Thursday, February 28, 2008

Does your vote count in Wisconsin?

The idea that Wisconsin can hold clean, competent, and fair elections in this state, based on the current voting system, is dead.

In a report released a couple of days ago by a MPD task force looking into voter irregularities of the 2004 elections found massive problems.

Within minutes after the report was released, the reaction by local and state officials and the local media was highly dismissive.

Governor Doyle reacted in anger. Mayor Tom Barrett and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel immediately became defensive stating the problems have all been fixed

Political pundits immediately dismissed this report by claiming that there was very little evidence of voter fraud.

All of these people have missed the big picture.

As legal American citizens, Wisconsin residents have the right to vote and that vote should count.

After reading that report – Can Governor Doyle, Mayor Tom Barrett, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the political pundits look every single legal Wisconsin voter in the eye and tell them that their vote counts?

Of course not, they cannot look every single voter in eye and tell him or her their vote counted, because not every vote counted.

In order to advance this conversation, let us toss aside the accusations of voter fraud for just a moment.

Voting in Wisconsin has turned into absolute chaos. Worse yet, we have created this chaos ourselves and the status quo from the Democrat elected officials is to continue to defend the chaos.

Anyone reading this simple statement in the report recognizes that we have create chaos in our voting system in Wisconsin:


Under the current system, a motivated group, i.e. abortion, gun control, school
choice could flood the race and determine the outcome because it is apparent
that the Milwaukee Election Commission allows anyone who shows up at a polling
location, even when listing a address outside of the Ward or city, to vote.

Think about that statement for just a moment and remember everything that has been happening at our polling locations over the last several years.

Lawyers packed the polling locations, hundreds of people jammed into locations that are way to small, heated political battles and continuous rule changes by our state’s election commission.

The incredible amount of pressure being put on our poll workers makes you wonder why anyone would volunteer to work at the polls. The moment you attempt to challenge anyone’s status, the lawyers hanging around launch into you.

Immediately they call goes out- Disenfranchisement! Disenfranchisement! A voter is being disenfranchised!

Next we have massive amounts of people crashing the polls demanding to vote. A poll worker attempting to tell someone that they are at the wrong polling location gets an immediate backlash from the voter. Once again, the call of “disenfranchisement” goes out.

Poll workers have very little way of checking to see if addresses are legitimate and if those addresses are actually in the correct ward. Even if they do figure it out, they then have to send the voter away to vote at a different location.

Next, we asking poll workers to verify that each voter coming into their polling stations are legal voters and yet, we do not give them the tools to identify them properly. Anyone handing over a piece of mail with their address and then verbally give the last 4 digits of their social security number can legally vote. Any 4 numerical digits will do apparently, because there is no way to verify the numbers one way or another.

If you read through the report you will see that thousands and thousands of mistakes were made at every level of the voting process.

Retraining poll workers does not fix the problem- eliminating the incredible pressure they are under and giving them the tools to identify voters is the only way to fix this problem.

This is the system that we have created in Wisconsin and we wonder why the voting process cannot be trusted. Every state has faced the same problems that we are currently facing in Wisconsin. Most state governments are attempting to fix the problem.

Our elected officials have made it very clear they are not interested in fixing the problems; they are spending too much time defending the process.

Even in the state of Illinois, where voting irregularities have become a joke, you have to register to vote 30 days in advance. There is no same day voter registration.

This is the mess that the Wisconsin government has created.

Each and every legal voter in this state has had the constitutional right to vote hindered by our Wisconsin government.

The reason we cannot trust the voting system in Wisconsin, is because the government has created an untrustworthy system.

If the government is wondering why voter fraud has become such a huge issue in this state it is because they have created a system where fraudulent voting is easy.

Even if massive fraud were not taking place- why in the world would the government insist on continuing to open our elections up to possible fraud?

It is like leaving the bank vault open and then being shocked when someone steals from it. Once they have stolen from it, you then make the claim that they only took $1000 dollars and not $1 million, so that is okay. No, it is not okay. The bank has an obligation to their customers to protect the customer’s money.

The same is true with our government.

Governor Doyle, state legislators and the state elections board(now the Government Accountability Board) has the constitutional obligation to ensure that elections are fair in Wisconsin.

The Governor, the state legislators and the GAO have miserably failed Wisconsin voters and must immediately fix the problems.
Governor Doyle and the Democrat State Legislators- DO YOUR JOB!

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