Wisconsin State Senate Recalls

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.

I can see why folks are concerned that ballots which are submitted by individuals who are subsequently found to be ineligible cannot be tossed out after the fact. This is a thorny problem, because of course it's important to allow for anonymous voting. I don't know whether it's insoluble (folks who are smarter at crypto and math than I am would be better able to determine that). A Voter ID law wouldn't prevent this portion of the problem. Proponents of the bill would argue that individual fraud would be eliminated or cut down, because identity and address verification would happen before any ballots were cast. I'm not convinced that's the case. The Chicago resident mentioned in the Milwaukee investigation could easily have gotten a Wisconsin license or ID, using their friends' address. It seems like folks who are determined to commit individual vote fraud are not likely to be deterred in significant numbers by the additional hurdle of obtaining a photo ID.

More to the point: there still doesn't seem to be any incidence that individual voter fraud is happening on any significant scale. The Milwaukee investigation shows that mistakes / misbehavior by election officials are many, many, many times more likely to result in voting irregularities. I think that's where any efforts should be directed first, both because that's more likely to have a higher return on investment, and because I'm extremely averse to any approach which has the potential to disenfranchise other citizens - especially those among us who are least advantaged.

More to the point: there still doesn't seem to be any incidence that individual voter fraud is happening on any significant scale. The Milwaukee investigation shows that mistakes / misbehavior by election officials are many, many, many times more likely to result in voting irregularities. I think that's where any efforts should be directed first, both because that's more likely to have a higher return on investment, and because I'm extremely averse to any approach which has the potential to disenfranchise other citizens - especially those among us who are least advantaged.

And that is the biggest objection to these schemes. While it's canon in current Republican thinking that voter fraud is rampant, it's actually at negligible levels. Proposals to "fix the problem" often seem designed to disadvantage particular non-Republican constituencies. For example, consider this:

Studies show that approximately 11 percent of Americans – about
21 million people – lack a current government photo ID, disproportionately racial minorities,
senior citizens, young voters, the working poor and people with disabilities – including:
• 25 percent of African American voting age citizens – more than 5.5. million people
• 15 percent of those earning less than $35,000 a year
• 18 percent of those age 65 and above – more than 6 million voters
• 20 percent of young voters 18-29
For those without ID, the hurdles to obtaining one can be substantial. IDs cost money and
after states’ implementation of the provisions of the REAL ID Act, the underlying documents
necessary to obtain an ID are costly and can be difficult and sometimes impossible to obtain.
To get a state-issued ID, voters must present documents showing identity, citizenship and place
of residence, including a certified birth certificate. In some instances voters must present a social
security card, marriage or divorce records if names have changed, or naturalization papers. A
copy of a certified birth certificate can cost up to $45, and 17 states require a photo ID to obtain
a copy of the birth certificate. Naturalization papers may cost $200. Not only can the process be
burdensome and time consuming, but some may be unable to get underlying documentation at
all, such as those informally adopted at birth, those born in rural settings, those born outside the
United States, those whose records were destroyed in natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina,
which destroyed birth records of thousands of people.

Something that is innocuous and an uneventful requirement to a middle class person, like getting a photo id, can be very difficult or relatively expensive for people in lower economic situations - and many of those vote Democratic. Wisconsin's getting rid of same-day registration is opined to be aimed at students, who may not realize where their residency is, or that they need to register beforehand, and thus disproportionately affects the student vote - and guess which party they often vote for?

This issue is currently a red herring, as the system we have now demonstrably prevents most if not all large-scale fraud. The biggest issue with irregular voting right now seems to be with electronic balloting, and - surprise - that's not a big initiative for the Republicans, since the companies involved tend to support Republican candidates, sometimes in an outspoken way. There have been suspicious elections using electronic voting machines which actually may have resulted in changed results, but that's not the focus - instead, it's on poorly documented or non-existent fraud schemes that are dressed up to look like real problems instead of the side shows they actually are.

Another fake political issue to rile up the base.

MattDaddy: all the evidence is that there is almost no fraud. There are a very, very few examples, but they're so vanishingly small that they're entirely within the margin of error for the vote counting process anyway.

If the goal is to actually get accurate votes, then this will do literally nothing, because the error rate from counting is higher than the error rate from fraud. Even if you totally eliminated fraud, it would have no measurable effect on election outcomes.

