Wisconsin and the voter fraud myth

(I was originally going to find something else to say about Sarah Palin, but variety is the spice of life, hey?)

Via my mother, some troubling news from my home state: J.B. Van Hollen, Wisconsin's attorney general and the possessor of a car-dealer name if I ever saw one, has filed suit to force the state's Government Accountability Board to review the legality of every voter registration card filed by mail or through a registration drive between 2006 and last month. In practice, this means that local election clerks would have to check over 240,000 voter registration records against a state database of drivers' licenses, criminal records, and other information.

I'm calling bullshit. This is the same old attempt to scare up fears of voter fraud that we've been hearing from Republicans since at least 2002. Yet in five years of investigation of the alleged conspiracy to swing close elections through massive voter fraud, the Justice Department turned up a grand total of 120 indictments and 86 convictions by 2005. The GOP was particularly interested in Milwaukee as a locus of potential fraud in the 2004 presidential election, but after a lengthy investigation, Steven Biskupic, the U.S. Attorney for Milwaukee, concluded, "We don't see a massive conspiracy to alter the election in Milwaukee." This is true even if your definition of "massive" is particularly generous: Biskupic, a Republican appointee, prosecuted fourteen fraud cases and won five of them. Now, Van Hollen - who just so happens to be the co-chair of John McCain's Wisconsin campaign - is trying the same crap again, with a suit that just so happens to disproportionately affect voters who live in heavily democratic, majority-minority Milwaukee.

Now, the disclaimers. Having voted in Milwaukee and observed our electoral system in action, I will certainly not claim that we're perfect, or even close. The state's voter record confirmation database faced glitches that kept it out of action well past the federal deadline. Milwaukee's election commission faces impressive backlogs. Most poll workers are poorly trained - so much that one poll worker allowed a felon to register to vote on election day, even though he presented his prison ID card to verify his identity. And over the summer, both ACORN and the Community Voters Project turned in a few employees in their own voter-registration drives for filing made-up cards. Yes, Wisconsin's election system has some big problems, and Van Hollen, as the attorney general, certainly has a role to play in rectifying them.

But Van Hollen's lawsuit is hardly going to help those problems, and not just because it's logistically impossible to check 240,000 voter records before November 4. The Help America Vote Act, which calls for the records checks he wants, is completely ambiguous about what happens when an election clerk finds a mismatch between the database and the voter registration records. Van Hollen acknowledges this:

Asked Wednesday if he was seeking to remove people from the voter rolls if their data did not match, Van Hollen said: “We’re not addressing that at all. The law is not clear and leaves some discretion within the Government Accountability Board as to how they enforce (the law) and how they make sure the voter rolls are accurate based upon the checks.”

In fact, the Journal Sentinel reports that voters with a records mismatch, even if they don't respond to the election clerk's request to correct their records, will remain eligible to vote - so if the checks were to magically uncover a widespread voter fraud conspiracy, they still wouldn't fix the problem.

There's a simple reason why this policy of not automatically removing voters from the rolls makes sense: because the vast majority of mismatches don't result from fraud; they result from simple data entry errors. If I register to vote as part of a registration drive, and the election officials can't read my terrible handwriting and enter my birth date incorrectly, I'll come up as a mismatch. If J.B. Van Hollen is registered to vote as J.B., but his driver's license lists his name as John Byron Van Hollen, he'll come up as a mismatch. In fact, all but two members of the Government Accountability Board, which would be charged with implementing Van Hollen's request, have records mismatches because of typographical errors or name variations. In short, Van Hollen is going after a problem that's hardly big enough to tip the election one way or another, in a fashion that will result in no actual change.

A tip for all you aspiring state attorneys-general out there: if you're really committed to eliminating voter fraud, maybe you should start by professionalizing the poll workers, streamlining records checks, or educating people about registration and eligibility - and maybe do it more than three months before the election.

