Mail Call #7: Trumping Reason (or coherence)

Trump supporters continue to spout confusing word salads at me. I think this person is anti-clean water and voting because of abortion? Or something? You decide:

It is amazing how progressives pick and choose among 'human rights'.  Finding from the right to life a right to feticide.  Finding a right to vote.  Finding a right to my environment's clean water.

Finding, from the right to life, a right to defense of life but not the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

Truly Meme Magic.  The Alternative Right is right.  TRUMP 2016

On a more positive note, I've gotten a much higher than normal volume of positive email responses to my column about the Clinton/Trump debate, largely from women, and specifically largely from older women who express how much relief and righteousness they felt at seeing what they've been experiencing their whole lives put into words. I find this incredibly humbling and gratifying, but also infuriating that so many women have had to suffer these indignities in relative silence for so damn long.

No. Fucking. More.

Post-election hangover

It's heartbreaking to wake up after a major election with the feeling that a large percentage of your fellow citizens have just kicked you--and themselves, really--square in the teeth. Yesterday's midterms are a prime example of wave elections based on doubling down on self-fuckery, voting out of spite and prioritizing winning over actual good governance and fairness.

To make matters worse, only about 55% of the eligible voters in this state actually voted. That's seen as quite high for a midterm--which is, frankly, depressing as hell. Local elections have a far, far greater impact on our day-to-day lives than do presidential picks. I'd argue that elections matter more the more local they are--city/county up to state.

So what happened? Half of us stayed home. Was it because of all the voter ID nonsense, people being disenfranchised, turned off entirely by the process (maybe just assuming their vote doesn't matter, especially if they live in one of the now several gerrymandered-to-within-an-inch-of-their-lives districts)? I don't have the answers, obviously, but something is terribly, terribly wrong when just half of half of the voting population has the power to make these big decisions on behalf of us all.

Something has got to give.

According to Ezra Klein, anyway, we have 2016 to look forward to as a far better year for Democrats/progressives, but it doesn't make today any less depressing.

Full breakdown of vote by county here.

In the meantime, I'm going to sit here and wait for the gushing thank-you notes from all the political comedians for sending troglodytic buffoon Glenn Grothman to the U.S. Congress. I'm looking at you, the Daily Show, Last Week Tonight, the Onion, and Wonkette.

Meanwhile, the apparently rather powerful transportation / highway builders lobby in Wisconsin won big yesterday as well. They managed to sneak a cleverly worded referendum onto the ballot that passed with overwhelming numbers, despite the fact that what it actually does is enshrine corporate patronage into our state constitution.

A silver lining among all the depressing news, though, was how the referendum to support raising the minimum wage did: it won big.

Douglas 70%
Dane 74%
Eau Claire 61%
La Crosse 61%
Kenosha 63%
Milwaukee 66%
Portage 58%
Rock 64%
Wood 55%
Appleton 59%
Menasha 60%
Neenah 60%
Racine 72%

Now to see if our government pays any heed to the voice of the people on this one.

Vote 'yes' on the Garver Arts Incubator

Election day draws near (it's April 7, in case you forgot), and in amongst the many candidate and referendum choices available to Madison residents will be a question on whether or not the city should sell the old Garver Feed Mill to Common Wealth Development. And I highly encourage you to vote 'yes' for that move.

Why? Because CWD, a non-profit organization that has done a lot of good for our community over the years, wants to transform the beautiful old--currently vacant--building into an arts incubator. They're proposing a LEED-certified renovation of the space so that it will provide much-needed, affordable studio and learning space for area artists. According to a CWD press release:

The Garver Arts Incubator will include 40 art studios. Visitors can enroll in art classes, attend performances or view a gallery while interacting with artists. A three-story atrium, indoor/outdoor café, gift shop and rooftop garden are also included in the plan. In addition, the renovation will be a sustainable development project and the building will be LEED certified.

They go on to emphasize that the center will not be paid for with city taxpayer money. Instead, "If the referendum passes, the City of Madison will sell the Garver building to Common Wealth who would retain ownership of the land through a minimum 30-year lease." Money for the project would be gotten through private funds, tax credits, and some federal assistance.

Certainly there's added appeal for me in a project like this. I'm heavily involved in the arts community, and many of my friends are artists who would likely benefit from its creation. In fact, the idea reminds me very much of the Mellwood Arts & Entertainment Center in Louisville, Kentucky. A few of my Wis-Kino comrades and I went down to Louisville to participate in their 48-hour filmmaking festival, and the final screening was held in a very nice room in the center.

