H 23°, L 4° | Tomorrow: 
H 21°, L 6°Last Thursday, the Racine Journal Times reported that a group called Project Vote is under investigation by authorities for turning in suspicious voter registration forms and that the city of Racine has banned those registrars allegedly responsible from turning in any more. In another disturbing case, the New Voters Project, an organization present on this campus, has also reportedly turned in thousands of dubious forms.
The Journal Times reported that Racine city officials have received “thousands” of new voter registration forms and that some forms, “appear to have been filled out and supposedly signed by voters without the voters’ knowledge.”
Wisconsin law allows deputized registrars working for non-governmental organizations to register citizens eligible to vote and submit those forms accordingly. Racine Mayor Gary Becker believes registrars from Project Vote may have pulled random names from the phone book and registered them without their knowledge. For example, signatures on applications supposedly for three individuals named Pflugrad, Phlieger and Phlieger all had “suspiciously similar” signatures and were already registered to vote.
Among the nearly 1,400 voter registration forms turned in as of Sept. 1, some of the startling findings included 59 forms for already registered voters, two for non-citizens and duplicate forms for the same person on multiple occasions. The Racine City Clerk’s office sent letters out to addresses on 96 suspicious forms, and already, 16 were returned as undeliverable.
This suspicious pattern of alleged fraud and forgery raises numerous questions, not the least of which is why the deputy registrars submitted the invalid registrations. Could registrars be submitting fraudulent voter registration forms with the intent of later casting fraudulent votes?
Besides Project Vote, Milwaukee radio talk show host Mark Belling has reported that the New Voters Project, another questionable voter mobilization organization, “sent in thousands (yes, thousands) of dubious registration forms that lack legally required identification.”
Incidentally, the Wisconsin campus director of this organization which has a strong presence here in Madison is Jessy Tolkan, who herself has had history with election fraud. In spring 2001, Tolkan gave up her seat on the Madison City Council amid allegations that she lied about her legal residence on her nominating papers. The property manager of the Randall Street apartment where she claimed residency later confirmed in the Wisconsin State Journal that Tolkan was never a tenant there. When running for ASM Student Council as a freshman, she was forced to perform community service before assuming her seat due to campaign violations.
Also, Belling stated, “One former employee of the New Voter Project has told me that many staffers simply took names out of the telephone book to fill out their daily quotas. He quit his job in fear there’d be a criminal investigation.”
Even in the unlikely event that innocent mistakes caused the problems of Project Vote and the New Voters Project, the incidents raise questions about the lax voter registration and election laws in Wisconsin.
Belling succinctly outlined the flaws in the state’s elections laws, “Here’s the method to the New Voter Project madness. In Wisconsin, you can register to vote at the polls on Election Day. You have to produce identification when you register. But sending in a phony registration in advance puts you on the voter list before the election. Already-registered voters don’t have to show any identification. By putting perhaps thousands of fake names on the voter lists, it will be possible for fraudsters to show up at the polls and simply claim to be the person who was already ‘registered.’”
The fact that municipal clerks have noticed and attempted to verify some dubious voter registration forms does not prove the system works; Wisconsin law does not mandate municipal clerks to verify any applications completed through deputy registrars.
Even if municipal clerks did begin verifying each and every application completed through deputy registrars, they have little time to do so. Racine County Deputy District Attorney Michael Nieskes questioned how much of an investigation can be accomplished before the election, telling the Journal Times, “There may be a lot of paperwork to go through at this point.”
With nearly a month to go before the election, claims of voter disenfranchisement have already surfaced throughout the United States. In Wisconsin, the real voter disenfranchisement comes not from imaginary obstacles to suppress legitimate votes. Rather, it occurs from legitimate voters knowing that state election laws allow illegitimate, fraudulent votes to easily cancel their decision.
Mark A. Baumgardner ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in electrical engineering.
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Great, looks like the Cheatocrats are starting early in Wisconsin this year. Guess smokes for votes was effective enough 4 years ago. Also, nice to see Jessie Tolkan back in the news. We’ve missed your crying, cheating, complaining over the past few years.
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There’s little doubt that voter fraud exists in this country. There’s also little doubt that Republicans overstate its effects in order to suppress turnout. The article above fits this pattern: other than the Racine investigation, certainly worth pursuing, there is only the word of a talk-show radio host (surely an objective source), an attack on a councilperson, and vague assertion that fraud reports are “surfacing.” Hey, Mark, reports that Republicans are sending “observers” to minority neighborhoods and putting up intimidating signs are “surfacing” as well. See http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040920fa_fact
I wil view voter fraud as a minor problem, until I see some sort of empirical evidence that suggests a larger pattern. Anecdotes don’t cut it. Until then, let’s not depress turnout by presenting some byzantine scheme for registration. I note that any actual reform proposal is missing from the piece, and this, I think, is the key.
