After the 2004 election, widespread claims of voter fraud arose from the close election results in our neighboring state of Wisconsin. At the time, the claims focused on the lax voter registration laws in Wisconsin that apparently allowed for massive overvoting in the critical precincts of Milwaukee. Over 4500 ballots got cast over the number of ballots that Milwaukee recorded as voting in that election, calling into question the reliability of the razor-thin margin of victory by John Kerry of 11,000 votes overall.
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel did an excellent job of reporting the shenanigans in 2005, leading to an investigation that ended up going nowhere. The county, state, and federal governments could reach no real conclusion as to the existence of fraud, despite the obvious imbalance in votes versus the records. Now a blogger on the Left has discovered what three levels of government investigators could not (via Memeorandum):
The Optech IIIP Eagle optical scanner claims it scanned 1219 ballots. On the poll book certification page, the poll workers checking in voters and handing out blank ballots claim they handed 1071 ballots to electors. On the Inspectors’ reports with the forged signatures, it is claimed only 981 ballots were handed to electors. If I believe the machine and the poll book, then the ballot box in Ward One was stuffed with 148 extra ballots. If I believe the machine and the apparently forged inspectors’ report, the ballot box is stuffed with 238 extra ballots. If I ignore the machine altogether, the ballot box is stuffed with 90 extra ballots.
This leads to several questions.
1. How many ballots are currently sealed in the ballot bag for Ward One; 1219 ballots, 1071 ballots, 981 ballots, or some other number of ballots? Has anyone checked? Ever?
2. How is it that this anomaly was never discovered after two years of “investigation” by the Joint Task Force of the FBI, Milwaukee Police department, the Milwaukee county District Attorney and the US Attorney for Eastern Wisconsin? What have US Attorney Biskupic and the County District Attorneys E. Michael McCann and John Chisholm been doing for two years if such clear statute violations were missed?
John Washburn, guest-blogging at Brad’s Blog, has more questions about the implications of this discovery, but there are more still. It took months for Washburn to receive the materials from a FOIA request; he got stalled by excuses of materials transfers between agencies. Now that Washburn has the materials, it hardly seems credible that the joint investigation could reasonably shrug off the complaints. The election inspectors signed their names as “Jane Smith”, “Judy Doe”, and “John Doe”, and as mentioned before, the numbers are quite a bit off from the optical-scan machines, which should be highly accurate.
John asks who benefits from the apparent ballot-stuffing in this one ward. Given that Milwaukee has a strong Democratic registration advantage and that the electoral mechanics in that county are controlled by Democrats, I’d find it extremely unlikely that it represents a Republican conspiracy. Democrats needed a wide margin of victory for Kerry in Milwaukee to overcome the advantage Republicans have in most of the rest of the state — and it seems as though some people were determined to maximize that margin through any means necessary.
However, no one can prove this, because we rightly do not match ballots to names. We rely on strict accounting to ensure a fair election with fair results. Regardless of who tried to game the system, all citizens should be demanding a new investigation into Milwaukee’s 2004 election, who ran it, and most importantly who corrupted it. After that, we need to find out why the last investigation failed to proceed with charges against the officials in this ward that falsified the controls.
John says that “it is the duty of sovereign citizens to watch public officials vigilantly and eternally.” He’s right.