Wisconsin Hotly Contested: Allegations Of Voter Fraud Surface
Wisconsin has become one of the most watched battleground states in the country, and forces on both the Democratic and Republican sides have activated their field operations and get-out-the-vote, or GOTV, efforts to woo registered Independent and undecided likely voters. Democrats have been hoping to turn this traditionally red state into a purple or possibly even blue one this year. But just before polls opened last Tuesday for Wisconsin's general assembly primary, numerous, unconfirmed allegations began to surface of a behind-the-scenes effort by the McCain-Palin campaign to manipulate the vote totals in Wisconsin and other key states this November.
On the Monday night before the primary, thousands of Wisconsin registered Independents and voters who have re-registered in the last year received absentee ballot applications enclosed in McCain / Palin direct mail pieces. The pre-printed, re-mailable absentee ballot applications appeared to be customized to the recipient's mailing address, with the addressee's local election office already on the form. Such mailers have been a tool for political campaigns, labor unions, GOTV interest organizations, and state and county election offices for a number of years. Other states reportedly saw similar mailings hit mailboxes, possibly totaling in the millions.
On the surface, the mailings appear to be a legal GOTV effort to re-register targeted recipients for the November 4 general election. But reports in the blogosphere, progressive media, and by other individual sources allege that the forms could instead be part of a larger effort to purposefully manipulate voter registrations in Wisconsin and possibly nationwide. The mailers, if true, may be a type of voter fraud because if someone receives an absentee ballot but does not send it in, he or she cannot go to the polls and vote on election day. The allegations imply that the McCain campaign is sending absentee ballots to people in the hopes that they will not send them in and when they try to vote in person will be turned away.
On Thursday's and Friday's nationally-broadcast Thom Hartmann Show, which airs on Air America Radio Network and streamed online, guest host Lee Rayburn of AAR affiliate The Mic 92.1 FM in Sun Prairie, Wisc., broke the story about the mailings and fielded numerous calls from listeners echoing their concerns about them.
In Wisconsin, the core center of government, the state capitol of Madison, is notoriously liberal. And Milwaukee, the economic center along Lake Michigan, tends to lean left. However, over the last three decades the rest of the state, proud of its independence, its agricultural and green technology industries, and religious conservatism, has proven to be moderate-to-conservative, primarily voting so-called red most of the time. In the last 12 years Wisconsin also has had its share of alleged voting irregularities, although investigations into the allegations have not yet been aggressively pursued by the state assembly or attorney general's offices.
This year, however, may be different. As the economic policies of George Bush have played out, and 3000-plus Wisconsin National Guard reservists were called up last weekend to deploy to Iraq this fall, the state's residents seem to have shifted their opinions of the Republican Party, and the presidential and vice presidential contests. As a result, Wisconsinites are scrutinizing every angle of electing their public officials at a level that has not been seen before. Members of the military who are deployed abroad, by far the largest group of absentee voters, are being courted particularly heavily by the political parties, as dissension in the ranks has swung both political contributions and absentee registrations towards the Democrats and away from Republicans in many states.
Direct mail campaigns containing absentee ballot applications from political parties and campaigns targeted at registered Independents are not new. Wisconsin is an Independent stronghold due to the popularity of Independent U.S. Senator Herb Kohl. Mail campaigns also affect the local and statewide races by activating those potential swing votes. Democrats have been active too, coordinating GOTV efforts for contested Wisconsin General Assembly seats with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). SEIU distributed direct mail pieces to thousands of households on behalf of their endorsed candidates to likely voters in Wisconsin and other states. In Wisconsin both direct mail campaigns hit mailboxes on or before Monday night, September 8, just in time for Tuesday's primary activities. The SEIU mailers did not contain absentee ballot applications, nor did they include endorsements of the national parties or the Obama-Biden campaigns.
