With Election Day right around the corner, the issue of voter fraud is a top priority for Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, who announced Wednesday the formation of an election task force.
Along with Democratic Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, Van Hollen, a Republican, hopes to create a bipartisan effort to guard against voter fraud and disenfranchisement.
The task force was created by the Van Hollen’s office, Milwaukee Police Department and Milwaukee district attorney’s office.
“We’ve been talking about this since the middle of summer, at least,” said Bruce Landgraf, assistant district attorney of Milwaukee County. “The teaming up with Attorney Van Hollen’s office came about as a result of past practices with the Attorney General’s office and Department of Justice. It worked well, and cooperation is great.”
The job of the task force begins with a centralized number in Milwaukee that voters can call, after which they are directed to a command center. From there, police are dispatched to the site to investigate the alleged voter fraud.
Van Hollen has also trained more than 50 agents from the Department of Criminal Investigation to handle issues of fraud across the state.
Landgraf added many of the issues to which police are dispatched turn out to be innocent.
This announcement comes on the heels of Van Hollen’s lawsuit against the Government Accountability Board and Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain’s absentee ballot misprints, which brought about allegations of partisan disenfranchisement.
According to William Cosh, spokesperson for Van Hollen, this task force has nothing to do with the current lawsuit.
“The task force has been operational, but was just announced today,” Cosh said. “This is a bipartisan arraignment with the DA and Milwaukee Police Department and has been up and running and in the works well before this.”
But Scott Ross, president of One Wisconsin Now, said the two are very much related and one should remedy the other.
“We’ve asked the task force to immediately investigate McCain’s faulty absentee ballots,” Ross said. “There are clear indications that the longer people go without the McCain campaign telling how many people got faulty ballots and what are they going to do to remedy the situation, the more it looks like they are intentionally trying to deceive and disenfranchise voters in Wisconsin.”
According to Landgraf, this issue was addressed at Wednesday morning’s press conference, where Chisholm agreed that the task force would be willing to look into the issue.
“We have not received complaints here in Milwaukee,” Landgraf said. “In order to start an investigation, we would have to have a complaint. The primary responsibly is in the Dane County district office, who may invite us to become involved.”
Despite the controversies, Ross said he sees the task force as a positive contribution to the upcoming election.
“The task force is charged with looking into possible voter disenfranchisement like what the McCain campaign has done,” Ross said. “This is a positive step, only if they are willing to look at allegations like this.”