However, if you require voter IDs, that's going to suppress a lot of voters. There's a lot of people that don't have cars and can't easily get around, or don't read the papers that closely and don't realize that the law has changed. It's predominantly poor people that will be suppressed.

It is not accidental that the vast majority of those affected by voter ID laws are black.

You might want to think about that. It's imposing a very real penalty on non-mainstream (read: poor black) voters, for no actual benefit. It will absolutely, demonstrably, probably reduce the numbers of blacks and Hispanics voting. And THIS is the real reason they're pushing it, not fraud.

Don't buy what they're claiming. The REAL problem is those pesky poor people voting.

Malor wrote:

It will absolutely, demonstrably, probably...

Sorry to interrupt. Just quoting this part because I love it.

Argh! That was supposed to be proVably, not proBably.

Great typo, though.

Wisconsin 2011 Assembly Bill 7 (the Voter ID law) passed the Senate today, in a vote along party lines. Some Democrats refused to vote.

Looks like they've opened it up to a legal challenge, though.

Wisconsin 2011 Assembly Bill 7 (warning PDF link)[/url]]Upon implementation of the provisions of the federal REAL ID Act, DOT may no longer issue an identification card without a photograph and a person may no longer obtain an identification card from DOT free of charge.

I'm not a lawyer, but I don't see how they will be able to mandate that people pay a fee in order to exercise their right to vote.

The IDs will be free. From the bill:

The bill also permits an elector who is eligible to obtain a Wisconsin
identification card to obtain the card from DOT free of charge, if the elector
specifically requests not to be charged.

The part you quoted deals with what happens once the federal REAL ID act is implemented in the state. At that time the DOT will no longer be giving out free voter ID cards because the REAL ID Act would overrule it. No need keep giving out free voter ID cards once they can get a free identification certificate which would serve as a valid voter ID.

I hadn't heard that the REAL ID act provided for free identification cards, but if that's true then I agree the law probably doesn't face any additional legal openings from the provision which says state-issued IDs will no longer be free once that's in place.

It's mentioned in the bill. There's a section that talks about the Real ID act and how that affects this bill. Here's the piece about it being free:

An identification certificate is valid for eight years and the fee
for an identification certificate is $18 unless the applicant requests that the
identification certificate be issued without charge.

Not sure if that is a nationwide mandate of the Real ID act or if Wisconsin just wrote the free piece in to cover themselves.

As I parsed it, the LRB analysis implies that the DOT will still be issuing identification cards, but they won't be free after the state has fully implemented the REAL ID Act.

This bill creates an identification certificate to be issued by DOT beginning at the time that DOT implements the provisions of the federal REAL ID Act. A person is eligible for an identification certificate if the person provides the same information that an elector is required to provide in order to register to vote and signs a statement affirming that the information is correct.

You may well be right, though. It would seem to be a fairly large oversight to realize the state can't charge people to be able to vote, then throw that out the window once they're done implementing REAL ID.

Because it parallels some of the vote fraud discussion we've been having here, I thought I'd mention State Senate Majority Leader Fitzgerald didn't have any evidence to back up his claim of "people trying to vote five, six times a day".

Politifact[/url]]Is that really going on?

We turned to Fitzgerald’s office, where spokesman Andrew Welhouse couldn’t cite a specific case. Instead, he said there might be cases in other states. But those cases, an anonymous allegation in Oregon and a claim in Alabama, have not been proved.

As for Wisconsin, Welhouse mentioned the episode in the 2000 presidential election when a Marquette University student claimed he voted four times. But he said Fitzgerald was not necessarily referring to that -- though he offered that it’s the "strongest case."

[truncated discussion of Milwaukee investigation discussed upthread]

Let’s look first at the 2000 incident involving the MU student, since Fitzgerald is hanging his hat mostly on that -- to the degree he has evidence to hang his hat on.

The episode, which drew national media attention, started on campus after scores of students responding to a Marquette Tribune survey claimed they had voted at least twice. One student’s name emerged: Rob Bosworth, 18, told reporters for the Journal Sentinel that he voted four times at the same polling place in Milwaukee.

But Bosworth’s claims did not hold up when examined by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

And after a five-week investigation, the Milwaukee County district attorney’s office found no evidence supporting it. Bosworth, who had gained national publicity, later recanted his story.

