Wisconsin State Senate Recalls

The Supreme Court Election of course had lower turnout than our normal fall elections (even for off-year election cycles) - the example was just to put things in perspective. The report you linked seemed to show that mistakes / fraud related to election officials were orders of magnitude more numerous than any individual misbehavior.

I'm not excusing vote fraud - it's a blight and we should throw the book at anyone caught doing it, but if ensuring accurate, transparent election results is the goal (and I agree that's a worthwhile goal) - investing money in procedures for election officials & an auditing process are much better places to put resources towards than Voter ID laws.

Here's the way this policy argument usually shakes out for Dimmer's (and mine, usually) side: I would rather have 100 people vote illegally before I had 1 person illegally denied the right to vote.

Dimmerswitch wrote:

The Supreme Court Election of course had lower turnout than our normal fall elections (even for off-year election cycles) - the example was just to put things in perspective. The report you linked seemed to show that mistakes / fraud related to election officials were orders of magnitude more numerous than any individual misbehavior.

I also stated that the Voter ID law would help eliminate a lot of those mistakes as well. This makes it worth the money IMO.

If you didn't have a problem with Kloppenburg costing taxpayers between $500,000 and $1,000,000 on a recount, I don't understand why this is suddenly not a good use of taxpayer dollars. Voter ID will improve the process even without fraud being taken into account.

The thing is that surmountable barriers, even easily surmountable barriers, are still barriers.

Even if the state ID card is free they generally still take several weeks to be processed and given to you. That means that voting is no longer about showing up the day of to vote, but making sure you do something a month or more prior. Finding out on election day that your card is missing, lost, or expired could be a real issue.

Now obviously none of these are deal breakers. Highly publicize the last day you can request your ID and have it be guaranteed to arrive by election day. Assume people will be responsible enough to keep their ID on them and up-to-date. It's arguable that these are acceptable barriers for the voting process, but they are most definitely barriers, and given current voter apathy I think even small barriers should be avoided.

I used to think that same day registration, and the fact that if you were registered you could vote without any ID was odd, but the fact that after the election the government can easily make sure that your identity wasn't used to vote twice seems to be an acceptable defense for most frauds, and the other stuff like felons and dead people voting can and is caught just by keeping the registered voter list updated.

I'm not opposed to the ID cards really, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" and all that, but when this is being sold as a way to combat current fraud, when it doesn't really fit that purpose just smells bad to me.

wordsmythe wrote:

Here's the way this policy argument usually shakes out for Dimmer's (and mine, usually) side: I would rather have 100 people vote illegally before I had 1 person illegally denied the right to vote.

Every person that votes illegally cancels out a legitimate vote. How is that ok with you unless you're on the side that is doing the illegal voting?

This bill does nothing to deny anyone their right to vote.

And can we not start down the "my side/your side" path?

MattDaddy wrote:

Instead of using numbers from Ohio and then an arbitrary multiplier to get an estimate, why not use the police report I linked to? There are far more than 60 instances where same day registration allowed for mistakes (if not fraud), and that report was just Milwaukee County.

Then the question becomes "If Ohio is able to get very clean elections without voter ID cards, then why can't Wisconsin?" Wisconsin is obviously doing something very, very wrong when it comes to elections. In that case the ID card thing is really just painting over the real issue without addressing it. It's actually worse than doing nothing, since once the problem is "solved" with the ID cards then public and government interest will turn elsewhere.

MattDaddy wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:

Here's the way this policy argument usually shakes out for Dimmer's (and mine, usually) side: I would rather have 100 people vote illegally before I had 1 person illegally denied the right to vote.

Every person that votes illegally cancels out a legitimate vote. How is that ok with you unless you're on the side that is doing the illegal voting?

This bill does nothing to deny anyone their right to vote.

The concern is that it may be an impediment to rightful voting.

And can we not start down the "my side/your side" path?

With a debate as old as this, I think it's appropriate to understand the history of the discussion.

wordsmythe wrote:

Here's the way this policy argument usually shakes out for Dimmer's (and mine, usually) side: I would rather have 100 people vote illegally before I had 1 person illegally denied the right to vote.

