GOP: In-person 'Voter Fraud' Is Real, Voter Obstruction Is Unreal

Update: Scott Ross:  Memo to Gov. Scott Walker and GOP legislators: Voters are not the enemy

A research report by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Employment and Training Institute (Pawasarat. June 2005) shows many racial minorities would be obstructed by a 2011 Wisconsin GOP-passed law "requiring (a photo ID) as a condition for voting."

Good, says the GOP.

In the Wisconsin Voting Rights trial slated to begin November 4, the Republican Party is attempting to legitimize its years-long project to disfranchise voters who vote the wrong way.

Lots of pre-trial motions over who will get to testify, including a racist ex-Milwaukee cop who really hates black folks casting votes against the Republican Party.

The nerve of those people in the most segregated metropolitan area in the United States.

Wisconsin GOP political operative, retired Milwaukee police detective Michael Sandvick, has been fighting a crime that never happened: Massive voter fraud that can only be stopped by the GOP's Photo Voter ID law, he says.

Sandvick has been chasing black voters in Milwaukee for years.

In fact, the Milwaukee cops set a special unit to drive around black neighborhoods (replete with a command center) until the unit was later disbanded.

Sandvick and his GOP colleagues are the frauds, and their crusade against non-GOP-voting Wisconsin citizens continues.

In 2004, the GOP made "allegations" of voter fraud, none of which (though proven false) could have been prevented by a photo voter ID anyway.

Facts are mere barriers to be overcome by Sandvick and GOP voter obstruction operatives in Wisconsin as they attempt to obstruct the African-American community in Milwaukee County, screaming 'voter fraud.'

Stopping Milwaukee County (urban types) is a project the GOP and Sandvick have no intention of giving up as they seek to introduce into evidence at the Wisconsin Voter ID trial a discredited, disavowed, unofficial, and partisan "Special Investigations Unit, Milwaukee Police Dept., Report of the Investigation into the November 2, 2004 General Election in the City of Milwaukee (2008)."

Writes Justin Levitt, counsel for the Brennen Center for Justice in trashing the unsanctioned report:

On February 26, 2008, the Milwaukee Police Department released a report on that election, with what appears to be a painstaking investigation of the facts, and policy recommendations offered with less care and disavowed by the Milwaukee Police Chief.[41]  The department's careful factual investigation primarily revealed administrative mistakes and, occasionally, negligence.[42]  It showed that much of what had originally been identified as potential fraud was in fact due to clerical error.[43]  It also uncovered several votes by potentially ineligible individuals, including some who were allegedly nonresidents, and some who had allegedly been rendered ineligible due to convictions.[44]  The report revealed only one potential vote that might have involved in-person impersonation fraud, with no documentation verifying that the vote in question was actually cast.[45]

So, according the 2008 report, there were zero in-person voter fraud cases prosecuted. But there were lots of innuendo and allegations, playing on racial prejudice that the GOP appeals to in its base.

Sandvick and the GOP should spend their time persuading people to vote Republican and not trying to obstruct people who have the right to vote in America any way they please.

The two cases to be heard in a federal court trial November 4 are:

• Frank v. Walker, (Case 11cv1128), U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin


• League of United Latin American Citizens of Wisconsin v. Deininger (Case 2:12-cv-00185), U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin

The two cases have been consolidated for trial in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin.

The two federal civil rights cases—Frank et al. v. Walker, and League of United Latin American Citizens of Wisconsin v. Deininger—will challenge the Scott Walker administration and the Republican Party's Wisconsin photo voter ID law under Section Two of the Voting Rights Act, in the League case.

In the Frank case,  plaintiff argue: "The photo ID law imposes a severe and undue burden on the fundamental right to vote under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution; violates the Twenty-Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution as an unconstitutional poll tax; and violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in arbitrarily refusing to accept certain identification documents."

Rightwingers Set to Mock Themselves

A valuable bequest from the Clinton administration is the revealing to a wide political audience of the American rightwing as hateful whack jobs.

Decent, hard-working people no doubt, but whack jobs nonetheless who pursued the Clintons relentlessly and shamelessly, casting every aspersion imaginable upon a cautious administration.

As a result of the Clintons' devastating rebuttal of the rightwing attacks [at the height of the impeachment, Bill Clinton's approval numbers rose to 69 percent], George W. Bush was forced to run as an anti-rightwing, centrist Republican, proclaiming non-divisive moderation in the 2000 election.

Progressive groups like Move On flowered as the attacks on Clinton became utterly untenable and the American people soured on the politics of the right.

Yet, there is every indication to believe that the rightwing is ready to launch another war on Obama led by many of the same characters.

Arguably, the war has already been declared in light of the vicious attacks that Obama has already repelled, and faces in the more doctrinaire Republican Party remaining in Congress.

But the vast majority of the American people have seen enough of negativity and hate as the results of the last two national elections clearly show.

During the 2008 presidential debates even an intellectual disagreement with McCain voiced and generalized by Obama as reflecting badly on McCain would result in focus groups effectively booing the statement because it came across as bordering on the mean-spirited side of the spectrum.

'Tell what you're for; not what the other guy is,' is the effective sentiment.

The GOP Southern Strategy is on its death bed though no complete victory is ever achieved. As the Clarance Darrow-inspired character in Inherit the Wind reminds us, "...fanaticism and ignorance (are) forever busy, and (need) feeding."

The attacks will still come, the vote suppression will continue [right here in Wisconsin as J.B. Van Hollen fights to cover his political behind in his losing quest], but in today's political culture here's a bet that those rightwingers still launching their hate-tipped cultural missiles will be perceived by the American people as merely making fun of themselves.

And that goes double for Milwaukee police detective Michael Sandvick; you blow-hard whack!

- via mal contends