Mike Sandvick, Voter Fraud, and the Milwaukee Police Department

Thank you, John Fund, for doing what the Milwaukee media are failing to do.

We have to rely on a reporter from the Wall Street Journal to do their work.

Fund reports that local Democrats do not take the issue of voter fraud seriously. His article is a big black eye for Mayor Tom Barrett and Police Chief Ed Flynn.

Milwaukee Puts a Vote-Fraud Cop Out of Business

Last week Mike Sandvick, head of the Milwaukee Police Department's five-man Special Investigative Unit, was told by superiors not to send anyone to polling places on Election Day. He was also told his unit -- which wrote the book on how fraud could subvert the vote in his hometown -- would be disbanded.

"We know what to look for," he told me, "and that scares some people." In disgust, Mr. Sandvick plans to retire. (A police spokeswoman claims the unit isn't being disbanded and that any changes to the unit "aren't significant.")

In February, Mr. Sandvick's unit released a 67-page report on what it called an "illegal organized attempt to influence the outcome of (the 2004) election in the state of Wisconsin" -- a swing state whose last two presidential races were decided by less than 12,000 votes.

The report found that between 4,600 and 5,300 more votes were counted in Milwaukee than the number of voters recorded as having cast ballots. Absentee ballots were cast by people living elsewhere; ineligible felons not only voted but worked at the polls; transient college students cast improper votes; and homeless voters possibly voted more than once.

Much of the problem resulted from Wisconsin's same-day voter law, which allows anyone to show up at the polls, register and then cast a ballot. ID requirements are minimal.

...The investigative unit believed at least 16 workers from the Kerry campaign, and two allied get-out-the-vote groups, "committed felony crimes." But local prosecutors didn't pursue them in part because of a "lack of confidence" in the abysmal record-keeping of the city's Election Commission.

Pat Curley, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett's chief of staff, told me he was very upset by the surprise release of the report. "I don't believe all of the facts are necessarily accurate," he said. Which ones? He only cited the report's interpretation of state policy on homeless voters. He denies the mayor's office had any role in disbanding the unit.

Mr. Sandvick says the problems his unit found in 2004 are "only the tip of the iceberg" of what could happen today. His unit has found out-of-state groups registering their temporary workers, a college dorm with 60 voters who aren't students, and what his unit believes are seven illegal absentee ballots.

When Sandvick's investigative report was released, Tom Barrett claimed, "We will continue to make the necessary improvements so that citizens of Milwaukee can be confident in their elections."

Well. That's a load.

Is disbanding the unit Special Investigative Unit and ordering that none of the officers be sent to polling places today what Barrett considers to be making the "necessary improvements so that citizens of Milwaukee can be confident in their elections"?

I agree with Fund's assessment that local Dems do not take the issue of voter fraud in Milwaukee seriously.

Another possibility is that the Dems take voter fraud very seriously and they're taking measures to allow it to thrive because that's in their self-interest.

In either case, it's a disgrace.

"The time to stop voter fraud is prior to when the questionable ballot is mixed in with all the valid votes," he says. Former police captain Glenn Frankovis agrees: "This issue could be solved if [the police chief] would assign police officers to the polling locations as was customary about 20 years ago." But election monitors are now viewed as "intimidating" in minority precincts and have been withdrawn.

Why is a police presence intimidating?

Any law-abiding person at a polling place to cast a ballot has nothing to fear. Voters have no reason to find election monitors threatening. Having one's vote undermined by fraud is the real threat.

What's unacceptable is creating an environment that encourages fraud, not safeguarding against it.

Mr. Sandvick's report concluded "the one thing that could eliminate a large percentage of the fraud" it found would be elimination of same-day voter registration (which is also in use in seven other states). It also suggested that voters present a photo ID at the polls, a requirement the U.S. Supreme Court declared constitutional this spring.

Sandvick's recommendations run counter to Gov. Jim Doyle's ideas.

Doyle has vetoed a photo ID bill THREE times.

But weeks after the vote fraud report was released, Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold introduced federal legislation to mandate same-day registration in every state. He claimed the system had worked well in Wisconsin and if "we can bring more people into the process, [it] only strengthens our democracy." Democrats tell me his bill is a top priority of the new Congress.

And that's our Russ.

The same-day registration system has worked so well in Wisconsin that he thinks there should be a federal law mandating it in every state.

Feingold is right. It has worked well, if he believes in promoting fraud.

Wisconsin is a haven for voter fraud. Doyle, Barrett, and Dem officials have succeeded in maintaining that environment.

Now we learn that superiors in the Milwaukee Police Department don't want anyone from the Special Investigative Unit at polling places.

Why would we want to have the fraud experts observing?

Right.

Again, I want to thank John Fund for covering this local story and writing about it in the Wall Street Journal.

In addition to revealing that Milwaukee's media are missing in action and failing the public, Fund shows that Democrats are actually fostering conditions to keep Milwaukee's elections vulnerable to fraud.

Fund concludes with this, from Sandvick:

"They say voter fraud isn't a problem," notes Mr. Sandvick, "but after this election it may be all too clear it is." Now that Mr. Sandvick is resigning from the force after a long, honorable career, let's hope someone else is allowed to follow up on the spadework he's done.

After today's election, it may be clear that voter fraud is, in fact, a serious problem. Perhaps even Doyle and Barrett will finally have to acknowledge that.

What's also clear is how poor the reporting is by local media.
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Our Laughable Elections System: An Interview With John Fund

"The bottom line is, I don't say voter suppression doesn't exist. We spent a long battle in the 1960s over that. We have to make sure that we never again have people who try to intimidate or prevent people from voting. There are two civil rights. We have the civil right to make sure people can cast a vote -- we fought a battle in the 1960s for that, the Voting Rights Act. We should preserve and extend those gains. There should be a second civil right -- not to have your vote canceled out by someone who shouldn't be voting, someone who's voting twice or someone who doesn't even exist. You can be disenfranchised just as easily if your vote is canceled out through fraud as if somebody stood in the courthouse door and prevented you from entering a polling place and voting."