That may be a reasonable stance to take with wrongful convictions and whatnot, but in votes I'm not sure that works out right. In your scenario the United States would have 200 million votes for John B. Human and 200,000 million votes for Robot J. MurderMeats. After winning in a landslide MurderMeats and his electronic voting machines would wipe out the human race, and it would all be your fault.

It's also a false dichotomy, because a lot can be done to keep voting legit without keeping anyone from voting, as I guess Ohio is showing.

Yonder wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:

Here's the way this policy argument usually shakes out for Dimmer's (and mine, usually) side: I would rather have 100 people vote illegally before I had 1 person illegally denied the right to vote.

That may be a reasonable stance to take with wrongful convictions and whatnot, but in votes I'm not sure that works out right.

They're both reasonable stances to take. Some would rather err on the side of keeping the election dignified and pure. Others would rather err on the side of inclusion.

It's totes OK to disagree on this, bros.

Yonder wrote:

The thing is that surmountable barriers, even easily surmountable barriers, are still barriers.

Then getting into a vehicle and showing up at the polling place is a barrier. As is waiting in line, and finding out where you need to go to vote. Being able to read may be a barrier. Getting a absentee ballot would also be a barrier. If a voter ID is such a hardship, then any of the above I listed would have already stopped a person from voting. That is a poor excuse, especially given how generous this law is.

Even if the state ID card is free they generally still take several weeks to be processed and given to you. That means that voting is no longer about showing up the day of to vote, but making sure you do something a month or more prior. Finding out on election day that your card is missing, lost, or expired could be a real issue.

You can still cast a provisional ballot. You'd have until that Friday (3 days after the election day) to show up with an ID.

I used to think that same day registration, and the fact that if you were registered you could vote without any ID was odd, but the fact that after the election the government can easily make sure that your identity wasn't used to vote twice seems to be an acceptable defense for most frauds, and the other stuff like felons and dead people voting can and is caught just by keeping the registered voter list updated.

After the election it's too late. The illegal vote has been counted. You can't just go into the bin and remove Joe Smith's ballot.

MattDaddy wrote:

Then getting into a vehicle and showing up at the polling place is a barrier. As is waiting in line, and finding out where you need to go to vote. Being able to read may be a barrier. Getting a absentee ballot would also be a barrier.

Exactly! For each separate case you have to carefully decide whether that barrier is one that simply needs to be there, or whether it's reasonable to lessen it.

Of the ones you listed the first one is a no-go. If you have so few polling stations that a vehicle is required to get to them then that's a pretty large barrier, especially in one of the many states that have rotten transportation. The expense of having enough polling places that nearly all people have one within walking distance absolutely sounds like a reasonable one. Only as a last resort (for example in the most rural and depopulated areas) should people need to resort to mailing in their ballot or renting a taxi.

As far as waiting in line goes, that's a barrier too, so some steps need to be taken to mitigate that. Some states make election day a holiday, so that everyone has more time available to vote. Other states mandate paid time off for part of the day, in California two hours is mandated. Working at it from the other direction there need to be enough polling places that are staffed well enough to let everyone vote in a reasonable amount of time. What's reasonable? I have no idea, I think that if people had to wait four hours in line to vote pretty much everyone could agree that that wasn't right. On the other hand I don't think that anyone would want to pay $10 billion to lower the average wait time from three minutes to two minutes.

As far as finding out where you need to go, that's also a barrier, and you probably notice every year that the government goes through a lot of effort every year keeping that a tiny barrier. They don't just throw it up on a website somewhere, that's not a big barrier for me, but I guarantee you that my grandparents may miss that election. You can find it online, and there are generally signs outside the polling places for at least several days leading up to the election, they mail you the address of your polling place, they generally put up fliers in libraries, supermarkets, and other public places, especially government-run public places. My local Subway and Baskin Robbins each have a bulletin board inside with various community events that always includes local polling places near election days. I've also lived in places with hotlines that you could call to get the address of your polling place, the number of the hotline was on many of the aforementioned fliers, as well as being advertised on the radio.

