Van Hollen's the Fraud

Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen made good on his assurances to his fellow Republicans that he would use his office, per the Republicans' wishes, during a Van Hollen address at the Republican National Convention held in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Said Van Hollen to his fellow Republicans: "... We are out there front and center everyday and you'll be hearing much more from the Department of Justice in the coming months about doing what we can to make sure that those people who have illegally and illegitimately registered to vote, don't have the opportunity on election day to show up and take away your vote by casting one that is not legal." (WisPolitics)

Van Hollen was looking for organized voter fraud, shown to be a fiction, by the Brennan Center for Justice and a state-federal committee looking into past GOP allegations of voter fraud in the 2004 election.

The fact is Van Hollen just wanted to suppress voters and make it as difficult as he could for new and casual voters to vote, placing a burden on and slowing down many black voters, for example, who do not happen to have up-to-date driver's licenses in Milwaukee County.

Van Hollen has been roundly hit for his filing a legal complaint in light of the imperative of Wisconsin to establish a centralized voter registration list "coordinated with other agency databases within the State" such as the DOT, as mandated by federal law (specifically the Help America Vote Act (HAVA)) which Van Hollen cites in the DOJ Complaint, saying that HAVA requires additional verification, and linking the citizens' right to vote with bureaucrats' databases perfectly matching.

HAVA makes no such demand for perfect matches, but Van Hollen thought that he could use HAVA as part of the national GOP's hysteria that voting fraud was everywhere, a ruse used to cover the GOP engaged in an unprecedented effort to suppress legal voting.

Today's Journal-Sentinel reveals that a full 11 percent of the 2.9 million votes cast in Wisconsin in the Nov. 4 election did not match state's master list.

Van Hollen's wished to force an exact match before these one of nine Wisconsin voters could have cast their votes.

A Dane County circuit judge tossed Van Hollen's suit on several grounds, not the least of which is that Van Hollen did not read the federal law correctly.

Van Hollen rather tried to use HAVA for his own dishonorable ends.

There is no organized voter fraud, just a corrupt Attorney General's office and a despicable effort by a political party trying to ensure that only the right voters cast their vote.