Voter Intimidation in Wisconsin

[cory777]

Source: PRWatch.org

The progressive advocacy group One Wisconsin Now has uncovered a plan by the Wisconsin Republican Party, Americans for Prosperity, and local Tea Party groups to engage in what One Wisconsin Now is calling a “voter suppression” scheme. The GOP and tea party groups have denied the existence of such a plan, instead claiming that their efforts are aimed at preventing alleged "voter fraud."

The voter suppression charge arises from right-wing groups training “election observers” to challenge people they somehow suspect of voting fraudulently in Wisconsin’s elections. Americans for Prosperity is paying for a series of mailings, targeted at communities of color, to assemble a list of “ineligible” voters that tea party election observers will challenge at the polls. Such challenges are not only intimidating and intrusive, but contribute to long lines at polling stations, further discouraging voters.

The practice is called “vote caging,” where pieces of mail are sent to registered voters, and a list of “ineligible voters” are compiled from those whose mail is returned as undeliverable. The persons whose name does not match their listed address are accused at the polls of being a fraudulent voter. The Wisconsin GOP made a similar effort in the 2004 elections, announcing plans to challenge 37,180 voters deemed “ineligible" on a caging list developed by the party, and targeting Milwaukee (the city with the largest proportion of racial and ethnic minority citizens in the state). The non-partisan City Attorney and Election Commission stopped the GOP’s plan, and determined that the voters the GOP deemed “ineligible” had a mismatch between the name and address due to clerical errors such as an incorrect apartment number, the lack of an apartment number, or that the person had simply moved.

Voter Fraud Widely Exaggerated

A spokesperson for Wisconsin’s Government Accountability Board (the state body charged with overseeing elections) tells The Nation that the groups concerned about voter fraud have a “complete and total delusion that minorities are voting more than once. There’s absolutely not one shred of evidence, no conviction, no charges, no nothing of that nature in the state of Wisconsin. I am aware of absolutely no activity like that.”

Read more: http://www.prwatch.org/node/9568

---

Your Activist News Source http://activistnews.blogspot.com/

[Ramulux]

1. So it begins

[madmax]

3. You beat me to it. My first thought exactly. nt

[avaistheone1]

6. The right wing has been doing this for a long time.

[glinda]

17. I think there was a ton of fraud/intimidation in many of the elections.

[AsahinaKimi]

2. Oh they are so asking for it...

If they want don't want fights in the streets, they best not mess with the Election!

[shraby]

4. Would that work in Wisconsin? We have election day

registration here. If people take two pieces of i.d. to the polling place, and get challenged, they can register at their address on the spot, then turn in the registration and vote.

[Suich]

5. Are those called "provisional ballots?"

Didn't some state refuse to count those in 2004? Ohio or Florida?

:shrug:

[madmax]

7. Perhaps I'm confused

but, I haven't mailed in votes, or tried early voting because 2000 makes me think that there is too much time between the time I do the paper ballot and the actual day of counting the votes. But, then again I recall Palm Beach and the 'butterfly ballot' and other counties which AA voters were purged from the voter lists. So if they want to fuck us they will.

There has to be a better way to vote and count the votes. We're about one step up from the blue dyed finger system right now.

[Buenaventura]

9. those are not "provisional ballots" by wisconsin's definition

unless the voter cannot provide his/her wisconsin driver's license number

[Ellipsis]

8. Ward 39 is the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

WI voter caging targets 95% student ward
by One Wisconsin Now
Thu Sep 23, 2010 at 01:13:25 PM PDT

Despite firm denials by Tim Dake, leader of Wisconsin's Tea Party organizations, the voter caging plot between the Tea Party, Americans for Prosperity and the Republican Party of Wisconsin exposed this week by One Wisconsin Now, is directly targeting university students - most notably voters at UW-Milwaukee Sandburg Hall, which made up 95 percent of the ward's 2008 vote total.

* One Wisconsin Now's diary :: ::
*

Earlier this week, the GrandSons of Liberty website, run by Dake, posted a "revised draft plan" in response to One Wisconsin Now's release of audio recordings, transcripts and strategy documents it obtained which detail a possibly-illegal voter caging plan. The document, whose properties indicate it was created last night at 9:56 p.m., says "AFP has mailed first 500 to Milwaukee districts 39, 60 and 62. Additional mailing as funding is obtained."

Ward 39 is the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. In 2008, 1,891 of the 1,966 votes cast in that ward came from 3400 Maryland Avenue, the Sandburg Residence Hall, which houses 2,700 students.


Much More

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/9/23/16747/4874


http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/9/21/903746/-More-details-on-voter-suppression-plot-in-Wisconsin

[rasputin1952]

10. Republicans are in the forefront of voter fraud....

they have been for years. The most notable being Coulter voting in two places. Goons come out and intimidate people or outright lie to them to get them to "move on". Pathetic...they cannot win w/o cheating...:grr:

[Ian David]

11. Let's List the violent attacks by the Right Wingers

Let's List the violent attacks by the Right Wingers
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=9389907&mesg_id=9389907

[kwolf68]

12. Just lots of hot air

No one knows who you're voting for. If you have the proper identification you can vote.

The Republicans got voted in back in the early part of this decade and the Democrats got voted in last time. there is no real fix here.

It's just each side's excuse for their own incompetence to lead and govern.

[No Elephants]

14. You're mistaken.

"No one knows who you're voting for."


No, but we all know that poor people, African Americans and, in certain areas, Latinos, are likelier to vote Dem than Pub--and those are the neighborhoods to which the vote caging mailings go. And this OP says they targeted student neighborhoods this time and students (and other young people) came out big for Dems in 2006 and even bigger in 2008.

A friend in St. Louis tells me of the intimidation he sees at the polls every election.

"The Republicans got voted in back in the early part of this decade and the Democrats got voted in last time. there is no real fix here."

Sorry, that is not a very thoughtful analysis. No one said Pubs cage 100% of votes or even 20%. However, they do cage some votes, thereby reducing Dems' chances of winning (reducing--not eliminating--reducing) --and that is not their only anti-democracy technique.

[glitch]

16. +18181 nt

[and-justice-for-all]

13. They know they can not win running honestly...

so they have to lie, cheat and steal to get what they want.

[txaslftist]

15. I used to live in Wisconsin...

I don't think Wisconsinites are very easy to intimidate.

I think you might get your ass kicked trying to pull something like that up dere, enehey?