As far as being able to read, that does seem like a fairly reasonable barrier. It's a small barrier because pretty much everyone can read, in large part due to the fact that this country has free public education up through 12th grade. If that wasn't true, or if illiteracy was somehow a large problem regardless of that fact, then that would start to become an unreasonable barrier, especially with the ease that that could be fixed using modern technology. ("Punch the first circle to vote for XXX, punch the second circle to vote for YYY" through a pair of earphones). What if someone can read, but they can't see? That's exactly why they make Braille ballots.

It is never ok to point to a barrier and just through your hands up in the air and say that's the way it has to be. You have to continuously minimize these barriers as much as is reasonable (reasonable obviously being up for debate). Also pointing at existing barriers and saying "oh well, there are already some barriers, no reason not to put in new barriers" is absolutely terrible rationale.

Yonder wrote:

I used to think that same day registration, and the fact that if you were registered you could vote without any ID was odd, but the fact that after the election the government can easily make sure that your identity wasn't used to vote twice seems to be an acceptable defense for most frauds, and the other stuff like felons and dead people voting can and is caught just by keeping the registered voter list updated.

MattDaddy wrote:

After the election it's too late. The illegal vote has been counted. You can't just go into the bin and remove Joe Smith's ballot.

That seems like exactly the sort of electoral process change that the money should be better spent on. If it's even true that Wisconsin has no measures in place to discount discovered vote fraud, then what the heck is the point of the ID cards. "Look, there are two John Does that live in this district, but they voted 17 times, 16 of them from the guy that lives on 12th Main Street. Shame we can't do anything about that." Just becomes "Look, there are two John Does that live in this district, but they voted 17 times, 16 of them from the guy that lives on 12th Main Street with ID card number 173423876. Shame we can't do anything about that."

MattDaddy wrote:

Dimmer, in another thread you wrote this:

It's critically important that we be able to trust the electoral process to accurately reflect the will of the populace.

While it does add a cost to us, doesn't voter ID help insure what you stated above?

Here's an example that vote fraud has happened in Wisconsin:the Election Commission reported that between 4600 and 5300 more ballots were cast than voters who can be accounted for

OK. Let's put things in perspective. The The City of Milwaukee Election Commission originally reported that between 4,600 and 5,300 more ballots than voters were cast in the 2004 election. That number represents 1.6% to 1.9% of the 277,000 votes cast in the city.

The Election Commission singled out some 1,305 On-Site Registration Cards as a possible major contributor to this gap, which is what the linked report focuses on. Again, a little perspective. There were 73,000 Milwaukee voters who successfully registered and voted on election day. That's a quarter of all votes cast on that day.

So the concern was that 1.8% of those 73,000 votes were potentially "un-enterable" by the Election Commission for various reasons. Keep in mind, they weren't "un-enterable" because the were fraudulent, they were "un-enterable" because of things like missing addresses, signatures, voter numbers, etc. Your basic mistakes filling out forms.

A review of these questionable 1,305 On-Site Registration Cards found that 541, or 41%, were subsequently approved by the Election Commission and their votes counted. The Task Force analyzed those cards and found:

-- 163 of these failed to provide their date of birth. A background check performed by the Fraud Task Force found that all of them were age-eligible to vote.
-- A "smaller number" failed to have valid signatures of the voter or the Election Inspector. Again, a background check of these registration cards found the voters were eligible to vote.
-- 39 cards failed to provide any form of identification. Further inspection confirmed the existence of a "majority" of these voters.
-- 20 cards were missing a variety of information and the Fraud Task Force verified the voters "as best it could with the information".
-- 100 of the cards actually had no errors and should have never been considered "un-enterable".

Of the remaining 764 "un-enterable" On-Site Registration Cards:

-- 540 were cross-referenced with various state and city databases and found eligible to vote.
-- 141 were reported as having addresses not in the city. A review by the Task Force found that all of these cards were actually valid voters, consisting of either data errors made by the Election officials, college students who accidentally put down their home address (though they are allowed to vote in Milwaukee elections), and voters who had recently moved to Milwaukee.
-- 55 actually lived outside the city limits, though the Task Force interviewed those people and "did not find any fraudulent intent by these voters."
-- 3 were found to be from felons, who are ineligible to vote.
-- 22 cards listed the address of a homeless support organization, which is not a legal voting address. An additional 69 homeless people had their votes tossed because they used the address of a homeless shelter or mission. So, congrats, 90+ American citizens were disenfranchised because they didn't have an officially recognized address.

