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Jail time for tire slashers right call for sake of voting integrity

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by Ryan Masse

Friday, April 28, 2006

With only half a year left until November's midterm election, congratulations are in order to Milwaukee Circuit Court Judge Michael Brennan for finally providing a fitting end to the sorriest chapter of the state's 2004 presidential contest.

It was during that election, you may remember, that a group of young Milwaukeeans, including the son of U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Wis., made a midnight journey to the local GOP headquarters with the intent to engage in a round of pre-Election Day vandalism. The group, all staffers for the Kerry-Edwards campaign, slashed the tires of 25 vans rented by the Republican Party to drive voters to the polls in what proved to be an extremely close statewide election.

After shuffling his feet for a while, Milwaukee County District Attorney E. Michael McCann charged five individuals with felonies in connection with the vandalism. During their trial in January, four of the five saboteurs reached plea deals to plead no contest to the lower charge of misdemeanor property damage, which carried a maximum sentence of nine months in jail and a $10,000 fine. A fifth member of the group rejected the deal and was acquitted by a jury.

As part of the plea, the prosecution requested the four receive probation — and no jail time — so long as they pay restitution, a stipulation they met. It appeared the men would get off with a punishment that can be characterized as being only slightly worse than a slap on the wrist.

And then Judge Brennan made an unusual move Wednesday. A much needed one, as well.

He ignored the prosecution's recommendation, instead handing down jail time for all four men convicted in the case. Two of the men, Michael Pratt and Lewis Caldwell, were sentenced to six months; meanwhile Lavelle Mohammad was sentenced to five months and Sowande Omokunde, Ms. Moore's son, got four months.

Make no mistake: the 2004 tire-slashing case was not simply an instance of petty vandalism. Nor was it merely an example of partisan one-upsmanship gone too far. This was a full-frontal attack on the voting rights of law abiding citizens in Milwaukee — an attempt to suppress the democratic process and hurt those who dared to hold out-of-the-mainstream opinions in a largely liberal, urban area.

Judge Brennan's decision was a surprising but welcome salvo in the name of voting integrity in Wisconsin, a concept that has been shown considerable hostility by the state's left in recent years. To be sure, the vandalism that occurred in November 2004 was the act of individuals; though four of the men involved were paid Democratic staffers, it was not the reflection of a political party. Yet the concept of 'one man, one vote' has come under assault from the left lately in the political realm as well.

Gov. Jim Doyle has repeatedly vetoed attempts to institute a voter-ID requirement in the state, each time objecting under the guise that such a law — which would include a provision for providing free IDs to those without driver's licenses — would somehow disfranchise minorities and the poor. That, or maybe Mr. Doyle simply realizes that those who would have a much harder time voting under a voter ID requirement — felons, illegal immigrants and so on — are much more likely to vote for him, and not Mark Green, in November.

No matter what his true intentions are, Mr. Doyle is disfranchising honest voters who risk having their votes canceled out by fraudulent votes cast under Wisconsin's ridiculously liberal voter registration laws. If the Milwaukee tire-slashers took away citizen's civic rights through criminal conduct, Mr. Doyle is accomplishing the same thing through utter negligence. Allowing everyone and their dog to vote as often as possible may be better than allowing no one to vote, but only marginally so.

Still, perhaps the most glaring example of a lack a respect for voting rights in the state has come from none other than Ms. Moore herself, whose behavior throughout her son's trial has served only as a shameful continuation of a career that thus far can only be characterized as disgraceful.

While Ms. Moore has every right to stand by her son through a trying period, her accompanying rhetoric has been near frightening in its ignorance. After her son accepted the plea deal in January, Ms. Moore told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "I'm going to go forward and work to improve the criminal justice system so that it operates fairly."

Apparently in Ms. Moore's world, vandalizing 25 vans designed to assist people in carrying out their most sacred democratic right is not something that warrants criminal prosecution.

Or take this gem: prior to the plea deal, Ms. Moore repeatedly said a conviction on the original felony charges would amount to a "civic death penalty" for her son. Of course, confining hundreds of willing voters to their homes on Election Day could never be construed as a "civic death penalty" in Ms. Moore's mind, at least if they're not going to vote for her.

If citizens in Wisconsin's 4th Congressional District truly appreciate their ability to vote in a fair election, they'll deliver Ms. Moore a "political death penalty" in November.

Hopefully the Democratic Party's multi-front campaign against voting integrity in Wisconsin will go with her.

Ryan Masse (rmasse@badgerherald.com) is a senior majoring in political science and economics.

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Anonymous (April 28, 2006 @ 8:01am):

Yes, it's time Democrats got what's coming. The bastards!

Anonymous (April 28, 2006 @ 8:52am):

Good article... agree with the judge, and your article, 100%!

Anonymous (April 28, 2006 @ 10:45am):

maybe bush should have won wisconsin...this is strange because i always thought dems were peaceful and wanted the 'vote to get out.' hmm. record turnouts of young people and latinos still elected a republican...hmm...need. more. tire slashing. efforts.