It's an old, converted meat packing warehouse that now houses artist studios, a cafe, fitness center, some retail space, galleries, and teaching spaces. I remember being very impressed with the look and feel of the building, and that the city had such a great resource for its artists. The Garver Arts Incubator could be just such a space for Madison.

The main reason it's had to come up for referendum is that, "Under the city's shoreline preservation ordinance, voters must endorse the project located near Starkweather Creek before construction can begin." I'm hopeful that, based on CDW's track record of working closely with the community and paying close attention to environmental concerns, shoreline preservation will be a top priority in construction plans. They've already made plans to have "on-site storm water management and a comprehensive transportation plan that minimizes parking," which is a good start.

I encourage you to read more about it over at the CWD website. They have detailed plans and proposals available. And if it means anything to you, The Capital Times has endorsed the idea, and my own alder, Marsha Rummel, has been championing the project as well.

Vote Yes for the Garver Arts Incubator.

A torn heart

I watched the returns roll in with a festive and like-minded crowd last night at the High Noon Saloon, and admit that I found myself getting misty-eyed on several occasions.

When the camera coverage on CNN cut to images of the Rev. Jesse Jackson with tears in his eyes, I almost lost my composure completely. I haven't agreed with everything he's done and said over the years, but still I have a great deal of respect for the greater fight he's been fighting. And here is a man who walked beside Martin Luther King Jr., and now he gets to see the election of this country's first African American president. Amazing.

Too, it's very nice to be on the winning side of a national election for the first time in my voting career.

We all deserve to feel really good, to revel in this massively historic accomplishment. But still, not to rain on any parades, we have a lot of hard work ahead of us. Obama said it himself in his victory speech last night. It's going to be an uphill battle. We have far better tools and leadership with which to see that battle through now, but it's still not going to be easy.

With the new-found Democratic majorities in both houses of the legislature here in Wisconsin, and a strengthening of those majorities at the national level, Democrats must now kick into high gear and get things done. And we, their constituents, must hold them accountable and push them to do the right thing. It's often very tempting for the majority party to just run roughshod, more focused on assuaging their own egoes and selfish desires than on actually working for a better country for all of us. Let's make sure that doesn't happen again.

And while we're at it, let's do something at the national level to actually fulfill the promise of equal rights for all under the law. Last night saw one giant step forward for equality, and several state-level steps back.

In California, for instance, Proposition 8 looks to have passed by a slim margin, stripping the rights of LGBT people across the state and (hopefully only temporarily) extinguishing the light of one of the great beacons of fairness in this country. It also throws into limbo around 18,000 same-sex marriages that have been conducted over the past 4 1/2 months.

I want you to imagine, if you can, waking up one morning to find that your fellow citizens have voted to revoke your marriage license, simply because your idea of love differed from theirs. I cannot even begin to understand how heart-rending this must be for all those couples who thought finally, finally, they were able to enjoy the same rights as everyone else. To know that so many people still have such a fundamental misunderstanding and fear of something as simple as the love you have for your partner. To realize that, after so much gained ground, you've once again been pushed back into the muck.

It's time to up our game, then--to launch a nationwide campaign to garauntee equal rights for all just as we did to rid ourselves of things like anti-miscegenation laws.

Just as important, though, is the continued and more quiet rise in visibility for LGBT people. The more gay folks people get to know on a personal level, the more they tend to support gay rights. It's about education and familiarity. The false spectre of the evil, degenerate, family-destroying gay falls pretty quickly to the wayside once people really meet and interact with members of the LGBT community. So despite these crushing blows to the cause--or perhaps because of them--it is crucial that we continue to fight the good fight, never stopping, because as Americans we have to believe that equality and fairness will eventually win out over ignorance and oppression.

We saw the potential for positive results yesterday, when Obama claimed victory. Take heart in that, and keep movin' forward.

TO ADD: I don't agree with the "fascist" part, but the rest seems about right:

This whole thing makes me doubly angry, because 1) it's super lame, and 2) it's making it difficult for me to be as happy as I ought to be about Obama winning. Blargh.

MORE TO ADD: Andrew Sullivan has a really good take on this here.

YET MORE TO ADD: OK, I'll buy this and dare to hope. The proposition alone may not actually be enough to amend the CA constitution.

Elation.

I am exhausted, but so immensely happy.