So out of 1,305 questionable On-Site Registrations, less than 80 of them actually turned out to be invalid votes and with absolutely no widespread fraud.

What the Task Force did determine was the the Election Commission needed to tighten it's guidelines. It was found that there were no defined standards on how to process On-Site Registration Cards when there is missing information or a standard process to ensure that all required information and signatures are collected. The result was that local Election workers were left on their own on how to handle exceptions. Again, this isn't fraud it's simply poor processes that can be improved without requiring special IDs to be issued to every citizen.

And since were talking about voter fraud, let's turn our gaze to the Republican Party of Wisconsin. The Task Force found that they tried to get 5,619 addresses tossed from the voting rolls (that's 2% of all Milwaukee voters).

-- 5,056, or 90%, were found to be valid addresses. Apparently RPW used an error-riddled database to determine all those "fraudulent" addresses.
-- 184 were valid addresses
-- 370 were not legal voting addresses, but a further check found that 309 of those addresses were actually valid and only appeared as illegal voting addresses because of data entry errors.

So out of the RPW's original massive claim of voting irregularities there were a grand total of 66 questionable votes consisting primarily of people voting from an address they actually didn't live at in 2004, a non-existent address, or people who were found to actually live outside Milwaukee.

The RPW also claimed that numerous cases of double voting:

-- One complaint of nine double votes had six eliminated immediately with the remaining three required additional investigation before anything could be determined.
-- Another complain of 60 double votes. Further investigation found that no double votes happened and that the errors were traced to Election Commission workers creating a new voter record instead of simply updating the information of an existing voter or different voters with the same or very similar names.
-- Another complaint of nine double votes found that two of those complaints were invalid, but the remaining seven voters voted in both Milwaukee and Cook County.

That's hardly rampant voting fraud and certainly not something requiring a costly new law to be passed.

Is the Election Commission perfect? Absolutely not. It needs to improve its processes and guidelines, but it is not allowing entire cemeteries to vote multiple times.

Let's just be honest about what the proposed law is all about: Republicans don't want to make it easy for people to vote. Fully a quarter of all the 2004 voters in Milwaukee registered for the election on the same day as they voted--and the vast, vast majority of those voter registrations turned out to be valid and legal.

It's terribly sad when a political party wants to actively restrict people from voting instead of encouraging every American to participate in the democratic process and even worse when they claim bugaboos like "voter fraud" to justify their position.

OG_slinger wrote:

Let's just be honest about what the proposed law is all about: Republicans don't want to make it easy for people to vote.

Here we go again....

Yonder wrote:

That seems like exactly the sort of electoral process change that the money should be better spent on. If it's even true that Wisconsin has no measures in place to discount discovered vote fraud, then what the heck is the point of the ID cards. "Look, there are two John Does that live in this district, but they voted 17 times, 16 of them from the guy that lives on 12th Main Street. Shame we can't do anything about that." Just becomes "Look, there are two John Does that live in this district, but they voted 17 times, 16 of them from the guy that lives on 12th Main Street with ID card number 173423876. Shame we can't do anything about that."

That example doesn't make sense. You can at the very least go after the guy whose ID that is. That is assuming that someone (or multiple people) were somehow able to use the same ID multiple times in the first place.

MattDaddy wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:

Let's just be honest about what the proposed law is all about: Republicans don't want to make it easy for people to vote.

Here we go again....

Funny how the report you cited as justification for the new expensive and restrictive voting laws turned out not to show massive voting fraud.

So what should Republicans cop to? Wasting millions of dollars of taxpayer money to solve a problem that really doesn't exist? Not really wanting all Americans to vote?