McCain's political pitch is targeted squarely at pro-life conservatives. The headline, "A faith that sustains me...," leads to a main story starting with his POW experience in Vietnam, his adoption (with wife Cindy) of a little girl from Mother Theresa's orphanage, and delivers the pro-life position to the reader right between the eyes.
Quoted McCain lines from one of the mailers include these:
"My faith in God sustained me, protected me and gave me the strength to endure."
"That's why I have consistently fought to defend the right to life and the rights of the unborn."
"That's why Cindy and I have worked to promote adoption here and around the world as an alternative to abortion, including adopting our own daughter from Mother Theresa's orphanage in Bangladesh."
"And that's why I will appoint judges that respect the values and protect the rights established in our Constitution, faithfully applying the law without legislating from the bench."
Local party officials and labor union organizers are mixed on the effect the national efforts will have on the races at the local level, and on the results in November. Wisconsin's 2nd Congressional District Democratic Party Chairman Peter Rickman, an experienced political operative and labor organizer for the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), indicated in a Thursday phone interview that the national campaigns are prioritizing their efforts in Wisconsin towards GOTV efforts, but that more statewide and local media buys would be necessary to sway the voters in his district. Rickman insisted that the local candidates and parties were more focused on winning the Wisconsin General Assembly for Democrats, because local politics, he said, is where "real governing happens," and was pessimistic on whether the Obama campaign had done enough to support the entire ticket in an effort to spur the kind of change Obama spoke about in his Democratic National Convention acceptance speech.
"They're focused on their guy and getting him elected, and that's great, but the Obama Campaign could do a lot more to help out in local and statewide races, supporting the whole ticket," Rickman said. "If they really want to make change happen, it's going to have to be at the grassroots level, and although they have raised a lot of individual contributions and support from the grassroots, I haven't seen much of that money coming back in the way of paid media." Rickman did say, however, that the Obama-Biden Campaign and other national organizations are mobilizing large numbers of volunteers and paid staffers in his state and others to bolster GOTV efforts, which would go a long way to insure that likely voters are delivered on November 4.
Wisconsin Republican Party officials at the state and county levels in several areas were contacted for this report, but numerous requests for comment about the allegations surrounding the McCain-Palin mailings went unanswered. Democratic officials, including Rickman and Dane County Democratic Party Chairman Wayne Bigelow, did not mention the absentee ballot allegations in their respective interviews, but have been contacted for follow-up on this story. Efforts to contact state election officials about the allegations are still ongoing, but at press time, requests for comment have yet to be answered.
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Wisconsin a "Red" State? I live in Wisconsin (have done so my entire life), and Wisconsin hasn't gone for a Republican in a Presidential election since '84, when it chose Reagan over Mondale by a bout 6-8 percentage points. It was close in the last two elections, but Gore and Kerry DID carry Wisconsin in 2000 and 2004, respectively.
Wilbur
Wilbur: I addressed this question in another post, but I will restate. I was commenting on ALL elections, and in the original piece I make that clear. You can read it at my blog http://www
Wisconsin a red state? With a Dem Gov, two Dem Senators, a mixed Congressional delegation, mixed state legislature, and Dem Presidential choice. Red? I say purple and I think the evidence supports this. Your characterizations of the politics here rings true, but I would add that Wisconsinites across party lines tend to support competent, honest government
Herb Kohl is and Independent, with a capital "I". When did that happen? Wisconsin has an extraordinarily weak party structure, but I think Kohl is still considered a Democrat.
I think the bigger electoral issue here is the cleansing of the voter registration roles. The state had a huge problem getting the voter lists on a state system. As I understand it a check of the database against other state databases came up with about a million minor irregularities. The Republicans want the list cleansed. Democrats say it can't be done in the next six weeks. Suit. Counter-suit.
My take is that all but a dozen or so votes in Wisconsin are honest votes. That the repeated Republican attempts to prevent "voter fraud" is the new poll tax, poll literacy test, or grandfather clause. Far more voters will be disenfranchised by these fraud prevention rules than there are fraudulent votes. Therefore the new rules to prevent voter fraud will create more electoral fraud by disenfranchising legitimate voters. The vote will not be the will of the citizens.
