Voter fraud most people will never hear about

Powerline has notes and links about the voter fraud that took place in Wisconsin for the last presidential elections. There seems to be no way around this - there was major fraud.

The Milwaukee investigation has revealed that the number of ballots counted there exceeds, by 4,609, the number of people recorded as voting. There is no evident explanation for this other than ballot box stuffing. In addition, investigators found "more than 200 cases of felons voting illegally and more than 100 people who voted twice, used fake names or false addresses or voted in the name of a dead person." And that's just the fraud that has been specifically identified. Approximately 70,000 voters registered in Milwaukee on election day, and they voted overwhelmingly for John Kerry. Altogether, Kerry received 71% of the 277,000 votes cast in Milwaukee, a margin of 116,000 votes. There is no way to be sure whether more than 11,000 votes--less than 10% of Kerry's Milwaukee margin--were fraudulent. But it is entirely possible that voter fraud swung Wisconsin into the Democrats' column.

No statistics here about how many have registered on election day in Wisconsin in past years. It wouldn't be surprising to see this number much higher than normal because of the intensity of the election, but we really will never know how many of these were fraudulent. Election-day registration may make voting more accessible to the masses, but if not managed properly, it opens the door to fraud on a massive scale. Most importantly, there's no practical way to prevent someone from driving from polling place to polling place, claiming a different name and address at each poll. From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

A photo ID requirement might have caught some of the problems highlighted in Tuesday's preliminary report. It notes cases of people voting in the name of a dead person or as someone else. Investigators located some people listed as voting who said they did not vote. In other cases, according to Tuesday's report, people "registered and voted with identities and addresses that cannot in any way be linked to a real person."

A proposed law to require photo ID's when registering on election day has been fought by the Democrats, and vetoed by the Democratic Governor, but could still pass by voter mandate. I'm not sure why asking for a photo-ID is such a great infringement on privacy -- you need a photo ID just to cash a check or get on a plane -- but that seems to be the common argument against. While nobody is suggesting this fraud would have changed the election, as they did about Florida in 2000, more than a couple of people are filing charges to set the record straight and afix some blame for the mistake. Via Duluth News Tribune and the AP newswire:

The state Elections Board launched an investigation into why the state's largest county approved voting results without receiving the materials after the Nov. 2 election, said executive director Kevin Kennedy. The investigation could result in a legal challenge to the outcome of the presidential race because the state used incomplete information to certify the results, said state Sen. Joe Leibham, R-Sheboygan. He said Milwaukee County committed "a clear violation of state law" and election workers could face felony charges specified under state law.

Felony charges are well deserved, in my mind. Tampering with the ballot in some ways lowers us to the level of tyrants like Saddam Hussein. The results of a ballot must be as accurate as humanly possible or it loses its value entirely.