The history of Republicans and voter fraud boils down to them really not liking any effort to register any voters that aren't old white people living the suburbs. Given their record of what they think about Hispanics (illegal immigrants responsible for crime, drugs, disease, mooching taxpayer dollars, and even terrorism), blacks (welfare queens), and students (snooty liberal intellectuals) it's no wonder they don't want more Americans to vote because they'd likely vote against them.

MattDaddy wrote:
Yonder wrote:

That seems like exactly the sort of electoral process change that the money should be better spent on. If it's even true that Wisconsin has no measures in place to discount discovered vote fraud, then what the heck is the point of the ID cards. "Look, there are two John Does that live in this district, but they voted 17 times, 16 of them from the guy that lives on 12th Main Street. Shame we can't do anything about that." Just becomes "Look, there are two John Does that live in this district, but they voted 17 times, 16 of them from the guy that lives on 12th Main Street with ID card number 173423876. Shame we can't do anything about that."

That example doesn't make sense. You can at the very least go after the guy whose ID that is. That is assuming that someone (or multiple people) were somehow able to use the same ID multiple times in the first place.

But you already were able to identify the person responsible for the irregularities with the name/address system! The ID card didn't give you anything. And why wouldn't someone be able to use the ID multiple times in the first place? The only thing stopping that would happening is if all of the polling places were marking voters as having voted in real time, so that even if a person was valid to vote in several polling places he wouldn't be able to vote more than once. Of course if you have a system like that than you could just mark him off in the Voter registry anyways. Once again the ID card gives you nothing.

There is only one fraud scenario that I can see a picture voter ID helping in. You know someone (that you don't look like) that will definitely not vote (but is alive and registered and all that stuff) you go and vote in their name one single time.

You have to be really sure they won't vote though, because if they do then you'll get caught. And it doesn't really work for people that never vote, because in most places I've lived you only stay on the registration list if you've voted in the last 2-5 years (usually two, I think my area of CA was 5).

I agree that it'd be nice to close that loophole, but it's questionable whether it's worth this much money and hassle to close it, especially with the lack of any evidence whatsoever that this is a problem. And when it's couched in terms of being a big problem, with very, very misinformative numbers being thrown around, I get suspicious.

MattDaddy wrote:

I also stated that the Voter ID law would help eliminate a lot of those mistakes as well. This makes it worth the money IMO.

If you didn't have a problem with Kloppenburg costing taxpayers between $500,000 and $1,000,000 on a recount, I don't understand why this is suddenly not a good use of taxpayer dollars. Voter ID will improve the process even without fraud being taken into account.

Other folks in-thread have already put forward positions similar to mine, but since the question was directed at me, I'll reply. I apologize in advance if this runs long, but there's a lot of ground to cover.

The money issue isn't a particular concern for me, as witnessed by the repeated "investing money in procedures for election officials & an auditing process" theme my posts have had today. I raised it because I think it's a problem for conservatives in our state who have been claiming penury as an excuse to gut social programs, or to oppose the legally-protected recount effort in the recent Supreme Court race.

I don't necessarily agree with Wordsmythe's calculus, but the general sentiment is correct. Disenfranchising people is not something to be done lightly. Excluding someone from an election should only be done when it's clear they are ineligible. When there is a grey area in terms of eligibility, my tendency is towards inclusion (with provisional ballots and subsequent investigation, where needed).

My issue with the Voter ID law in front of the Wisconsin legislature is that it will inordinately impact the least-advantaged of our fellow citizens. I don't think we need to derail into speculation for the motives, but people who are young or poor are much more likely to move regularly, imposing a larger burden on them (even with free IDs) than on folks who are more well-off / established.

I also haven't seen anyone adequately make the case that the Voter ID law would cut down on the mistakes / misbehavior by election officials which constitutes the bulk of vote irregularities. From all the evidence, investing money in policies and auditing of election officials would be a much more effective way to ensure that election results are accurate and transparent.

I do support enforcement and prosecution of anyone who is found to be committing fraud, but the evidence seems to be that voting irregularities are much more likely to result from mistakes / misbehavior by election officials than by malfeasance by individual citizens.