JMcC and SP are nothing but cheaters -- dirty, dirty cheaters!!!
One of those phoney applications arrived addressed to my mother (who died in 2004). I live in Florida as did she. I tossed away the mailing; now that I understand it's part of , manipulative and illegal effort, I wish I'd kept it and urge anyone else who gets a similar mailing to hold on to it and perhaps find a state attorney general or election dept. official, or a newspaper reporter willing to determine how widespread this fraud is.
bewill: Good advice. You can also email them to me at foval.comal.com and I will keep on this story as long as necessary.
As an independent in New Mexico, I received this type of mailing from the McCain group. It went directly into a shredder because I've got a degree in economics and the lack of fiscal oversight in the Bush administration leads me to believe we're in serious trouble. If this report is correct, I don't want to find it out on election day. I've already had to explain to my 11-year-old son how we've lost our faith in the political system as a whole because nobody seems to shout loud enough to be heard. We have a government created by the people, all the people, not just that minority that would take away all those freedoms they don't agree with.
You have a great point here. I grew up having faith in the political system, too. I was raised to believe that in a real democracy the people's interests will eventually win out. That is why I feel this story needs to be told, and why I'm still working on the larger story both here at HuffPo/OTB and at my own blog site http://www
The Voter Fraud and Voter Suppression going on in battle states is deeply disturbing.
Contact the MSM and demand they report on these tactics
kellygrrl.
Republicans - Liers and cheaters.
GLT21 well, nuff said, but let's remember that because the MSM and people aren't tuned into the issue, in some areas of the country it is the other side that is doing the sneaky stuff. As a journalist it is my job to try to keep both sides honest, and do so in order to keep our democracy safe by telling the truth.
Shouldn't this more accurately be called "Election Fraud" rather than "Voter" fraud? Voter fraud would be like when, for example, Ann Coulter voted in a former precinct, then voted in her current precinct during the 2004 election, effectively voting TWICE during one election. That's VOTER fraud. ELECTION fraud, on the other hand, is what the McCain campaign is doing as reported in this post. It may be a small distinction to some, but in this instance, it's not the voters who are fraudulently voting. It's the McCain campaign performing illegal and fraudulent activities in order to keep registered voters from casting a legal ballot. It's election fraud. AND IT'S WRONG.
Fraud is Fraud and I received one of those phony WI Application for Absentee Ballot as a very slick mailer from the McCain Campaign to me personally. It was prepared from South Carolina and targeting me in WI. We have as many as 1M voters who could be turned away at the Polls. WI is one of two or three key races that could turn this election into a fiasco.
msreinvest: let me give you public credit for helping me turn on to this story. msreinvest actually sent me a copy of the piece that was received in the mail, and that is how I got turned on to the possibility that this might be a bigger issue across the country. Thanks again for helping me on this ms!
Wouldn't this be considered *mail fraud* as well? Isn't it a federal crime to use the mail system to send fraudulent mailings?
LisaMarieC: I'll certainly keep that in mind as I'm working on the follow-on pieces to this story. I really don't know the answer yet, but it is a GREAT question. Thanks for adding to the arsenal of questions we need to ask.
Tradtionally red? Wisconsin's gone blue in 6 of the last 10 elections.
If you'll notice the context of the article, I looked at all of the contests in the state, not just the Presidential races. It is important in Wisconsin, as well as other states such as Iowa, Minnesota, the Dakotas, etc. to keep in mind that there are political pockets in each of these states which vote differently in Federal vs. Statewide/Local races. Wisconsin, in particular, is the extreme of this dichotomy, which holds true that Madison and Milwaukee lean left, yet much of the state votes more right in the majority of elections. The Presidential races are not necessarily indicative of how the state votes in other election cycles. Thanks for your comments!
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