The DA’s inquiry examined voting records for hundreds of MU students and found no double voting. McCann concluded that the student survey had drawn "apparently unfounded, spoof responses."

No one was charged.

I do think the discussion of voter fraud vs. voter disenfranchisement is an interesting one - if folks think the debate merits it, I'm happy to create a separate thread.

Legal challenges to the petitions for recalling the three Democrats may push the date for those recalls later than July 12th.

Wisconsin State Journal[/url]]A Government Accountability Board spokesman said Friday the board's staff needs more time to review factual and legal challenges to the petitions targeting the senators, Dave Hansen of Green Bay, Jim Holperin of Conover and Robert Wirch of Pleasant Prairie. Democrats have alleged that circulators used widespread fraud and misrepresentation to gather signatures.

The board will still review challenges to three petitions targeting GOP senators Tuesday, but won't decide on the other petitions until June 8 at the earliest.

It's not clear whether the GAB is planning on possibly postponing all the recall elections, or just the ones in dispute.

GAB has confirmed the recall petitions against the three remaining GOP state senators today.

No word yet on their decision timeline for the recall efforts against the three Democrat state senators, or information about what the implications would be for the date of the recall elections (whether the Democrats would face a subsequent recall, or if they'd potentially postpone all the recall elections).

Our state GOP has been caught trying to scare up a fake Democrat in order to postpone the recall election for Dan Kapanke.

Lacrosse Tribune[/url]]On the recording obtained by the Tribune, party vice chairman Julian Bradley says he just spoke with Mark Jefferson, executive director of the state GOP, and "we are actively keeping our ears to the ground and if anybody knows anybody for a candidate that would be interested on the Democratic side in running in the primary against Jennifer Shilling.... So if anybody knows any Democrats who would be interested, please let us know."

Kapanke, a second-term Republican, is expected to face a recall election July 12, unless more than one challenger comes forward. Shilling, a five-term state representative from La Crosse, is the only candidate to declare her intention to run.

Should a primary be necessary, the general election would be pushed back, according to scenarios proposed by the Government Accountability Board.

That, Bradley said on the tape, "would give the state senator an extra month to campaign in. The opposition would obviously have to spend more time and more money."

As mentioned later in the article, it seems of uncertain benefit to the Republicans to delay the election. More time to stump, for students to come back from break, and for results to potentially come back from the courts. Throwing the Dems off their game might be worth it for the Repubs, though.

Either way, it's dishonest but, as far as I know, legal to be a spoiler candidate, right?

Jolly Bill wrote:

Either way, it's dishonest but, as far as I know, legal to be a spoiler candidate, right?

That's my understanding as well. They won't be in legal hot water over this, but it's another black eye as the state GOP tries to convince voters they're trustworthy to deal with the real challenges our state is facing.

You better hope that Alvin Greene didn't just move to Wisconsin.

I have to say that I believe either side is capable of this kind of gamesmanship; I don't think it's Republican perfidy, it's just politics. Now, if the state Republican funds were used to pay for a fake Democratic campaign, I'd have issues with that.

I agree that misbehavior like trying to scare up a fake challenger to an opposition candidate is not uniquely Republican - I'd be criticizing this if Democrats were doing it, too.

Judge John Markson today granted election officials a one-week extension to investigate the widespread claims of fraud in the recall efforts against Democratic state senators.

This apparently means we'll have two rounds of recall elections for the state senate:

July 12th: Sheila Harsdorf (R), Robert Cowles (R), Alberta Darling (R), Randy Hopper (R), Dan Kapanke (R), Luther Olsen (R)
July 19th: Robert Wirch (D), Jim Holperin (D), Dave Hansen (D)

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel[/url]]Because the board had to review tens of thousands of signatures, it couldn't meet the deadlines in state law for determining whether elections could be held. Last month, Dane County Circuit Judge John W. Markson extended the deadline until Friday for the board to determine whether the nine recall elections should be held.

The board has determined enough signatures were properly submitted to hold recall elections for the six Republicans, but it announced late last week that it was not able to review the attempts to recall the Democrats by the deadline. Markson on Friday gave the board another week - until June 10 - to review the petitions for the Democrats.

Those attempting to recall the Democrats have accused the accountability board of partisan bias. The board consists of six retired judges and was specifically designed to be nonpartisan. The board said politics played no role in its decision, it worked on reviewing signatures as quickly as possible and it was able to get through the petitions against Republicans faster than the ones against Democrats.