(Now I'm just hoping that California doesn't harsh my mellow)

Election Day '08

Haven't had your fill of election day prattling from all corners of the blogosphere? Then read on!

Boy am I sleepy. It has already been an interesting day, and it's not even lunchtime yet.

I rolled out of bed at 6:15 this morning and, because of the unseasonably gorgeous weather, hopped on my bike to head to my polling place. This year, I got to cast my ballot at the lovely Olbrich Gardens - and by the time I got out of there an hour and a half later, was glad to have had the pleasant vistas to keep me mildly entertained.

When I rolled up at 6:55, there was already a long line snaking down across the parking lot. Everyone seemed upbeat, though, and once the doors opened the line moved at a relatively good pace. Unfortunately, at around 7:20 word came that the one and only tabulation machine on the premises had jammed. They were instead bundling all of the ballots into a clear, sealed and signed plastic bag until such time as "someone from the city" came out to fix the machine. We were assured that, once that happened, all of our ballots would be fed into the counting machine for us, so I can only hope and assume that that happened.

For what it's worth, I was voter #280 at around 7:55/8ish.

I'm following a couple of live blogs that are attempting to track the goings on at various polling places in the area, and so far no major mishaps have popped up (just something about misinformed poll workers in Sun Prairie).

Tonight, I'll be doing some live blogging of my own, covering the election results viewing party being thrown at the High Noon Saloon by the Daily Page. The link is already active, even if the live blogging won't commence until 8pm. So if you're looking for oh-so witty and snarky commentary on the elections and the singing abilities of Madison's political junkies, please come on by and have a read.

In the meantime, if you find yourself becoming overwhelmed by the anxiety and excitement of the day, may I recommend a cleansing dose of puppies? I find it's good for the stress levels.

So, how's everyone's election day going?

UPDATE: This is cool. Granted it's on the honor system, but Facebook is tracking how many of its users have voted today. Provided that even most of the folks who've said "yes" are telling the truth, the numbers are encouraging, I think. As of 11:39AM, it's at 1,765,887 and climbing.

Vote, damn it!

Van Hollen can't get his story straight

First, Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen claimed that "There was no discussion with anybody involved in leadership with the Republican Party (or the McCain Campaign) about this lawsuit before it was brought." Then he said he had "no reason to believe” any of his aides discussed the case with the GOP or the McCain campaign.

This was all back in September, but maybe being on the losing end of a lawsuit has jogged his memory. On Oct. 26, Van Hollen was interviewed for a story on CNN, and when asked whether or not lawyers from the GOP had a discussion in his office the week before he filed the suit, he replied that "I understand that's true." When then pressed if he'd been asked by those lawyers to file the suit, he said "No. They may have asked lawyers in my office to file the lawsuit."

That's a bit of a different story than he was first telling when the whole thing came up back in September.

If there is an appeal of the ruling in this case, I would ask and hope that those handling it take a serious look at this man's various and contradictory statements. There's something seriously amiss when our Attorney General keeps changing his story about whether or not partisan politics had any influence over something as important as election law.

See the interview here (scroll down).

Living vicariously through CA and FL

On November 4th, citizens in both California and Florida will head to the polls not just to voice their preference for president, but also to help decide whether their states will write discrimination into their constitutions by banning gay marriage.

In California, this comes just seven months after the state's supreme court ruled that it was unconstitutional to deny marriage and all its legal benefits to same-sex couples. Outraged that the whole "equal rights under the law" thing was actually being upheld, opponents of gay marriage rallied and put Proposition 8 onto the November ballot. Proposition 8, as I'm sure most of you already know, would re-ban homosexual couples from marrying and annul all of the same-sex marriages that have already taken place.

ELIMINATES RIGHT OF SAME-SEX COUPLES TO MARRY. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. Changes the California Constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry in California. Provides that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California. Fiscal Impact: Over next few years, potential revenue loss, mainly sales taxes, totaling in the several tens of millions of dollars, to state and local governments. In the long run, likely little fiscal impact on state and local governments.

Down in Florida, a similar ballot measure will be voted on come Nov. 4th - and it's eerily reminiscent of the one Wisconsin voted into law back in 2006. Though gay marriage is already illegal in Florida, Amendment 2 would "enshrine the prohibition in the Florida Constitution, making it nearly impossible for a judge to overturn." It would likely apply to domestic partnerships as well, which effects both straight and gay couples.