Sunday Nights on the Lam: Cheese Curds, Booyah, and Beer Edition

Hello from sunny rainy flooded Wisconsin, where I have been happily lodged for most of the last month (fortunately, without any water damage). As anyone who has ever talked to me, walked past me when I have a Green Bay Packers logo attached to my person somewhere, or been within shouting distance when I am watching a football game is painfully aware, I love this place, almost as much as I love foisting every possible Wisconsin reference on unsuspecting passers-by. Sadly, I get fewer opportunities to do that when I'm actually in Wisconsin, since most of our unsuspecting passers-by already fully appreciate Brett Favre and frozen custard and have no need of my promotional comments. But it's come to my attention that tonight is Sunday night, and that I haven't offered an edition of Sunday Nights on the Lam for a long, lonely five-week stretch. So we're going to combine my two passions - Wisconsin and inexcusably belated blogging - for this live-from-Wisconsin edition of Sunday Nights on the Lam.

First, it's baseball season, and according to accuratebobbleheadlist.blogspot.com, my new second-favorite blog, that can only mean that the Brewers are giving away bobblehead dolls! For the uninitiated, these little figurines usually bear the likeness of some popular player, but here in Milwaukee, we honor the true stars - participants in the sausage race, in which people costumed as a bratwurst, a hot dog, a chorizo, an Italian sausage, and a kielbasa race around the field at the bottom of the sixth inning of every game. Consequently, fans who attended today's 7-3 beatdown of Sam Novey's beloved Orioles were rewarded with a bobblehead figure of a Polish sausage. As awesome as a bobble-sausage is, though, even I will admit that it can't quite top a Memorial Day Weekend bobblefoot day. Apparently the Saint Paul Saints, a minor-league team over yonder in the Land of Slightly Fewer Lakes, handed out this tribute to Larry Craig:

Now, if that doesn't make you appreciate baseball, I don't know what will.

On the subject of sports, folks here also do love their hunting, and not just the shooting at varmints that passes for hunting in Romney-land. The corresponding pro-gun attitudes have sometimes reached frightening extremes - for example, in 2005, we came dangerously close to passing a concealed-carry bill that would allow guns in daycare centers. However, happily, we haven't gone quite so far as the Missouri car dealer who gave away a free gun to everyone who bought a car. Perhaps another argument for alternative energy - with gas prices this high, people are really getting desperate to sell a car.

Finally, if you're wondering about the title of this post, it's a reference to a song from a fabulous musical called "Belgians in Heaven," by Fred Heide and James Kaplan; it was performed regularly during my childhood (and possibly still today) by the American Folklore Theatre in Door County, Wisconsin. (Where is that? If Wisconsin is shaped like a mitten - and no matter what Michiganders and Michigeese tell you, it is - Door County is about where the thumbnail starts. Picturesque, I know.) Sadly, they haven't yet hit YouTube, but it is an excellent show, and it features a hilarious song with the chorus:

Cheese curds, booyah, and beer
That's what I like to hear
I may be kinda pokey,
But I say, "Okey-dokey!"
To cheese curds, booyah, and beer.

I love this song not only because it's an awfully catchy polka, but also because it celebrates three of Wisconsin's greatest sources of calories, two of which you've probably never heard of (you can guess which two). Cheese curds, although they probably sound fairly artificial, are actually fresh cheddar cheese, before it's processed and aged; they are the only food product I know of that are fresh if they squeak in your teeth. Fresh curds are tasty raw, but as far as I'm concerned, they are infinitely better when fried - those of you lucky enough to have a Culver's nearby can experience that particular delicacy. Booyah is a chicken stew of probably Belgian origins whose name, long before it was a short-lived expression of triumph when I was in approximately the fifth grade, originated as a botched transcription of the French "bouillon," properly pronounced. And beer - well, you know. However, you may not know how John McCain feels about beer:

All we need to do is circulate that video, and Barack Obama will take Wisconsin by double-digit margins.

That's all for this week's (or, more probably, month's) edition of Sunday Nights on the Lam. Enjoy your summers, and visit Wisconsin!

A brief note for journalists covering the Wisconsin primaries

I can't help but notice that bloggers and journalists, possibly those who were foolish enough to go on assignment to Wisconsin without their long underwear, keep harping on how cold it is. See, e.g., Real Clear Politics:

Wisconsin -- cold, cold, cold. Right now, it's 1 degree F in Madison. One. But, hey, at least it's sunny!

On behalf of the cheeseheads: WE KNOW. THIS IS NOT UNUSUAL. WISCONSIN IS COLD. Now shut up and cover the election.

Of course, twelve hours from now they'll all be packed up and headed to Texas, where they'll probably deliver the amazing revelation that lots of Texans are fairly enamored of Texas. Brilliant.