Lisa Artison keeps digging the hole deeper in Milwaukee. The Milwaukee election commission announced yesterday that they have determined that 1,305 same-day voter registrations from the November 2 election could not be verified, instead of the 10,000 estimate Artison reported earlier. However, as the Journal-Sentinel's Greg Borowski reports, that leaves over 7,000 more votes than registered voters in Milwaukee:

Milwaukee officials said Thursday that 1,305 same-day voter registration cards from the Nov. 2 election could not be processed, including more than 500 cases where voters listed no address and dozens more where no name was written on the card.

But the revelation of the actual number of cards that couldn't be processed, far lower than previous estimates of 8,300 or more, raised new concerns, because it leaves a clear gap of more than 7,000 people who voted on Nov. 2 and cannot be accounted for in city records.

An audit earlier by Borowski showed an additional 1,200 registrations that came from non-existent addresses. Yesterday, the commission upped that number to almost 3,000, as cards from apartment buildings have come back as undeliverable (the J-S could not verify apartment addresses due to database issues). Almost half of the new set of 1,305 didn't even have an address and/or a name on them. And the gap between registered voters and the votes cast in Milwaukee is larger than the 7,000 one gets from simple subtraction, as Borowski has found a number of instances of multiple voting.

Shown in this scan is a registration card from "Randal Jarosch". Note that Jarosch filled out the card as a new voter in the precinct -- and yet supplied no address at all, despite having supplied a Wisconsin driver's license as ID. He signed the card, as did the poll worker, who also supplied a voter number, which means Jarosch got his ballot. The poll worker never bothered to check the address against the ID, meaning Jarosch could have driven in from Hudson if he wanted.

Have the city leaders taken any ownership of this fiasco? No -- they've started shifting the blame away as fast as possible:

Lisa Artison, executive director of the city's Election Commission, said "layer upon layer" of human error likely is to blame for the problems, which came as election workers faced a crush of voters, tens of thousands of whom registered at the polls. ...

Mayor Tom Barrett reiterated his confidence in Artison and pledged that the process will be improved. "We will look at all options to see what we can do," said Barrett, who was elected in April. "Obviously, it's a system I inherited."

Artison wants people to simply accept that "mistakes were made" and move on. Barrett also says that these issues don't convince him that photo-ID should be required for voting. Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle has threatened to veto any bills with that requirement.

Is this the kind of leadership Wisconsin voters wanted? Either massive incompetence or serious fraud has completely undermined the state's choice of electors in a Presidential election, and yet the simplest preliminary fix has been taken off the table by the state's executive, and the two people on the scene responsible for conducting the election refuse to take any responsibility for its failure. In such an environment, it's easy to see why this incompetence or corruption flourishes. (see also The American Mind)

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry is

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Milwaukee Can't Account For Gap:

» Milwaukee OK'd 1,305 Flawed Voter Cards from Vista On Current Events
Via the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel January 27

People were allowed to cast ballots, despite registrations with wrong information [Read More]

Tracked on January 29, 2005 4:46 AM

» Ty from Ty
Walker [Read More]

Tracked on March 28, 2006 3:00 AM

» Ty from Ty
Walker [Read More]

Tracked on March 28, 2006 3:00 AM