We have election laws.
It's against the law to cast a vote under the name of a dead person.
I think we'd all agree that's a good law.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- A Milwaukee man acknowledged Wednesday he illegally cast an absentee ballot in the name of his late wife, who had hoped to live long enough to vote for Barack Obama.
Jacqueline Wroblewski was a veteran Democratic activist who died of lung cancer in August. Her husband, Stephen Wroblewski, filled out paperwork to obtain and cast an absentee ballot in her name in late October.
“It was her dying wish to cast a ballot in the 2008 presidential election,” according to a criminal complaint charging the 64-year-old Wroblewski with making a false statement to obtain an absentee ballot, a misdemeanor.
“She was such a Democrat and saw there was finally going to be a new administration. She really wanted to live long enough to vote,” Wroblewski said Wednesday in a phone interview. “But I still don’t know why I did it. A grief counselor told me it was just a matter of keeping her close to me and not letting go.”
I have sympathy for Wroblewski on the loss of his beloved wife, but his grief is no excuse for doing something like this.
...Wroblewski said his wife, who often volunteered as a poll worker, would have been appalled had she known he planned to vote under her name since she “was a stickler for the rules.” That’s why he sees some irony in the strange confluence of events that ended up with him getting caught and charged, he said.
...He said he became nervous after mailing his wife’s ballot but thought the chances of getting caught were slim. But a volunteer poll worker who was processing absentee ballots in Milwaukee the night of the election happened to be a family friend.
“Out of 35,000 ballots, she pulls that one and blurts out that she knew my wife and that she was dead,” Wroblewski said. “That was my wife from the grave saying, ’Look what you did, you stupid ass.”’
That is incredible that Wroblewski's ballot was caught as being fraudulent.
...Wroblewski turned himself in to the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s office through his attorney the day after the election after reading in the newspaper that his wife’s ballot was being challenged. The office charged him last month and released a copy of the complaint Wednesday.
Assistant Milwaukee County District Attorney Bruce Landgraf defended the decision to charge Wroblewski. His office previously declined to charge a Milwaukee woman who turned herself on Election Day after casting two absentee ballots.
“Mr. Wroblewski committed a series of acts that were designed to have the effect of voting twice in the election,” Landgraf said. “He forged his wife’s signature. He lied about the fact that she was still alive. He stole her identity, if you will.”
I think that anyone who uses a dead person's identity to cast a fraudulent ballot should be charged.
Obviously, Wroblewski is taking responsibility for his behavior. That's good, but I don't think he should be let off the hook.
There were so many points where Wroblewski should have realized that what he was doing was wrong-- when he thought of the idea of casting a vote in his wife's name, when he applied for the absentee ballot, when he received the ballot, when he filled out the ballot, when he forged his wife's signature on the ballot, when he mailed the ballot.
He had many opportunities to grasp that his grief was getting the best of him and snap out of it.
Whatever the reason, whatever the degree of remorse, we simply cannot allow people to mess with the integrity of our elections.
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UPDATE: Video, from FOX 6
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