Anonymous (April 28, 2006 @ 1:09pm):

So Ryan, I'm just wondering if you were equally concerned about the integrity of the vote when GOP opeatives in Florida shut down Miami-Dade County's re-count of 2000 by resorting to mob tactics. Do you deny Gore won the popular vote that year but was denied his victory by a Supreme Court which did Bush and Cheney's bidding?

Did you voice any objections to the notoriously corrupt Tom DeLay's successful effort to disenfranchise Black and Hispanic voters by gerrymandering the Lone Star State's congressional districts in 2002? And where was your concern about an honest ballot when Republican agents in polling places intimidated largely minority members of the electorate from casting their votes in Ohio and other states in 2004? What about the Diebold machines, manufactured by a Bush supporter, that registered all kinds of innacurate counts, almost always in favor of Republican candidates?

Ryan, it certainly seems that your concern for the integrity of the vote is quite one-sided.

Anonymous (April 28, 2006 @ 2:07pm):

Since when has the person who wins the popular vote ever been given the Presidency based on that alone. We have an election system here, always have smart guy. Did you also know that Democrats routinely redistrict in Texas for their own political gain as well? Wait, no you didn't because you drool over Al Franken.

Anonymous (April 28, 2006 @ 2:31pm):

"Since when has the person who wins the popular vote ever been given the Presidency based on that alone. We have an election system here, always have smart guy. Did you also know that Democrats routinely redistrict in Texas for their own political gain as well? Wait, no you didn't because you drool over Al Franken."

oh snap.

right on.

Anonymous (April 28, 2006 @ 4:57pm):

yeah, that's a big problem, Democrats with too much power in Texas. When exactly did this take place ditto head?

Anonymous (April 29, 2006 @ 12:16am):

"yeah, that's a big problem, Democrats with too much power in Texas. When exactly did this take place ditto head?"

Probably when the Dems were the party of slavery and segregation.

Anonymous (April 29, 2006 @ 7:20pm):

Well, all you apparent GOP diehards have a point. Personally, I firmly believe that the electoral college should be scrapped in favor of a straight popular-vote victory, as is the case in most European and other parliamentary democracies. But the electoral college, with all its incumbent pitfalls, is indeed enshrined in the US Constitution.

Really, the most heinous crime republicans committed in 2000 was their theft of the presidential election by outright larceny and subterfuge. The Bush/Cheney team was quite blatant in stealing the Florida result, and even more brazen in shutting down the recount there. For example, Bush's miniscule 500-vote margin of "victory" in Florida was accomplished only by tricking thousands of elderly Jewish voters, by use of the infamous and probably illegal "butterfly ballot," into casting their vote for well-known anti-semite Pat Buchannan. And so there were thousands of "hanging chads." The repubs also engaged in all kinds of scare tactics, like using Volusia County Sherrif's Deputies and Florida Highway Patrol officers to set up roadblocks near polling places, in order to dissuade African American voters from even showing up at the polls. And on and on...

Not to mention the fact that in June 2000, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris ordered the "scrubbing" of 57,700 names from Florida's list of registered voters, claiming they were convicted felons. Subsequent investigations by free-lance reporter Greg Palast revealed that at least 90.2 percent of the voters thus disenfranchised were completely innocent of any crime - other than being African American, that is.

Repubs engaged in many similar offenses in 2004. To begin with, thousands of registered Ohioans, who were exceedingly likely to have voted for John Kerry, had their votes stolen by the touch-screen machines, rather than, as in Florida 2000, simply by having their allegedly spoiled ballots tossed out. Oh, and also by being falsely labeled, just as their Floridian counterparts were four years before, convicted felons.

Why, you may ask yourself, am I "rehashing" all these "old" arguments? Ask Ryan Masse, who very selectively claims that the tire-slashing represents "a full-frontal attack on the voting rights of law abiding citizens in Milwaukee." Masse is only too willing to point his finger at those young people in Milwaukee for their actions in Nov. 2004. Meanwhile the BIG TIME electoral thieves are still in the White House. And in the governors' mansions of Florida and Ohio.

The only time in living memory that the democrats (I happen to be an independent) likely perpetrated such a coup d'etat at the ballot box was in 1960. That year, Mayor Daley's Chicago "machine" very likely engaged in widespread electoral fraud, possibly denying Richard Nixon the presidency. It does seem that hundreds or thousands of deceased and otherwise inelligible Illinoisians "voted" for John F. Kennedy that November, though such a claim remains highly controversial. However, regarding claims of more recent democrat malfeasance, I'd like some verification from the person on this forum who claimed that Texas democrats have routinely engaged in the kind of unconstitutional gerrymandering republicans carried out four years ago. Not saying it never happened; I'd just appreciate some documentation.

Anonymous (April 30, 2006 @ 3:50pm):

Not even the MSM was able to make a case for Gore in the 200 Florida debacle - you can't either.

Anonymous (April 30, 2006 @ 5:56pm):

"It does seem that hundreds or thousands of deceased and otherwise inelligible Illinoisians "voted" for John F. Kennedy that November, though such a claim remains highly controversial."

'highly controversial'? yeah, like it's 'highly controversial' that the Earth goes around the Sun - ROFLMAO