GOP Voter Suppression and Obstruction Program Are a National Enterprise

- It's the GOP voter obstruction that could be decisive this November in close races across the country. UnAmerican and corrupt, the GOP-Tea Party Alliance works to prevent the wrong Americans from legally voting -

By Michael Leon

Madison, Wisconsin—Not exactly shocking that the Voter Suppression scheme among the Republican Party of Wisconsin, Americans for Prosperity, and Tea Party Groups is under way here in this important swing state. Thanks to the efforts of One Wisconsin Now the program to obstruct minority and college-age voters have been exposed.

GOP operatives like Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen know well that Republicans lose in high-voter turnout elections, thus the top state's top law enforcement official's energetic work in the corrupt stop-the-vote legal case that was tossed out of court in 2008.

See J B Van Hollen vs. Government Accountability Board et al, (Dane County Case Number 2008CV004085); and WI Elect Board Hits DOJ, GOP Voter Suppression; Brennan Center on Wisconsin Van Hollen 2008 Voter Suppression Decision, and Targeting Black Milwaukee Voters, and Black Voters Across the Nation (Andrew Hacker, New York Review of Books, Sept 25, 2008) for background.

Now, the Democratic Strategist reports the national GOP voter suppression efforts continues at crash speed:

Voter Suppression 2010 Style

By J.B. Green

Democrats have plenty to worry about over the next five weeks, but it nonetheless behooves Dems to get up to speed on the latest voter suppression scams. Toward that end, Demos and Common Cause have partnered to present a must-read report on the topic, "Voting in 2010: Ten Swing States: Problematic election laws and policies in ten swing states could impact enough voters to determine election outcomes." (PDF Executive Summary here)

The report profiles ten states (AZ, KY, CO, IL, LA, MI, MO, NV, NC and OH), where close elections are expected. The report focuses on laws and policies built into the structure of state election codes, rather than the illegal suppression practices that popped up in FL and OH during recent presidential elections.

The fact sheet on Kentucky, for example, reveals the obstacles Democratic candidates face in that state, including cutting off registration 28 days before the election, draconian felon disenfranchisement disqualifying 24 percent of African Americans, no legal mandate to disseminate voter information and a poor record of complying with the legal requirement to register people at public assistance agencies.
The report also credits each state for "exemplary voting laws" where applicable.

There are also reports of a voter caging operation underway in Wisconsin. According to Karoli's post, "Voter Suppression in Wisconsin, Courtesy of the GOP and Americans for Prosperity" at CrooksandLiars.com,

Here's how it works: A mailer is sent to registered voters. Any mailers returned by the post office are put in a database and those voters are submitted to be purged from voting rolls. Of course, the targets are never Republican voters. They're Democrats, and generally minority voters in particular....One Wisconsin Now has uncovered this plot with evidence, but don't assume this is limited to Wisconsin. I guarantee you it isn't. They are targeting as many states as they can, but particularly swing states. Expect Ohio, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona just to name a few to have the exact same operations afoot.

And here's a recent report on voter suppression in Texas.

In addition to the aforementioned laws and policies, and 'caging,' Dems should be ready for other suppression practices, like switching poll places, intimidation, parking obstruction, misleading and incorrect poll information, inferior computer equipment at polls in minority neighborhood polling places,

Stephen Ansolabehere and Eitan Hersh also have a contribution to the topic in their "Early and Often" post at the Boston Review, in which they note,

Registration problems create barriers to voting and make it difficult for administrators to communicate with voters, identify voters at the polls, and audit elections after the fact. Reforms following the 2000 election sought to improve the accuracy and currency of the voter-registration lists. Most important, all states now have statewide voter files. So how good are the files today?...

This summer the Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences at Harvard University and the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project issued the first comprehensive, nationwide analysis of the quality of information stored on voter registration lists...Nationwide, approximately 1 in 16 entries on the registration lists is unmailable. The magnitude of the problem varies greatly throughout the country. In California, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C., about 1 in 50 entries is problematic, but in Arkansas, that number is 1 in 5.

The authors provide a chart ranking every state. This is not just about incompetence and sloppy registration management. The states are all well-aware of their rankings and the reasons for it, and in most cases it's a matter of political manipulation -- almost always to the detriment of Democrats.

Doyle on Right Track on Early Release

Update: Wisconsin budget: Prisoner proposal defended

"They hate us for our freedom," George W. Bush used to bellow, except for that one-in-100 people in jail thing.

Gov. Jim Doyle is calling for a cost-effective and sensible initiative in his state budget that would cut the sentences of non-violent and low-risk Wisconsin inmates, a modest proposal that is bound to draw Republican howls. (see Mark Pitsch, WSJ)

Sen. Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau is calling the proposal "alarming".

Writes Adam Liptak in a NYT piece last year:

Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences. ... (T)he United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.

Gov. Doyle should be commended for this first step towards sanity in finding alternatives to the jailing of our fellow citizens.

Let's hope state policy follows the direction that Doyle has set and not the direction of increased criminalization and bashing of civil rights that Dane County Exec Kathleen Falk is proposing in her War on Drinking Culture.

