Jim Witkowiak and Voter Fraud

It's a simple question: Do we care about the integrity of our elections?

The simple answer depends on whether or not you or the candidates you support benefit from voter fraud.

Very sad.

Patrick McIlheran writes:

On the same day that state elections regulators were deciding that it would lead to trouble if a candidate could describe herself as "NOT the 'whiteman's bitch,' " a Milwaukee alderman was explaining in another case some real electoral dangers.

Ald. Jim Witkowiak dropped by the Government Accountability Board to share some thoughts about vote fraud since, he said, he saw it up close.

Witkowiak got beat in 2000 by a scant 17 votes. He said he'd heard of busloads of people "who couldn't even say their names" registering with no more identification than being vouched for by a companion. He got hold of the names of the new voters, he said, and "found close to 200 people that didn't exist."

Not that it helped. As ballots are secret, disqualified votes are chosen randomly. Witkowiak conceded.

He won back the seat in 2004, and in 2008, he took no chances. After winning the primary, he sought and got the names of the roughly 400 fresh-registered voters, "because I want to meet all these people." He mailed them literature introducing himself.

About 80 postcards came back as undeliverable, Witkowiak said. So he and a helper, a retired cop, hit the pavement. There were a few address problems, he said, but 75 of the newly registered voters couldn't be found. Never heard of that person, said those living at some addresses. No such house. No such address.

"Election fraud is alive and well," Witkowiak said. "It's working."

Back in 2008, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett vowed, "We will continue to make the necessary improvements so that citizens of Milwaukee can be confident in their elections."

What a load!

Barrett made a fool of himself years ago when he insisted that Milwaukee's elections were free of corruption. He demanded to be given just one name of an individual involved in voter fraud. Of course, since Barrett put out that challenge, there have been many names.

McIlheran concludes:

...Wisconsin gained its reputation for clean politics by being intolerant of corruption. This was the gift of the Milwaukee Socialists a century ago: Not that they were less corrupt than predecessors but that they brooked no corruption. This is why it's dangerous to dismiss vote fraud as inconsequentially rare. It ruins faith and excuses cheaters.

"I honest to God think that some people don't want to believe that it exists," Witkowiak, who belongs to no party, told me. If anything, his testimony knocks the wind out of the ability to be so deliberately blind.

The blindness is deliberate. They know voter fraud exists. They know they could find plenty of evidence if they looked. That's what's so disturbing and so frustrating. It's disgraceful. It's unforgivable.

"I can't see! I can't see!"
"What's the matter?"
"I got my eyes closed."