Hey Jessica

Shouting madVoter ID, voter fraud have tempers flaring in Madison

By JESSICA McBRIDE

March 8, 2008

You think it's just the Dem's. Hang onto your socks. Waiting for the DOJ to get their papers and then we'll post the Repubs here



In my media writing class at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, I assign a simulated news reporting assignment involving a fake school board meeting.
This semester, the fake school board members got into a fistfight to create "conflict" news value. After creating the assignment, I briefly wondered whether or not the fistfight was too unrealistic.
Journalism students, meet the state Legislature.
The headline this week: Democrats, Republicans get in shouting match at news conference. The picture with the story shows two lawmakers confronting one another and a frazzled looking Rep. Jeff Stone in between, like a "Saturday Night Live" skit.
According to the story, the Republicans called the news conference because they wanted Senate Democrats to vote on a proposed constitutional amendment to require photo IDs when voting.
The Democrats, who showed up at a news conference they didn’t call, alleged that they just didn’t agree with Republicans on the issue. No kidding. They were shouting at Republicans at a news conference.
The Republicans weren’t angry because the Democrats oppose photo ID (although I am sure that hacks them off too). They called the news conference to highlight the fact that Democrats were bottling up the proposal so no one would have to put their name to a vote on whether to allow the public to ultimately decide the matter. That’s exactly what then happened.
Democrats don’t trust the public to make up its own mind. Nor do they want the public to know which Democrats don’t want to let them make up their own mind. And they’re really upset that Republicans want the public to get to make up its own mind. Period.
The voter fraud/photo ID issue took on new currency recently when someone in the Milwaukee Police Department leaked a fairly old report to the media on the 2004 presidential election. It found that campaign workers from other states were voting here possibly contrary to our laws; record keeping was so shoddy it invited fraud; thousands more ballots were counted than people listed as voting; on-site registration forms were not filled out properly; felons voted illegally; and other problems.
Democrats argue that Republicans haven’t proven fraud. Yes, they have. The police proved that. There was fraud. The scope of it is largely unknown due to the wide-open, poorly documented system. So, Democrats can’t prove fraud didn’t occur. They can just argue Republicans haven’t documented how much of it happened.
Why don’t Democrats spend their energy implementing reasonable safeguards to make sure it’s not easy for a lot of fraud to happen? (Like photo ID). The answer is fairly obvious if you look at which party benefits from the documented problems.
The police report advocated policy changes: An elimination to same-day registration and photo ID at the polls. Wisconsin’s loose laws on both create an invitation to fraud or, at least, no strong safeguard against it.
Gov. Jim Doyle then told the media he didn’t think the police should be suggesting policy and the police chief, who didn’t know about the report’s release, had a fit about it, saying he hadn’t authorized it and didn’t know who put it out.
The real question the media didn’t focus on: Why did the police sit on this information for so long without releasing it? The nonrelease could be seen as political.
If Milwaukee police find systematic illegalities - or a messed up situation that makes it impossible to tell - why shouldn’t they propose fixes? After all, they’re the ones who have to clean up the mess, wasting their resources on a problem with a partial solution. Law enforcement types propose policy all the time - tougher drunken driving laws, opposing (or supporting) concealed carry.
I can appreciate, though, why the police chief wouldn’t want his underlings to do so without his signing off on it. So why did Nan Hegerty, the former police chief once named by a Democratic president to a top federal position, sit on the report?
There’s some truth in the middle on the photo ID debate, of course. It’s true, as Democrats say, that photo ID won’t prevent all fraud. It’s true that widespread, organized fraud hasn’t been proven.
It’s also true that there’s enough evidence of a problem to put into place additional safeguards to ensure it’s tougher to commit fraud at the polls. Furthermore, the Democratic arguments against the measure are not sound.
Their key argument that photo ID will disenfranchise poor blacks is patronizing and racist, especially since Republican proposals ensure that poor people can get IDs. It implies that poor blacks are somehow less capable of figuring out how to get a free photo ID. Pretty insulting.
Furthermore, if getting a photo ID is a greater problem for some groups, then spurring an educational outreach campaign is the better answer.
Let’s just revisit the past few years. Felons voting illegally, smokes for votes, tire slashings, double voting, illegalities in voter registration drives, and so on.
If nothing else, photo ID will deter some fraud by making it clear that people are watching the system more closely.
Yes, the Milwaukee police officers who wrote that report were right. Whoever they are.