"Beyond Thin" Judge Draws Notice for a SC Vacancy

Justice Diane P. Wood is drawing attention as a leading candidate to fill the first vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Wood is famous in some circles (especially in Wisconsin) for her judicial equivalent of voiced disgust shown towards Stephen Biskupic, former U.S. Atty for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, who launched several political prosecutions during his tenure with the Bush administration's Department of Justice, including the repulsive political prosecution of an innocent woman, Georgia Thompson.

Wood was nominated to serve as an appellate judge by President Clinton and confirmed in 1995.

As Mark Pitsch notes in a State Journal piece in 2007 [largely an it's-not-what-Biskupic-did-that-really-matters piece]:

Georgia Thompson, a state purchasing agent for Doyle's Department of Administration, was indicted in January 2006 and convicted six months later in the midst of a heated gubernatorial election.

She spent four months in prison before the federal appeals panel reversed the conviction and ordered her immediately set free - with one judge saying the evidence was 'beyond thin.'

The same judge, Diane P. Wood of the 7th U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, also had harsh words when the panel rejected a 2005 voter fraud conviction won by Biskupic's office against a woman who voted despite having a felony record, The New York Times reported.

'I find this whole prosecution mysterious,' Wood said. 'I don't know whether the Eastern District of Wisconsin goes after every felon who accidentally votes. It is not like she voted five times.'

Biskupic said he hasn't prosecuted for political reasons.

The evidence for the conclusion that Biskupic was an apolitical US atty is beyond thin, and Wood was not shy about pointing out the many deficiencies in Biskupic's prosecutions.

Wood's name has been mentioned in numerous news reports on President Obama's likely leaning toward appointing a woman to the court, and Wood came up again today in a piece in the Washington Post by Carrie Johnson:

At the White House, advisers already had begun drafting a short list for the court in case one of the several aging justices decided to retire this summer. Speculation has been that the list includes Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan, who has been nominated to serve as solicitor general; Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit; Judge Diane Wood of the 7th Circuit; and Stanford University law professor Kathleen M. Sullivan.

-

via mal contends

Wisc Judge Tosses GOP Vote Suppression Lawsuit

Update IV: Opinion - Order and Hearing Transcript (Case No 08CV4085)

Update II: GOP AG to appeal. Hoping to get to the Wisconsin Supreme Court where the GOP enjoys a 4-2-1 majority, though the case (J B Van Hollen vs. Government Accountability Board et al, (Dane County Case Number 2008CV004085)) is so clear-cut, even the WI SC might rule against the GOP. In any event, this will not result in any new voter suppression rules that the GOP had hoped for.

Update: Judge: "Nothing in state or federal law requires that there be a data match as a prerequisite for a citizen's right to vote," Judge Maryann Sumi said in dismissing Van Hollen's lawsuit that tried to use the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) as a voter suppression tool.

Dane County Judge Maryann Sumi has "dismissed a lawsuit by Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen to require the state elections agency to check voter registrations against other state databases dating to 2006, which critics said could have thrown hundreds of thousands of registrations into doubt," the Wisconsin State Journal reports.

Nationwide, the GOP is attempting to suppress Democratically leaning voters to stave off a landslide defeat, and is unquestionably attempting to use HAVA to this purpose.

The case deals a political and legal body blow to Wisconsin Attorney General and John McCain co-chair J.B. Van Hollen, and delivers a victory to the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board and other voting rights advocates.

Lester Pines, a lawyer for the board, called the ruling 'an absolute validation of the position of the board.' 'Judge Sumi's decision was exceptionally scholarly, well-reasoned and supported by law,' Pines said.

Similar voter suppression efforts by Republicans are under way in Ohio and numerous other states.

The opinion will likely be posted soon at Election Law-Moritz.

GOP Chair Met Van Hollen at Convention, Talked 'Follow-law' Shop

Interesting piece in the State Journal by Mark Pitsch this morning.

Reince Priebus, the Wisconsin GOP party chairman, confirms that he

had multiple conversations with Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen's top aide before Van Hollen filed a lawsuit against the state election agency to compel expanded voter registration checks.

But Reince Priebus, the party chairman, defended his contacts with Deputy Attorney General Ray Taffora, his comments in Van Hollen's presence this month at the Republican National Convention criticizing the election agency, and meetings between GOP lawyers and the Justice Department lawyers handling the lawsuit. ... 'It's important that in my comments to the delegation and even standing around in the breakfast room or the staff room with J.B., there was nothing more I said than the continuation of my general feeling that the Government Accountability Board needs to follow the HAVA law,' Priebus said. 'There was no strategizing.'

No strategizing, just following the law?

The problem is the GOP's view of following the law led to its voter suppression efforts. Must have been a fun party though.

The GOP knows fully well it's trying to suppress turn-out in what it hopes will be a close race this November.

Can't have too many of those non-driving blacks voting.

Does this piss off everyone?

But maybe it went down like this:

Reince Priebus: Hey JB, you know: We really to need to follow the law and stuff.

J.B. Van Hollen: Yep, we need to follow the law; just have to. Protect voters.