Yonder wrote:

An awesome, in-depth discussion of systemic barriers to voting participation.

Truly well said.

OG_slinger wrote:

Great breakdown of the numbers from the Milwaukee investigation

Thanks for doing that, OG. I couldn't quite juggle all those moving pieces, mentally. I also hadn't heard that same-day registration in Milwaukee was so high.

Voter turnout in Milwaukee (in 2004) was roughly 482,000. If one quarter of that was same-day registration, that'd be roughly 120,500 (let's round down and say 120k). Less than eighty cases of individual voter fraud were found by the special investigation unit. Let's round up and say there were 100, and they were all folks exploiting holes in the same-day registration process. That'd amount to 0.083% of the turnout for same-day registration voters, and 0.0207% of the total turnout.

Also noteworthy: the Milwaukee investigation found more citizens who were eligible to vote but were improperly disenfranchised because they didn't have an officially recognized address than committed vote fraud.

[quote=OG_slinger]

MattDaddy wrote:

Funny how the report you cited as justification for the new expensive and restrictive voting laws turned out not to show massive voting fraud.

It was not my intent to show "massive" fraud, but rather simply show that it exists. This was in response to Dimmer saying there was no evidence of fraud.

Your "let's be honest" rhetoric adds nothing to the discussion. None of us knows why each supporter (of which there were 2 democrats, BTW) voted for the bill. What I choose to do is look at the facts of the bill and decide for myself if I agree with it or not. I see other benefits to it and I do not consider it either expensive or restrictive.

Dimmerswitch wrote:

Also noteworthy: the Milwaukee investigation found more citizens who were eligible to vote but were improperly disenfranchised because they didn't have an officially recognized address than committed vote fraud.

I'm not going to address everything due to time constraints and responding to multiple people, but I do want to address this point.

You are correct in your above statement. This is something that I feel voter ID will help. If they have an ID card, then the address has already been verified. You eliminate a lot of the mistakes/issues caused by same day registration.

Yonder wrote:

But you already were able to identify the person responsible for the irregularities with the name/address system! The ID card didn't give you anything. And why wouldn't someone be able to use the ID multiple times in the first place? The only thing stopping that would happening is if all of the polling places were marking voters as having voted in real time, so that even if a person was valid to vote in several polling places he wouldn't be able to vote more than once. Of course if you have a system like that than you could just mark him off in the Voter registry anyways. Once again the ID card gives you nothing.

If they do vote at multiple places, you at least have some proof of who committed the fraud. It's still after the fact, but at least you have poll workers making sure the guy with the ID matches the photo on the ID. Come to think of it, I'm not sure if you can just vote at any polling place, or if you have a designated place based on where you live. The photo ID at least eliminates a person hopping from one district to another to vote, as the address wouldn't match the area. Today that same person can go into each location and fill out a card, using any address in the area. I think it does give you something.

MattDaddy wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:

Funny how the report you cited as justification for the new expensive and restrictive voting laws turned out not to show massive voting fraud.

It was not my intent to show "massive" fraud, but rather simply show that it exists. This was in response to Dimmer saying there was no evidence of fraud.

Your "let's be honest" rhetoric adds nothing to the discussion. None of us knows why each supporter (of which there were 2 democrats, BTW) voted for the bill. What I choose to do is look at the facts of the bill and decide for myself if I agree with it or not. I see other benefits to it and I do not consider it either expensive or restrictive.

(Fixed quotes in excerpt)

My fault for using ambiguous language, I'm afraid (Twitter has conditioned me to favor brevity, sometimes at the expense of clarity). Here's what I'd written:

Dimmerswitch wrote:

I still think spending millions on an effort to add barriers to participation in the democratic process (when there's no evidence of voter fraud) is a poor choice. If we want to invest in ensuring accurate, transparent election results, that money should be given to the GAB with a mandate to prevent irregularities like the mess in Waukesha County in the recent Supreme Court election.

The part in bold would have been much more clear had I written out "when there's no evidence that voter fraud by individuals is anywhere close to a significant problem". I maintain that there are better ways for us to spend state money to ensure fair, accurate, transparent elections - like investing in policies & auditing of election officials, which appears to be the source of the bulk of voting irregularities.

