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The Democratic Party of Wisconsin Monday bashed Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen’s decision to sue the Government Accountability Board.
DPW Chair Joe Wineke reprimanded Van Hollen for what he called a “politically motivated lawsuit aimed at disenfranchising voters in order to sway the election in favor of his candidate.”
Van Hollen, who also serves as co-chair of Wisconsin’s campaign to elect Republican candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., sued the Government Accountability Board last week demanding they cross-check driver’s licenses with names in the state’s voter registration database.
Rep. Joe Parisi, D-Madison, also spoke at the press conference. “Just because one bureaucratic database doesn’t perfectly match another, that is no reason to disenfranchise up to one million voters,” he said.
“The Van Hollen suit seizes on technical problems and clerical errors to deny Wisconsin citizens the right to vote,” Parisi said.
Van Hollen filed the lawsuit after the Government Accountability Board finished setting up their system on August 6, 2008. However, a federal mandate, the Help America Vote Act, required the system to be in place by Jan. 1, 2008. Van Hollen has demanded the GAB check information of voters registered between the two dates.
Wineke said Van Hollen filed the suit two months prior to the November presidential election in order to stop Democrats from voting, which would help put McCain into office.
The two men also talked about McCain’s recent mass mailing of absentee ballot applications in Wisconsin, some of which they said had the wrong clerk office addresses on the return address.
“Within days of Van Hollen filing the lawsuit, McCain sent out thousands — if not hundreds — of absentee ballot requests with misleading information,” Wineke said. “Their response was ‘no list is perfect.’ The hypocrisy of this is astounding.”
According to Parisi, the mistaken mailing addresses are another ploy to stop Democrats from voting.
“People think they applied when the application didn’t make it to the proper place,” Parisi said. “He is sending these to 75 percent democratic areas and many of these ballots have been addressed to the wrong clerks. Draw your own conclusions from that.”
But Mark Jefferson, chair of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, said he disagrees entirely.
“There are a couple different types of disenfranchisement: One is folks who should be allowed to vote who can’t, which we should all oppose, and the other is the type of person who votes legally and follows the rule yet [their] vote [is] negated by someone who doesn’t follow the rules [and] yet is allowed to vote,” Jefferson said.
According to Jefferson, Van Hollen is doing the right thing by making sure the Government Accountability Board takes the issue of voter checks and voter fraud seriously.
As for the mass mailing by McCain’s campaign, Jefferson said it was “an honest mistake.”
“The absentee voter program has one goal: To get more people to the polls and get more people to vote,” Jefferson said. “There is no interest by the campaign to have postcards go to the wrong municipal courts. There is no possible advantage to the campaign to do that intentionally.”
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Van Hollen needs to resign.
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Diebold, diebold, diebold, diebold……
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Another Republican scam…anyone surprised? At least Democrats are finally standing up to this nonsense
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Why is it a scam to make sure that only those who are actually eligible are able to vote? It makes me mad that fradulent voting has the potential to impact the outcome of the election. It should make every voter mad…those votes could very well cancel yours out, no matter which side you are voting for.
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Vote early, vote often, even if you’re dead
It’s the Chicago Way, and now it’s the best hope that the Obamamaessiah has to wi.
When In Trouble, Cheat
The Democrats are sinking in the polls, but, as always, they have an ace in the hole: voter fraud. Their number one perpetrator of fraud, ACORN, is at it again, this time in Michigan:
Several municipal clerks across the state are reporting fraudulent and duplicate voter registration applications, most of them from a nationwide community activist group working to help low- and moderate-income families. The majority of the problem applications are coming from the group ACORN, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, which has a large voter registration program among its many social service programs. ACORN’s Michigan branch, based in Detroit, has enrolled 200,000 voters statewide in recent months, mostly with the use of paid, part-time employees.
“There appears to be a sizeable number of duplicate and fraudulent applications,” said Kelly Chesney, spokeswoman for the Michigan Secretary of State’s Office. “And it appears to be widespread.”
The U.S. Attorney’s office declined to comment on whether it is investigating voter fraud perpetrated by ACORN. What do you think the chances are that voter fraud would be prosecuted by an Obama Justice Department?
Under the current Democratic Congress, the “community organizers” at ACORN are being lavishly funded by federal dollars. Your tax money, going to support voter fraud: not exactly what the Founders had in mind.
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Re: 1:51pm, It illustrates irony though, doesn’t it? McCain’s campaign is suing Wisconsin because they BELIEVE there is a problem with the voting list (they don’t have any evidence, the only thing they do have evidence for is that the background checking process to CHECK the list is flawed, not the list itself)…..and then in the same week the McCain campaign sends out an informational flier to voters with flawed information on it.
What they know is, the people who are most likely to have problems with their voting information are the young people, the working class and poor, who tend to vote democratic. These groups move around a lot (renters), are unable to get to the poll office to fix these things because they cannot miss jobs/class, and in the case of the poor, they tend to be less educated and are more likely to have typographical or other clerical errors in their information.
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so… …the lawsuit comes early enough and is settled before any disenfranchisement can occur… Seems like a principled effort to make sure the rules are set and followed before the game starts… …would it be better to file a lawsuit after the fact? O.k., everyone but Al Gore answer…
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Wisconsin has same day registration at the polls. You just walk in; register; and vote all at the same time.
This will have minimal effect. But was the McCain mailings an “honest mistake”? Lets have an investigation.