WI Republicans are ready to cause problems at the polls

From today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

One in five people who registered this month to vote provided information that does not match driver's license records, state officials said Wednesday.

Many of those mismatches are likely typos or similar problems because voter records are supposed to match driver records exactly. Mismatches can occur in a host of situations — when clerks transpose digits in driver’s license numbers; when people use a middle initial or nickname on their licenses but not when they register to vote; or when they register to vote under their latest residence without updating the address on their driver’s license.

Officials said they do not know how many mismatches can be attributed to those types of problems compared with attempts to commit fraud.

***

From Aug. 6 until Tuesday, 4,350 of the voters whose names were checked did not match driver or Social Security records, said Barb Hansen, the Statewide Voter Registration System director. That’s 22% of the 19,470 voters whose names were checked; it includes people who registered for the first time as well as those who changed their address.

Based on past evaluations of problems with the rolls, the Brawler would suggest the answer to that question is "virtually all." And if a few registrations turn out to be fraudulent, that does not mean voter fraud was going to take place. As the Brawler has noted previously, when Washington state prosecutors nailed some vote registrars involved in submitting 1,800 fake names it was determined that none of those fake names voted. Fake names are submitted for cash -- not to sway elections. (And yes, those who submit fake names should be punished).

The Journal Sentinel bemoans that the state Government Accountability Board did not approve a measure that would require newly registered voters to show ID if the info didn't match.

On Wednesday, the Government Accountability Board — composed of former judges — failed on a 3-3 vote to pass a proposal to require voters to show ID at the polls if they hadn’t corrected mismatched information. Supporting the measure that would require ID at the polls in those cases were board members Tom Cane, Victor Manian and Gerald Nichol. Voting against it were Michael Brennan, William Eich and Gordon Myse.

The board said it will continue to perform the checks and ask voters to fix any incorrect information. But it will not create hurdles for those who don’t. The board voted 5-1 on that approach, with Manian dissenting.

Is that former Republican judge Michael Brennan who opposed the measure to require ID at the polls? The guy who locked up the tire-slashing idiots of yore? If so, quite interesting.

Anyway, Republicans are in a kerfuffle:

Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen and other Republicans said the board should require election clerks to perform matches on as many people as possible who were entered into the voter database since Jan. 1, 2006. That’s when states were required to have databases under the federal law; Wisconsin’s database wasn’t fully functional until this month because of technical problems.

***

Bob Spindell, a Republican member of the Milwaukee Election Commission, said he was appalled the state board hadn’t taken a harder line because Wisconsin could be the state that determines who is president — and it could do so by a thin margin.

“This could be the presidency of the United States on the line here. . . . I can’t believe this group would allow this to happen, especially with the major fraud we’ve had in Milwaukee,” he said, referring to hundreds of fraudulent voter registration cards that were recently filed.

As mentioned, there's no sign that registration fraud (which should be punished) translates into voter fraud. But you wouldn't expect Spindell to catch on to that nuance. But based on the RPW track record, the Brawler takes Spindell's outrage to mean we should expect RPW winged monkeys to descend upon central city polling stations to get in peoples' faces, disseminate disinformation and other neat tricks.

Comments

[Menagerie Manager]

Question: if voter registration fraud does not translate to voter fraud, why do they do it?

[Brew City Brawler]

Answer: To get paid. As prosecutors in a Washington State case noted, none of the 1,800 fake registrations they found led to illegal voting.