Republican Election Theft Watch for 10/31/04

Dateline Wisconsin:

The state Republican party is questioning another 37,180 addresses of people registered to vote in the city along with the more than 5,600 it already had flagged last week.



The party is demanding city officials require identification from all of those voters Tuesday or it is prepared to have volunteers challenge each individual at the polls.



"It's not a leap at all to say the potential for voter fraud is high in the city, and the integrity of the entire election, frankly, is at stake," state GOP chairman Rick Graber said. "The city's records are in horrible shape."



Any inaccurate address is an opening for someone to cast a fraudulent vote, he said.



Last week the party claimed Milwaukee had 5,619 bad addresses, but the challenge was dismissed 3-0 by the city Election Commission.



Democrats condemned the latest move as a last-minute effort to suppress turnout in the largely Democratic city of Milwaukee by creating long delays at the polls.



City officials, who already were trying to establish safeguards in response to the party's claim of 5,619 bad addresses, were surprised by the new number.



City Attorney Grant Langley labeled the GOP request "outrageous."



"We have already uncovered hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of addresses on their (original list) that do exist," said Langley, who holds a nonpartisan office. "Why should I take their word for the fact this new list is good? I'm out of the politics on this, but this is purely political."



The initial GOP challenge cited thousands of cases where no voter address exists, such as vacant lots and, in one case, a gyros stand.



The Republicans generated the list using a computer to compare the city's list of 386,526 registered voters to a U.S. Postal Service list of known addresses.



The same list generated about 13,300 cases in which incorrect apartment numbers were listed, and some 18,200 more cases where no apartment number was listed for an existing building. The party didn't include any of those in its original challenge, filed three minutes before a 5 p.m. Wednesday deadline.

This kind of challenge is ridiculous. In most cases, mail is delivered to tenants at a particular address even if an apartment number is not included in the address. Republicans want to challenge these addresses. They would similarly challenge an address in which "Township" was part of the name, if, say, the post office address had it as "Twps." or "Twsp". and the voter registration form read "Twp." Or "Boro of" instead of "Borough of".



This kind of challenge is designed to do two things: 1) keep the challenged voter (who in most places will be black; funny how the Republican party is getting touch with and embracing its inner Jim Crow after all these years); and 2) clog up the works so the polls in the challenged areas, which in most cases are minority/Democratic, can't handle everyone who comes out to vote before the polls close.



Again, I ask you: If the Republicans are so proud of their record, and so confident, why do they have to resort to disenfranchisement -- preventing people from voting -- in order to win?



Eriposte will document the atrocities...



UPDATE: Kos has a big lineup of Republican vote suppression efforts.