I have written before about the sloppy and downright stupid way elections are monitored here in the frozen tundra, but today's google search produces a deluge of proof to offer up to my curious readers.

Let us examine, for example, this story:

MILWAUKEE - Election records show that a man who was listed as living at the address of the St. Catherine Residence, which has allowed only women to live there for 110 years, voted in the Nov. 2 election, a newspaper reported Wednesday.

A Milwaukee newspaper said the records also show that someone with an identical name and middle initial also registered at the polls that day and voted from another address, which does not even exist.

The newspaper said driver’s license records list a man with that name living next door to the second address, but his name is not on a directory of residents at that apartment building and messages left by the newspaper at that apartment were not answered.

...

But the newspaper said that, using computer records provided under an earlier request, it has attempted to track down some cases in which people with identical names and initials are listed as voting from different addresses.

The newspaper said that it had also found a woman listed as having voted from an address where she says she has lived and voted for six years and another house where she said she has never lived and from which she did not vote.

There's something rotten in Milwaukee, and it is blowing this way. You can find more here, like this little gem:

There are college students listed as voting on campus and at home; people recorded as voting at old addresses and their new ones; identical names listed as registering at different addresses on election day; and even a woman who is listed as voting somewhere she says she never lived.

Then, of course, there are these startling statistics in this article:

More than 1,200 ballots cast in the Nov. 2 presidential election came from bad addresses in the city of Milwaukee, including playgrounds, vacant lots and baseball diamonds, according to an analysis published in today’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that verifies concerns raised by the Republican Party of Wisconsin (RPW) prior to the election.

RPW uncovered some 37,000 non-existent or highly suspect addresses on the city’s voter rolls prior to the election. The revelation prompted the city to order poll workers to double-check some of those addresses if prospective voters attempted to use them.

...

Today’s revelation is just the latest in a series of troubling developments surrounding Milwaukee’s mishandling of the November election:

The city Election Commission admitted it was unable to send out registration cards to some 10,000 voters who registered on election day because the information on the cards was either illegible or incomplete. The cards are used to confirm the identities of those who voted.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has reported that about 8,300 more votes were cast than the number of people recorded by the city as voting. It is unclear whether this number is directly connected to the 10,000 unprocessed registration cards. According to Election Commission Executive Director Lisa Artison, ‘several hundred’ of the registration cards that the city was able to send out have since been returned as undeliverable. (MJS, 1/25/05)

...

“Time and time again, the Milwaukee Election Commission has failed to answer questions and concerns in a timely manner, which raises even more red flags. And considering today’s revelations, it’s not surprising that the city wanted to delay the release of this information for as long as possible,” Graber observed. “Whether this is a case of rank incompetence, widespread fraud or a combination of the two, we are talking about a number of suspect votes large enough to possibly throw the Wisconsin results of the 2004 presidential election into question.”

And these are just the issues we know about! What else could it be but widespread, systematic, election fraud?

Then, of course, there is the tale of this idiot:

A former College Republican from Illinois has been charged with illegal voting in Brown County, but a prosecutor said Wednesday the case is no longer as clear-cut as when a College Democrat first turned him in.

Illinoisan Marc P. Lacher had bragged about voting in a "swing state" when casting his ballot in De Pere on Nov. 2, according to a felony criminal complaint. He used the address where he lived before graduating from St. Norbert College last spring, the complaint says.

Brown County District Attorney John Zakowski said Tuesday, following Lacher's initial court appearance in the case, that he has learned Lacher may have lived in Green Bay and Illinois in the months leading up to the election. Lacher apparently believed he could simply vote using his last permanent address, in De Pere, which raises questions about whether he intended to commit fraud, Zakowski said.

Idiots! All of them are Idiots! How dumb do you have to be to not know your address (assuming of course that all of these voters were legitimate)? I suggest to the world at large that if you don't know your own address...you are too ill-informed to vote! And who in the heck is under the impression you can vote anywhere you've ever lived before? Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Of course it is fraud! Which is why we need election reform in Wisconsin! Either that or we need to change the state's motto to "Wisconsin: Where everybody gets to vote at least once!"

So, this news, that the FBI is joining the investigation into voter fraud in Milwaukee is most welcome. But still, if it waddles, quacks, swims, eats bread crumbs, and hatches ducklings...it is probably a duck! The problem will be catching and prosecuting the offenders. What we need are real election controls. Like requiring registrations to be in at least 60 days before an election. Like requiring photo ids at the polls, something that is not unreasonable. For heaven's sake, the lady at the grocery store asks to see a photo id everytime you write a check or use a credit card! What is so offensive about asking for id? It does not disenfranchise anyone! If you don't have a driver's license you can get a state id card!

And, could we open the polls at 6 am...when working folk have a chance of voting before their workday begins? I mean, really! Not opening the polls until 9 am is like having a diner only serve lunch between the hours of 2 and 3 pm.

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