Milwaukee Journal: City, county spar over ballot supply
- Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, citing vote-fraud concerns, is publicly balking at a City of Milwaukee request for almost 260,000 additional ballots in anticipation of high turnout for the Nov. 2 presidential election.
Mayor Tom Barrett blasted Walker's stance, and Common Council President Willie Hines Jr. immediately joined in, saying it was an attempt to suppress the central-city vote. "I'm going to lay this at the footsteps of the county if there aren't enough ballots in the city," said Barrett.
Barrett said that the 679,000 ballots the county had agreed to print were less than the amount prepared for the presidential election in 2000 as well as for the the gubernatorial race in 2002. He and the city's top election official said that the city requested 938,000 ballots from the county, which, by law, pays for and prints ballots.
The pattern seems to be the Republicans accuse Democrats of voter fraud without producing evidence and Democrats complain of documented evidence of Republicans creating obstacles for voters to get to the ballots. I'd say the lack of evidence in the accusations of voter fraud tells us what's really going on.
Complete Article
Original URL: http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/oct04/266144.asp
City, county spar over ballot supply
Walker cites fraud concerns; Barrett cries foul
By DAVE UMHOEFER and GREG J. BOROWSKI
<a href="mailto:dumhoefer@journalsentinel.com">dumhoefer@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Oct. 12, 2004
Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, citing vote-fraud concerns, is publicly balking at a City of Milwaukee request for almost 260,000 additional ballots in anticipation of high turnout for the Nov. 2 presidential election.
Mayor Tom Barrett blasted Walker's stance, and Common Council President Willie Hines Jr. immediately joined in, saying it was an attempt to suppress the central-city vote.
"I'm going to lay this at the footsteps of the county if there aren't enough ballots in the city," said Barrett.
Barrett said that the 679,000 ballots the county had agreed to print were less than the amount prepared for the presidential election in 2000 as well as for the the gubernatorial race in 2002. He and the city's top election official said that the city requested 938,000 ballots from the county, which, by law, pays for and prints ballots.
In a letter sent to City Elections chief Lisa Artison, Walker said that he had "serious questions" about the need for that many ballots when the city reported having 382,000 registered voters in September.
Walker said that having excess ballots around was troublesome in light of possible illegalities in current voter-registration drives - already under investigation by the district attorney - and potential "chaos" at understaffed polling places where voters could grab ballots.
He has invited all municipal election clerks to a meeting in his office Thursday to discuss voting safeguards and ballot requests.
Artison is not expected to attend the Thursday meeting because of a training session scheduled for poll workers.
"If this was a genuine attempt to deal with this, you'd call someone and say, 'Can you meet with me?' " said Barrett.
Shortages feared
City officials said that they were trying to err on the side of no ballot shortages because some wards have run out in the past.
They said that ballot-marking errors, intense voter interest, the need to have extra ballots at many high-turnout wards and other factors played into their request.
The flare-up between Barrett and Walker pits two of the most prominent politicians in the Milwaukee area who - while holding non-partisan offices - are on opposite sides of the presidential race. Walker, a Republican, is a state co-chair of President Bush's campaign, while Barrett, a Democrat, is state co-chair of the John Kerry campaign.
Neither cited those roles in the exchange, but the dispute is playing out against a partisan backdrop in a battleground state.
More specifically, it involves central-city voters, most of them minorities, thousands of whom have been registered in recent months by voter-registration groups. Those efforts, though non-partisan, are widely viewed as helping the Democrats; Bush drew just 2% in 2000 in Milwaukee's predominantly African-American voting wards.
Sufficient number
Walker said the Milwaukee Election Commission contacted his office last week to appeal the decision by County Election Commission manager Janice Dunn.
Dunn said Tuesday that she felt that the city had enough cushion with 679,000 ballots.
Walker agreed, saying that he consulted over the weekend with appointed members of the county commission and researched voting patterns. He concluded that the city request "just didn't add up."
"These requests do not appear to be driven solely by higher census counts, but by anticipated voter registration drives in certain areas," Walker wrote to Artison.
The chairman of the county commission, Doug Haag, who is also the Republican Party's chairman in Milwaukee County, went further.
