Some of my colleagues on the opinion page have pooh-poohed my concern over vote fraud in Wisconsin. One argued that those intending to vote fraudulently would have to steal mail before a fraudulent registration turns into a fraudulent vote. There are a number of problems with this argument. First, it is incredibly easy to come up with a phony piece of mail, and with poll workers being incredibly lenient, this is hardly an obstacle to fraudulent voting. With the hundreds of lawyers the Kerry campaign has stationed at polling places, it's hard to believe that poll workers would have the final say in preventing a fraudulent vote anyway. Of course, an easy way to avoid this whole situation is to require photo IDs at the polls in Wisconsin- just as banks, movie rental stores, and many other polling wards in different states do. There's a number of other common sense measures Wisconsin could adopt to prevent vote fraud- a problem our current laws only ripen the situation for.

Forgery on even one voter registration form is a felony, and should never be taken lightly. In other swing states, we now other examples of questionable voter registrations, and I link two of the stories below.

Ohio– A man was charged Monday with filling out more than 100 fictitious voter registration forms and was paid in crack cocaine for doing so.

Colorado– An estimated 55,000 names appear on the state's voter list more than once. Twenty counties have more registered voters than residents eligible to vote. The New Voters Project (responsible for many problematic voter registration forms here in Wisconsin) also has a strong presence in Colorado.