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Rob Deters talked about his work on a voter registration project this summer. Was he working for these people?
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Voter fraud is a “minor problem?” Approximately 300 votes decided the Presidential election in 2000, and you think voter fraud is a minor problem? Any chance you’re working for these dubious organizations?
Here’s to hoping Edwards’ complete failure in the debate helps Bush/Cheney garner enough votes to overcome this “minor problem.”
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To the previous message…yes, voter fraud is a minor problem as compared to the 100 million eligiable voters who fail to go to the polls at all. Apathy is a much more serious threat to our democracy than fraud is. That is not forgiving fraud…it should be punished and avoided. But if your attempts to squash a few dozen incidents of fraud result in suppressing a few thousand legitimate voters, then obviously something is wrong.
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Rob Deters here, I don’t have a login, so excuse me…but I didn’t work for the New Voters Project, nor Project Vote. I worked for Wisconsin Citizen Action. Thanks for writing an anonymous accusation though! Really appreciate that!
By the way, the reason you’re seeing a lot of these problems is that these programs are under enormous pressure to turn out registrations. That’s fine, getting people to sign up to vote is a good idea. But fraud is never appropriate, and investigations into these allegations is entirely appropriate.
As for this being a pattern of voter fraud that would allow these programs to vote more than once, well, there Mark completely misses the mark. New voters, which these registrations are for, all have to show proof of residence. They don’t have to show ID, but they have to show a piece of mail or some other proof of residency to vote for the first time at a polling place.
So now, the conspiracy gets trickier. These hypothetical vote fraud perpetrators have to go about stealing the mail of the people they fake registered, and vote at their polling places. And the state elections board commissioner has said he may require new voters to show ID even if they provided it when they registered (a questionable reading of WI law). Add to that, these vote fraud perpetrators could probably only vote at each polling place once without risking being recognized by the poll worker and now you have such an unwieldy and ineffecient way of committing voter fraud, you realize that Baumgardner is really just grasping at straws.
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If some people are so willing to denigrate anecdotal evidence, then how do these people suggest that in depth investigations are started. Numerical data and statistics are the results of investigations, not their cause. How many investigations are started by “whistle blowers” who recount experiential and anecdotal evidence to the right people who then begin investigations? That’s just a rhetorical question, no need to answer with numerical data.
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And another thing, a good reform proposal would go as follows: (1)require identification at polling places, (2)and - oh yeah - don’t cheat!
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And another thing, a good reform proposal would go as follows: (1)require identification at polling places, (2)and - oh yeah - don’t cheat!
IP hash: 5e1ca0b3
And another thing, a good reform proposal would go as follows: (1)require identification at polling places, (2)and - oh yeah - don’t cheat!
IP hash: 5e1ca0b3
And another thing, a good reform proposal would go as follows: (1)require identification at polling places, (2)and - oh yeah - don’t cheat!
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And another thing, a good reform proposal would go as follows: (1)require identification at polling places, (2)and - oh yeah - don’t cheat!
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Why is it always conservatives who are afraid of getting more people to register to vote? One would think they would be happy to sign up as many voters as possible, what with their wide-ranging support among those who are less likely to vote, like the elderly, home-bound and less fortunate.
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A piece of mail, Rob??? Come on! Why should a piece of mail be all that prevents a fraudulent vote!? It should never get to that point. Besides, if these frauds are willing to go to the trouble they already have to forge registration forms, a piece of mail is probably about the last thing they are worried about. At the very minimum, we need IDs at the polls, not a piece of mail. And Rob should know better than anyone else that if any of these retirees that work the polling places would dare interpret the law to ask for IDs, there will probably be a trial lawyer right on hand to intimidate them and threaten some kind of lawsuit. The system doesn't work. Plain and Simple.
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mark belling is a sap. about as credible a source as rush limbaugh. and dumber, too.
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Adding bogus names to fulfill a quota is one thing. Stealing mail and voting under someone else’s name is quite another.
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I’m pretty sure you only need proof of residence (i.e. a piece of mail) if you register at the polls. I voted for the first time at each of the three separate polling places I’ve had in my three years here at Madison without presenting any form of identification.
And on another note, I find it humorous that conservatives complain of voter fraud, when they’re the ones going around telling African-Americans across the country that they can’t vote. Yes, apathy is the biggest problem, but voter intimidation beats out voter fraud for second place (unless, of course, you count voting for Republicans as a problem as well).