I apologize if my word choice triggered a derail, though I do think the issue of ensuring fair, accurate, transparent elections is interesting, and at least somewhat relevant to the Wisconsin State Senate recalls.

MattDaddy wrote:
Dimmerswitch wrote:

Also noteworthy: the Milwaukee investigation found more citizens who were eligible to vote but were improperly disenfranchised because they didn't have an officially recognized address than committed vote fraud.

I'm not going to address everything due to time constraints and responding to multiple people, but I do want to address this point.

You are correct in your above statement. This is something that I feel voter ID will help. If they have an ID card, then the address has already been verified. You eliminate a lot of the mistakes/issues caused by same day registration.

No, because these people can't vote with the current system because they don't have an address at all. The only difference is that instead of giving an incorrect address and having their vote stricken they will give an incorrect address and not get an ID card. Which I suppose is slightly preferable because it lets them know up front that they don't have their constitutional right to vote, but it still doesn't let them actually vote.

MattDaddy wrote:
Yonder wrote:

But you already were able to identify the person responsible for the irregularities with the name/address system! The ID card didn't give you anything. And why wouldn't someone be able to use the ID multiple times in the first place? The only thing stopping that would happening is if all of the polling places were marking voters as having voted in real time, so that even if a person was valid to vote in several polling places he wouldn't be able to vote more than once. Of course if you have a system like that than you could just mark him off in the Voter registry anyways. Once again the ID card gives you nothing.

If they do vote at multiple places, you at least have some proof of who committed the fraud.

You can do that without the ID.

At least you have poll workers making sure the guy with the ID matches the photo on the ID.

That is the sole thing that the cards get you, I just don't think it's important in comparison to everything else.

Come to think of it, I'm not sure if you can just vote at any polling place, or if you have a designated place based on where you live.

Where I have lived the general gist is that if you are registered your name is already on the list at the polling places in your zip code (so you didn't need anything) if you wanted to go elsewhere they needed to look you up separately, which took longer. You also may have needed your registration card. There is no reason to force you to vote where you work, if it's more convenient to you to vote near your work, school, child's school, shopping center, or anywhere else you find yourself during the day than why shouldn't you?

The photo ID at least eliminates a person hopping from one district to another to vote, as the address wouldn't match the area.

If you are insisting that you have to vote where you live that's a pretty huge barrier. Also since you already need to give your address as part of the registration it gives you absolutely nothing.

Today that same person can go into each location and fill out a card, using any address in the area.

But this isn't a real threat, as the article you listed shows it is already completely possible to cross check your name and address and find people that gave false information. Once you have identified the fraudulent votes you can toss them if necessary.

MattDaddy wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:
MattDaddy wrote:

Funny how the report you cited as justification for the new expensive and restrictive voting laws turned out not to show massive voting fraud.

It was not my intent to show "massive" fraud, but rather simply show that it exists. This was in response to Dimmer saying there was no evidence of fraud.

Your "let's be honest" rhetoric adds nothing to the discussion. None of us knows why each supporter (of which there were 2 democrats, BTW) voted for the bill. What I choose to do is look at the facts of the bill and decide for myself if I agree with it or not. I see other benefits to it and I do not consider it either expensive or restrictive.

Please, MattDaddy. Here's what you said:

MattDaddy wrote:

Dimmer, in another thread you wrote this:

It's critically important that we be able to trust the electoral process to accurately reflect the will of the populace.

While it does add a cost to us, doesn't voter ID help insure what you stated above?

Here's an example that vote fraud has happened in Wisconsin:the Election Commission reported that between 4600 and 5300 more ballots were cast than voters who can be accounted for

You cited the report in an attempt to show that there was enough electoral fraud happening to justify the new law. You were explicitly making the argument that electoral fraud was a big enough issue that something needed to be done to address the issue, if only to ensure that the vote accurately reflected the will of Wisconsinites. Hell, the law's proponents themselves said the reason for the law was combat voter fraud.