I still don't understand why some folks are so hell-bent on writing discrimination into the law. But America has spent every day since its inception fighting to make good on the original promises of the Declaration, Constitution, and Bill of Rights. I guess, then, I shouldn't be surprised that the struggle continues, but since I'm an idealist at heart, it still makes me sad.

Take, for example, one of my favorite bands, the Ditty Bops. The dynamic duo at the band's center, Amanda Barrett and Abby DeWald, have been a couple for ten years and were just recently finally able to get married (they live in California). Now, I want you to watch this video and tell me why you want to strip these two of their rights and how on earth you could possibly disapprove of their relationship.

But you know what? It shouldn't matter whether or not they're the most adorable and talented couple ever (because they pretty much are), because no one seems to have as much of a problem with the many perfectly wacky straight folks who get married every day.

Because it shouldn't matter.

If two consenting, not immediately related to one another adults wish to enter into a legally binding relationship, with all of the federal benefits it entails, then it should absolutely be their right to do so. You don't get to decide for them. Period.

Unfortunately, a narrow majority of my fellow Wisconsinites were misguided enough to pass our blight of an amendment to do just that. And so I am left to fervently hope that California especially and Florida, too, do better.

If you live in either of those states, please, vote no. Donate money. Talk to your friends and neighbors who might disagree and be thinking of voting yes, and do so with compassion and logic. The struggle continues.

JB Van Hollen has a good sense of humor

In a letter to Senate Democrats, who were curious as to how much taxpayer money was being spent on his "frivolous" lawsuit against the Government Accountability Board, Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen claimed that, "At the time of your letter, the Department of Justice had spent the court filing fee: $155."

It's possible that, at the time the letter arrived in his hands, the only pay out that had been made was the filing fee. What he's leaving out, perhaps out of spite, is how much it has cost to pay DoJ employees to work on the case:

[Rep. Mark] Pocan said Van Hollen omitted the cost of having Department of Justice employees work long hours on the complicated lawsuit since its filing six weeks ago.

“He’s had his spokesman on the issue. He’s had lawyers on the issue — and they wrote a 78-page brief,” Pocan said. “It’s pretty clear he’s not telling us how much taxpayer money he’s wasting on this lawsuit.”

Maybe it's all just an elaborate practical joke Van Hollen is pulling. I mean, claiming that a suit of any size only costs $155 is pretty laughable. Unless he's doing this pro bono, out of the goodness of his own heart.

Excuse me, I'm laughing again....OK, all better.

Let's hope that the judge hearing the case tomorrow takes things a little more seriously, and gives Van Hollen a good, proper rebuking.

I think I figured it out...

...all this screeching from the right-wing about ACORN and alleged widespread voter fraud (for which there is little to no evidence)?

They're getting ready to lose.

Casting off the ballot casters

In the push to bring their states into compliance with HAVA, it looks like many have gone too far. According to a recent study by the New York Times:

Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law, according to a review of state records and Social Security data by The New York Times.

The study didn't find any particularly partisan reasons for these purges, which is good, but it does, I think, illustrate what can happen when we value kicking people off the rolls over getting them properly registered.

This certainly isn't true across the board, but more Democrats seem primarily concerned with making sure anyone and everyone who can vote is able to do so, whereas more Republicans seem primarily concerned with making sure anyone and everyone who cannot vote is not able to do so. It's a notable difference in philosophies. Both are important, but I happen to believe that the former should be our priority.

As for these swing states' overzealous and improper enforcement of HAVA requirements, I can't help but be reminded of the voter registration controversy here in Wisconsin. Aside from the fact that it's looking more and more like Attorney General Van Hollen filed it for somewhat dubious, partisan reasons, I'm left wondering just how effective it's possible for HAVA to be in its current incarnation. It seems to be wreaking havoc all over the country.

Yes, our voting system needs overhauling--you've only to refer to the 2000 elections in Florida and the 2004 elections in Ohio for prime examples of why--but I'm not convinced that this is the way to go about it. Fact is, the spectre of voter fraud so often and ominously raised is rather flimsy. Cases of individual voter fraud are few and far between, and hardly merit the panic and radical action (ID requirements, for instance) so often being called for.

According to truthaboutfraud.org, in the 2004 elections in Wisconsin:

...allegations yielded only 7 substantiated cases of individuals knowingly casting invalid votes that counted -- all persons with felony convictions. This amounts to a rate of 0.0025% within Milwaukee and 0.0002% within the state as a whole. None of these problems could have been resolved by requiring photo ID at the polls.

