Excerpt: "Another disturbing practice that has occurred in the recall elections is the mailing of fliers telling people how they can obtain absentee ballots. But these mailers, which usually also back one candidate or another, sometimes contain false or misleading information that can effectively disenfranchise the person casting the absentee ballot."
A screenshot of the fraudulent part of an absentee ballot mailer distributed by Americans for Prosperity. (photo: Politico)
A New Kind of Vote Fraud
10 August 11
We're sensing a new kind of vote fraud.
housands of Wisconsin voters are going to the polls today to cast ballots in recall elections for six state senators.
Campaigning in these elections has been expensive and, in some cases, downright dirty. Sadly, we've come to expect false and misleading advertising, much of it from third-party groups that slither under the full-disclosure rules that candidates and political parties must follow.
We've endorsed rules in the past that would require everyone who wants to have a say in political campaigns to disclose the names of those who donate money to support their effort. Unfortunately, this hasn't happened.
Another disturbing practice that has occurred in the recall elections is the mailing of fliers telling people how they can obtain absentee ballots. But these mailers, which usually also back one candidate or another, sometimes contain false or misleading information that can effectively disenfranchise the person casting the absentee ballot.
Wisconsin's Government Accountability Board, the agency that oversees elections, said it received several reports in recent weeks of unofficial absentee ballot applications potentially causing confusion among voters.
In some cases, there have been incorrect addresses for where to send the application, or an incorrect date that the ballot must be returned by in order to be counted. The board said it also has received complaints about automated phone calls that have contained incorrect dates and other election information.
If the voter doesn't catch the mistake, he or she may never get the absentee ballot, or find that their legally cast vote didn't get counted because the ballot arrived too late.
When confronted about the false information, the group sponsoring the mailer or robo-call has claimed it was an "honest mistake" or typographical error.
Funny, but these errors usually involve critical information about the casting of a ballot and can easily nullify a legitimately cast vote.
We've just gone through a very trying and sometimes bitter debate about the need to protect the integrity of elections by requiring voters to produce a photo ID at before casting a ballot. This despite the finding of only a tiny percentage of double voting or otherwise illegally cast ballots.
But the dirty tricks of deliberately misleading voters in oder to disenfranchise them is no less fraudulent than someone casting two votes. And giving the number of complaints that have been made in the recalls and most recent presidential elections, we think that this kind of fraud is far more prevalent and even more insidious than the fraud that resulted in photo ID.
Perhaps the lawmakers who were so insistent on photo ID can find a way to rid the state of this new kind of fraud.
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Comments
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and it may just be me, but i do not trust the results counted on republican electronic voting machines. especially in light of all the massive protests we've seen in wisc. you KNOW they all voted.
The article clearly states that these errors have occurred on both sides of the elections. They might have been clearer had they included a sample Democratic mailer error in addition to the Republican one shown here.
Fraud however is fraud and if we find that supporters of one candidate were actually sending these fliers to opposition supporters, they should be prosecuted. In this case however, since I believe the error-filled fliers were sent to sympathetic mailing lists, the errors only disenfranchised their own voters. And this whole thing is very likely a result of predictable human glitches on both sides.
Fraud does exist -- I've seen it myself several times -- Democratic operatives collecting absentee ballots from Alzheimers patients and, in one instance, Democratic polling place workers fudging the results a bit. And voting machines whose tallies cannot be paper verified should be outlawed. And photo ID is not a very effective way to get at any significant amount of fraud.
But this is neither a Republican nor Democratic monopoly (I've only seen Democrats actually committing fraud but that is likely because there are only about 3 Republicans in my community) and our polling place regulations should be even-handed and strict enough to minimize the problem.
Lee Nason
New Bedford, Massachusetts
Regina is that accurate?
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