Health and Family Services (DHFS), and Transportation (DOT).

However, electronic matching failed for the November 2006 general election and the spring 2007 election. As a result, the Elections Board took other action to identify ineligible individuals. For example, it provided municipal clerks with paper lists of 35,013 individuals who were ineligible to vote in November 2006 because they were serving felony sentences, including probation or parole.

We found that 16 municipal clerks we contacted did not use the lists consistently. We also found that the lists included 1,537 individuals whose sentences ended before Election Day and who were likely eligible to vote.

Elections Board officials now believe that the data matching will not work during Wisconsin’s presidential primary in February 2008. The Elections Board is contemplating legal action against the vendor that developed the $22.7 million statewide voter registration system.

Municipal clerks we contacted noted problems with the statewide voter registration system’s ability to process absentee ballots and suspend voter registrations. Close scrutiny is warranted because of these implementation difficulties and the Elections Board’s dispute with the vendor.

The Elections Board mails address verification cards to verify the accuracy of addresses provided by individuals registering to vote by certain methods, such as on Election Day. Undeliverable cards are returned by the postal service to municipal clerks, who are responsible for reviewing them and determining whether to designate individuals as ineligible to vote. We followed up on concerns in our 2005 audit, which found that cards were not consistently used as required to verify residency or investigate improper registrations.

In October 2006, the Elections Board mailed 106,620 cards to registered voters. We reviewed 874 cards returned to nine municipal clerks and found that the clerks had received them too late for review before the November 2006 general election.

Right. Swimmingly.

The JS Editorial Board echoes Tom Barrett's assertion that the "bad management" problems have been resolved thanks to improved training.

About that training...

The Elections Board had not yet promulgated the administrative rules as of August 2007 but indicated that it is working to do so. In addition, it has trained municipal clerks in election procedures since August 2007, although officials were unable to provide information indicating the number of clerks who have completed the training.

We questioned 16 municipal clerks about the usefulness of training they received from the Elections Board on using the statewide voter registration system. Three of the 16 municipal clerks rely on their county clerks to manage the statewide voter registration system and, therefore, did not attend the training; 7 indicated they were adequately trained, and 6 indicated they were not.

Not good.

The LAB report is 103 pages.

I suggest that the Editorial Board read the full report here.

Back to "A case not made"--

Voter ID might catch that isolated individual intent on casting more than one vote, but it could bar others from voting. Eliminating same-day registration might make things easier, but the likely trade-off is fewer people voting.

Can it get better? Certainly. But let's concentrate on fixing the system rather than devising unfair or self-defeating work-arounds.

Translation: We are going to continue to write lame editorials to assist the Democrats' efforts to ensure that Wisconsin remains a land of opportunity when it comes to voter fraud.