But that exhaustive report determined there were maybe 75 votes that *might* be considered fraudulent, but additional investigation would be required to determine that. Again, that's 75 votes out of 277,000 votes cast.

The report also outlined simple changes to the Electoral Commission's guidelines and processes that would clear up most of the issues uncovered rather than costly new legislation.

So we're back to trying to justify special legislation to fix a problem that really doesn't exist. On top of that the special legislation will have the effect of disenfranchising thousands of voters who don't have a drivers license and who can't get one of the special IDs. The result will be that that the electoral process won't actually accurately reflect the will of the people, which, oddly, is one of the reasons you said the new law is required.

As for the cost of the new law you seem to forget that Wisconsin's own governor said that the state is "broke". You don't have to be a die-hard fiscal conservative to know that spending millions of dollars to fix a problem that really doesn't exist is one of those examples of wasteful government spending.

As for how restrictive the new law would be, it is definitively more restrictive than existing laws in that all IDs would have to include a voter's current address, date of birth, and signature. The other states that require photo IDs simply require voters to present a photo IDs and do not require the additional information.

So were does that leave us? It's a law designed to fix a problem that doesn't exist. It's a law that will cost a "broke" state about six million dollars to implement. And it's a law that is definitively more restrictive than any other voter ID law on record.

To balance out that you simply say that you see "other benefits" to the law. I'd be very curious to find out what you think those benefits would be.

Please what? Stop being so damn condescending with the please, funny and let's be honest crap. With that last one you just insured that I won't bother addressing the rest of your post.

If folks need to hammer out personal stuff, I'd like to politely suggest they do it via PM. Let's keep this thread civil and unlocked, at least until the recall election process is complete. I don't want a poor word choice on my part to degenerate the conversation into finger-pointing.

I'd be interested in hearing more data to back up the assertion that voter ID cards will improve the policies & procedures of election officials (either in a more cost-effective way than other options, or indeed at all).

I'd like to clear something up about the same day registrations. If a problem is found with the registration card after the ballot has been cast, the ballot is not stricken. It has been counted and stays counted. Problems with the card may prevent that voter from being entered into the system for the next election, but that doesn't remove their vote from the current election.

Page 16 of the Police report reads as follows:
"The Wisconsin on-site Voter Registration system confirms the identity, address, and eligibility of the voter after the election is completed. Therefore, fraudulent voters such as the Chicago resident have their votes counted even though they are ineligible to vote in Wisconsin".

The voter ID system would prevent this because the identity, address, and eligibility of the voter would be confirmed before the election.

wordsmythe wrote:

It's totes OK to disagree on this, bros.

Et tu, wordsmythe?

MattDaddy wrote:

I'd like to clear something up about the same day registrations. If a problem is found with the registration card after the ballot has been cast, the ballot is not stricken. It has been counted and stays counted. Problems with the card may prevent that voter from being entered into the system for the next election, but that doesn't remove their vote from the current election.

Page 16 of the Police report reads as follows:
"The Wisconsin on-site Voter Registration system confirms the identity, address, and eligibility of the voter after the election is completed. Therefore, fraudulent voters such as the Chicago resident have their votes counted even though they are ineligible to vote in Wisconsin".

The voter ID system would prevent this because the identity, address, and eligibility of the voter would be confirmed before the election.

That was in reference to a *single* instance of a voter who split his time between Milwaukee and Chicago and voted in Milwaukee using the address of the friend he was staying with.

It might make a compelling reason if it happened more frequently than a blue moon, but the Task Force found that virtually all of the 1,305 On-Site Registration cards cited in the report were from valid voters. In other words, there weren't oodles of people fraudulently registering on election day and voting.

There are issues with the Election Commission in regards to their processes, but those can be addressed with improved standards and better election worker training and do not require what will become one of the most restrictive voter ID laws on the books.

LouZiffer wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:

It's totes OK to disagree on this, bros.

Et tu, wordsmythe? :(

NPR gave me a whole bag of totes to hand out, and I don't intent to keep them.

Please what? Stop being so damn condescending with the please, funny and let's be honest crap. With that last one you just insured that I won't bother addressing the rest of your post.

Here we go again...