Are you a political campaign, a ?get out the vote? group or 527 organization? Do you want to rig an election?
Yes? You?re in luck. With information gleaned from a 67-page report released Tuesday by the Milwaukee Police Department concerning the 2004 election, I can help you. Just follow my blueprint below.
First, you?re going to need people. Lots of them. Thousands, even. They?re going to work for you. Or volunteer for you. Either or. Don?t worry ? the commitment isn?t huge. Just 10 days of their time will suffice. Tell them it?s a vacation.
Your new army of thousands will descend upon Wisconsin under the auspices of a ?get out the vote? campaign. And they will do that ? but they?re also going to vote in the state?s election themselves. This is the most important part for the purposes of our grand fraud.
From a legal standpoint, they can?t vote here. They?re not residents of the state of Wisconsin with the intent to stay here, as is required to cast a ballot. But you need not concern yourself with such trivialities. Just keep your lemmings in the state for 10 days. They?ll become, in the parlance of the MPD investigators, ?10-Day Residents.?
As for living arrangements, you can pack them all into a few apartments, or even your organization?s headquarters. Once they?ve been here for 10 days, they can register to vote. Then they can send in an absentee ballot or go to the polls, register and vote on Election Day. When registering, they?ll provide the address of their temporary lodgings. They can personally vouch for the veracity of each other?s accommodations. This does away with the minor inconvenience of presenting some sort of documentation when registering. Election workers won?t suspect a thing.
Presto! That?s it. You?ve just delivered thousands of fraudulent votes to Wisconsin. Just the type that can tip the pendulum in what has become a regular battleground state.
Unfortunately, such a scheme doesn?t seem too far removed from reality. The scope might be, but the general concept of out-of-state workers coming to Wisconsin and voting ? it?s been done.
According to the MPD report, in 2004 at least 10 staffers from one of the ?major political parties? came to Milwaukee and voted in the Badger State despite being here exclusively to campaign. The staffers resided permanently in places such as California, New York and England, yet listed various Milwaukee addresses as their personal residences, including the campaign?s headquarters in at least one case. The report does not identify the party.
MPD investigators also discovered six staffers from a ?national 527 group? who came to Milwaukee temporarily to influence the 2004 election. The staffers had no known ties to the City of Milwaukee, but registered and voted there anyway in contravention of state law. One listed a temporary housing facility as his Milwaukee residence.
As with the ?major political party,? the MPD investigators did not divulge the identity of the 527 group in question. Their report did provide an anonymous quote from one of the group?s press releases, however. Thanks to the miracles of Google, the group?s identity is easily revealed as the League of Conservation Voters. You can safely assume they weren?t stumping for President Bush in ?04.
Sadly, the 16 staff members of the ?major political party? and League of Conservation Voters may not be the whole story. ?There does remain a strong possibility that the discovery of these random staffers voting illegally is the proverbial ?tip of the iceberg? as it relates to an illegal organized attempt to influence the outcome of an election in the state of Wisconsin,? MPD investigators noted in the report. The 16 were identified purely by luck, according to the investigators. Both the political party and the LCV placed thousands of staffers in Wisconsin during the 2004 election season ? to say nothing of the myriad other groups that placed workers and volunteers in the state at the same time.
There is little possibility these 16 paid staff members were simply ignorant of Wisconsin election law, given their duties as campaign workers, according to the report. Rather, each knowingly violated Wisconsin law. And in doing so, each canceled out the vote of a law-abiding Wisconsin citizen.
There?s a way to put a serious hamper on such activity. It is a simple solution ? one that poses absolutely no burden to the vast majority of voters, and only the smallest of burdens to the minute slice of the electorate left.
Among the MPD investigators? primary recommendations is the adoption of a government-issued photo ID to be presented by voters at the polls. This is a sensible proposal that has been introduced in the Legislature multiple times. It is supported by the vast majority of the electorate. Unfortunately, Gov. Jim Doyle put the kibosh on it each time.
To be sure, voter ID is no panacea to the state?s plagued election framework. As the MPD report made clear, significant problems exist in the oversight of absentee ballots. The investigators uncovered a person who voted absentee in Milwaukee in the 2004 election despite graduating from UW-Milwaukee and leaving the state in 2002. The investigators also found a man who has lived in Hamburg, Germany since 1974 and a man who has lived in Canada since 1971; both cast absentee ballots in Milwaukee in 2004.
Sloppy recordkeeping and clerical work on the part of election officials and poll workers bears a good deal of blame as well. The registered voter list for Sandburg Hall on the UW-Milwaukee campus listed 5,217 voters in 2004, despite the fact that only 2,600 students actually lived in the dormitory. A total of 1,305 registration cards filled out for the general election in Milwaukee, meanwhile, were not completed in their entirety. The cards lacked information like the voter?s address, signature or even name. But election workers accepted them anyway.
The report presents a sobering picture of what can go wrong in an election. With another presidential contest in eight months, legislators should pour over it immediately and carefully.
Ryan Masse ([email protected]) is a first-year law student.