The two sides have made significantly different arguments for why the recall elections should be denied. The Republicans say Democrats filed their initial paperwork in the wrong way. The Democrats say those circulating petitions against them often misrepresented themselves; fraud was so rampant that the petitions should be thrown out, they argue.

The Democrats have submitted more than 200 affidavits that they say show fraud was committed. The board has said it is obligated to review all that material, which will take more time.

In contrast, the Republicans made a purely legal argument that paperwork was filed improperly. The same argument was made in all six cases, so once the board got through one of them, there was comparatively little work to do on the others.

The GAB today certified the recall petitions against the three remaining Democratic state senators. I'll link to a more in-depth report when I find one, but local reporter Zac Schultz @zschultz15 had good running coverage on Twitter.

[Edit to add: this article on the Wisconsin State Journal is a decent overview]

As I see it, the arguments boiled down to "the pattern of fraud demonstrated by the folks circulating these petitions is so egregious that they should all be thrown out and forced to start over" versus "throwing out any signatures which were given in good faith and with full knowledge is an unacceptable abridgment of those citizen's rights".

I can see the merits of both sides - you never want to be in a position to encourage fraud, and a precedent which only excludes those signatures which can conclusively be proven to be fraudulent certainly encourages that possibility.

That said, I do feel pretty strongly that disenfranchising a voter is something to be only done in the direst of circumstances. I'm fine with this judgement, but would like to see much stronger penalties where a pattern of fraud can be demonstrated on the part of the collector.

Today's decision does mean that we should have recall elections on July 12th and 19th as enumerated in my previous post.

After discussing with Mrs. Dim, we've decided to open up our house to any Goodjers who'd like to come help with the recall efforts.

I don't want to clutter the thread, so please PM me if you're interested, and I'll get you details.

Given the fact that our state GOP has been claiming statewide penury to force through their political agenda (as well as mock a legal recount effort in the state Supreme Court election), I thought this was rather startling news.

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel[/url]]A plan by Republicans to run fake Democratic candidates in this summer's recall elections would cost taxpayers upward of $428,000, according to election clerks.

Dimmerswitch wrote:

After discussing with Mrs. Dim, we've decided to open up our house to any Goodjers who'd like to come help with the recall efforts.

I don't want to clutter the thread, so please PM me if you're interested, and I'll get you details.

Would you pick me up from Manitowoc if if I take the Badger?

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel[/url]]A plan by Republicans to run fake Democratic candidates in this summer's recall elections would cost taxpayers upward of $428,000, according to election clerks.

Hilarious. "We must reduce our expenditures no matter the cost!"

Don't know how I missed this last week. The Republicans followed through on their fake-Democrat gambit, filing fake Democrats for all the Republican recalls. This will force a Democratic primary for all those races, meaning our new recall schedule is:

July 12th: Democratic primary, with all legitimate Democrats facing at least one fake Democrat
July 19th: Robert Wirch (D), Jim Holperin (D), Dave Hansen (D)
August 9th: Sheila Harsdorf (R), Robert Cowles (R), Alberta Darling (R), Randy Hopper (R), Dan Kapanke (R), Luther Olsen (R)

Local CBS Affiliate[/url]]Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald said Tuesday that running so-called protest candidates is a tool available to help Republican candidates have more time to campaign.

I'm entirely certain that he'd be saying the same thing if Democrats were attempting to field fake Republican candidates to postpone the recall elections.

It should probably come as no surprise that the Wisconsin GOP is now looking at options to make recall elections more difficult.

That legislation would not impact the State Senate recall efforts at all, but would almost-certainly be tailored to keep Governor Walker from having to face a recall in January[color=red]*[/color].

Spoiler:

[color=red]*[/color] Save the date.

That will only make the defeat take longer, and hit harder.

Local Radio Station[/url]]A judge in Madison will hear more arguments Friday on requests to cancel the state Senate recall elections which are scheduled to begin on Tuesday.

This is the same argument that the Wisconsin GOP brought to the Government Accountability Board, and that the GAB ruled on a month ago.

I don't expect it to succeed on its merits, but the gameplan may be to get an unfavorable judgement and immediately appeal to the state Supreme Court, where a Republican majority has already shown it is willing to ignore the law to further a partisan agenda.