Reince Priebus: Yep.

Candidate Landowski Denies Recruitment by Anti-Catholic Pol

Update II: Informed sources say that absolutely no mainstream Republican will have "anything" to do with Tom Reynolds. That will make this story a bit less fun to cover, but it merits stating that the GOP ought not be blamed for anything Reynolds and his people do and say.

Update: Clean Sweep Wisconsin’s (CSW) PAC is mandated to file a 2008 continuing financial report with the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board by July 21. Citizens seeking CSW’s disbursements made prior to July 21 can request a copy or inspection of CSW’s report. CSW can claim exemption from financial reporting if several criteria are met.

Tom Reynolds' candidate, Phil Landowski, says on his website that he was not recruited by Tom Reynolds or Reynolds' political action committee, Clean Sweep Wisconsin.

Landowski is running in the Democratic primary against Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee, 20), and has been linked to the notorious anti-Catholic Reynolds in press reports.

"... I haven’t been ‘recruited’ by any Tom, Dick, or Harry and I made that quite clear to Mr. Pitsch (of the Wisconsin State Journal)," says Landowski on his site.

The Landowski denial, echoing other denials made to Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel writers, casts further doubt on the credibility of his candidacy, that has been described as part of a disingenuous effort by Reynolds, because Landowski's links to Reynolds have been made public in several press reports.

Last Sunday's Journal-Sentinel political column by Daniel Bice notes:

Landowski is a graduate of Bob Jones University, a fundamentalist Christian school that barred interracial dating as recently as 2000 and has been accused of being anti-Catholic. Landowski said he opposed the ban as a student and isn’t sure if he would send his children to Bob Jones. ... Landowski, of Milwaukee, one of Sinicki’s two primary challengers, demurred when asked if he had been recruited by Reynolds. But he acknowledged he has talked to the former West Allis senator about his campaign.

Bice has posted the audio of a Tom Reynolds phone call to state Rep. Sinicki (D-Milwaukee, 20), revealing the rightwing Reynolds' plan to run his recruited candidates in the September Democratic primary, opposing Milwaukee-area state representatives. [See link to the audio of the Reynolds phone call.]

Transcription of the Reynolds phone call, reads:

“… In Milwaukee here, we are working on a full slate of 12 candidates; eight on the north side, and four on the south side. And we are at eight or nine candidates right now. ... We have a candidate against Sinicki and a candidate against Staskunas. And we're still working on Zepnick and Colón….”

Landowski has also criticized the reporting of the Wisconsin State Journal's Mark Pitsch, asking, "So what’s this guy Tom up to that’s so sinister, that Mr. (Pitsch) couldn’t seem to focus on anything else (so much for issues) in our interview?"

One political observer sympathetic to Democrats, speaking on background, said the Reynolds-Landowski and allies' efforts, is a "clumsy head fake," that has "politically ruined anyone associated with it forever. ... At least we still have Tom Reynolds to kick around some more."

Clean Sweep Wisconsin still refuses to post its slate of candidates or answer its phone.

Anti-Catholic Nut Tom Reynolds' Guys to Be Revealed Next Week

Clean Sweep Wisconsin's foray into the state Assembly races is being fronted by former state senator Tom Reynolds (R-Outer Reaches).

Reynolds has created Clean Sweep Wisconsin's PAC and is recruiting numerous rightwing candidates to run in the Democratic primaries of Milwaukee state representatives.

The Wisconsin State Journal's Mark Pitsch politely describes Reynolds as "eccentric".

But with Reynolds, politeness obscures reality.

The Milwaukee Shepherd-Express' Lisa Kaiser leads her piece from June thusly:

Former state Sen. Tom Reynolds—the kooky right-wing legislator who allegedly asked his staffers if they were virgins, and who superimposed the faces of his family on Mary and Joseph on their Christmas cards—is attempting a comeback.

Just how kooky is Reynolds? And why would any candidate associate him/her self with this guy?

He's indescribably kooky: Reynolds is an anti-Catholic, homophobic nut. From Waxing America's profile on Reynolds from 2005:

Wisconsin State Senator Tom Reynolds needed his own post about his cavorting with the anti-Catholic crowd. To set the record straight, in 2003 Reynolds attended the International Conference on Homo-Fascism. These are the folks who brought us 'An Urgent Plea to Roman Catholics'. Since that conference (Homo-Fascism) in 2003, Reynolds has refused to disavow these religious bigots ...The purpose of the post is look at what Reynold's buddies say about the Roman Catholic Church:

An Urgent Pleas to Roman Catholics
The Word of God and the word of the Roman Church are at direct odds with each other on many foundational issues including, most critically, how one receives forgiveness and salvation from God. It is impossible for one to be obedient to both the Roman Church and the Bible, just as it is impossible to follow both the pope and Jesus. ...

It will be enlightening to list Reynolds' slate of candidates next week (July 8 is the filing date for Assembly candidates) and see who will carry out the political vision of Reynolds' Clean Sweep Wisconsin.

Wonder if that means all Catholics and non-virgins will be swept away this election cycle.