Haag said Republican Party officials questioned why voter-registration groups seem to target only Milwaukee's central city and students on the city's east side. And he noted that Wisconsin has same-day registration.
"Why is there this need to get all these people registered?" Haag said. "If people want to vote, they will vote. If they want to stay in bed and not vote, they don't have to bother."
Political motives seen
Barrett criticized Walker for sending the letter, noting that no similar concerns were raised about the city's ballot request for the September primary, which included more ballots for each ward.
"I think there is obviously a political agenda here," said Barrett. "We're talking about the people's right to vote. I will do everything I can to make sure there isn't voter fraud. But I'll also do everything I can to be sure there is no voter suppression."
Too few ballots could lead to long lines and frustration on election day, he said.
Hines, a Kerry supporter, said he was appalled by any assertion that central-city voter drives were inappropriate. Those efforts seek to encourage participation among groups who historically have not voted often, he said.
Walker said that the charge that he was playing politics was unfair.
"Tom Barrett is one of the statewide co-chairs for Kerry, but I wouldn't be accusing him to get more ballots . . . to help John Kerry," Walker said.
Walker, who ran Bush's 2000 campaign in Milwaukee County, said that his concern was avoiding controversy at the polls akin to the race four years ago. He cited District Attorney E. Michael McCann's oft-stated concern that short-staffed polls could be overwhelmed again.
"I'm not accusing them of fraud," Walker said of city election officials.
For the September primary, the city requested 841,357 ballots, or about 3,000 per ward plus the absentee ballots. Barrett said that the number requested in September was "in retrospect, too high" and, in fact, only some 94,643 votes were cast in the city.
For November, the city requested about 2,500 ballots per ward. The overall total - 938,300 - is higher, due to additional absentee ballots requested. Two years ago, the county printed about 2,000 ballots per ward and in the 2000 presidential election it was 1,700 per ward.
The county has agreed to print about 1,600 per ward, plus extras for wards where a heavy turnout is expected.
City officials say that a cushion is needed because some ballots invariably are filled out wrong and deemed "spoiled" and because Wisconsin's same-day registration law makes matters more unpredictable.
"It isn't an exact science," Artison said. "The main thing you want to do is protect a voter from being disenfranchised."
From the Oct. 13, 2004, editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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2 comments:
Yes, you Had not been paying attention. Angel Sanchez stole his aldermanic seat in the Spring of 2000 with the exact kinds of frauds. Phantom voters, double voting, felons voting, invalid addresses, fraudulent registrars. Sanchez's aldermanic race was November, 2004 written small.
For a list of current problems, frauds and illegalities in Milwaukee and Wisconsin uncovered so far see:
http://washburnsworld.blogspot.com/2005/03/list-of-election-problems.html
I was asked to clarify my prior post. The critism is warranted as I make reference to a great deal of inside baseball when it comes to City of Milwaukee election practices.
I was reacting to the inane statement: "Perhaps I simply haven't been following previous elections as closely, but I've never heard such strong accusations about voter and ballot fraud until this election."
Back in the spring aldermanic elections for the city of Milwaukee in 2000, Angel Sanchez "won" by 22 ballots (not votes). The allegations documented in the Milwaukee Journal included: fraudulent registrars, bad/faulty registrations by those registrars and City Hall, double voting, voting from addresses which were alleys and dumpsters, felons voting But on a much smaller scale than Gore's race in November 2000 or Kerry's race in 2004.
But, of course no prosecutions occurred. The DA of Milwaukee county, "Let 'em go" Mike McCann, will not pursue vote fraud or election bribery even when videotaped for him. Yes, some of these activities were actually videotaped. One of the delightful quirks of Wisconsin election law, is that only the county DA can prosecute most forms of election fraud. Because of Let 'em Go Mike, the City of Milwaukee is a prosecution-free zone for election fraud; no matter how well documented.
This is 4 years and 9 elections. In each election are the same recurring kinds of problems. The number an scope of each kind of problem grew with each of the 9 election.
If you could not see, the fraud of November 2, 2004 in Madison and Milwaukee coming, you were not paying attention to Democratic politics in urban Wisconsin.
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