So while it's important to make sure that people legally barred from voting--or people who don't exist in the first place--don't cast ballots, it's not nearly so pressing and huge an issue as some folks would have us believe. Shouldn't we be more concerned with things like hackable ballot machines without paper trails? Provisional ballots not being counted? Disenfranchisement of certain legal voters?

Fact is, there are far more crucial issues in our election system that need addressing, too. Perhaps we should revisit HAVA. Absolutely we should make sure that states are following appropriate procedures when checking voter registration databases instead of wildly purging thousands from the rolls based on incorrect information. Again, the NYT:

In Michigan, some 33,000 voters were removed from the rolls in August, a figure that is far higher than the number of deaths in the state during the same period — about 7,100 — or the number of people who moved out of the state — about 4,400, according to data from the Postal Service.

In Colorado, some 37,000 people were removed from the rolls in the three weeks after July 21. During that time, about 5,100 people moved out of the state and about 2,400 died, according to postal data and death records.

In Louisiana, at least 18,000 people were dropped from the rolls in the five weeks after July 23. Over the same period, at least 1,600 people moved out of state and at least 3,300 died.

This could very well lead to some serious problems come election day, as these tens of thousands of people unfairly removed from lists show up at the polls expecting to cast their ballots, only to meet challenges from party officials or election workers.

Frankly, registration and election laws in this country are a mess. We need a standardized, streamlined, and as fool-proof as possible system of checking registrations. We need ballot machines, like the optical scanner versions we have in Wisconsin, that are 1) easy to read and fill out, 2) electronic and so easy to count, and 3) still have a paper trail (plus, there's pretty much nothing to hack in these). We need same-day and motor-voter registration laws, like those in Wisconsin, for the entire country. And heck, while we're at it, why not consider holding elections on weekends, and let them span two days instead of just one? It would make it easier for people to find time to vote, and allow for more time to count all of the ballots, instead of this weird insistance on having results the same day.

Making sure that every eligible voter gets to have their say should be the priority.

HAVA compliance now! No wait, scratch that....

Thanks to an email tipster, I was made aware of this little bit of interesting news that had otherwise slipped under my (sleepy, coughing) radar:

A recent alert by the Social Security Administration announces that the agency plans to shut down its databases for maintenance from October 11 through October 13. While this might not sound like an election issue, it turns out that this could significantly impede registration of first-time voters as well as the re-registration of eligible citizens.

Here's why. A 2002 federal law, the Help America Vote Act, requires all states to "coordinate" their voter registration databases with the Social Security database (and state motor vehicle databases) for the purpose of processing new voter registration forms. For the millions of voters who do not have current driver's licenses and register using the last four digits of their Social Security numbers, state election officials are required to try to match their voter registration information against Social Security records. But if the Social Security database is down—as it will be for four days—they won't be able to do that. Across the country, the processing of these voter registration forms will grind to a halt for four days.

Both Senator Diane Feinstein and EAC Commissioner Rosemary Rodriquez have sent letters to the SSA asking them to delay the shut down until after the elections, which seems like an entirely reasonable request to me. No word yet on whether or not the SSA will actually do that, though.

Which leaves us with the distinct possibility that, in the midst of one of the busiest election cycles in recent memory, when state's voter registration officials are scrambling to keep up not only with new registrations but, as may be the case in Wisconsin, with cross-checking older registrations in order to comply with last-minute lawsuits, said officials may be plain SOL for four days.

Let the good times roll.

Now, whether or not this was some planned partisan move, I can't rightly say. My hunch is that it was just really, really bad timing on the SSA's part--stupid, thoughtless timing--and not a concerted effort at further mucking up the voter registration process. It is interesting to note, however, that Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue "is a veteran of Republican administrations going back more than 20 years, according to his biography on the SSA Web site. Campaign finance records also show that the Belmont, Mass., resident has given more than $35,000 to GOP candidates and causes during the past decade."

Regardless, though, I sincerely hope that the SSA agrees to postpone the shut down until after the elections. State officials already have enough to worry about leading up to Nov. 4 without the added monkey wrench of the complete disappearance of their main resource for four days in October.

Accountability

I'm still hearing from people who continue to receive faulty absentee ballots from the McCain campaign, and now, in addition to just checking to see whether the information on them is correct and reporting problems to the city clerk, there's another course of action we can take.

One Wisconsin Now has created a petition "to the newly-created Election Task Force and the Government Accountability Board...calling for an immediate investigation of the mailing." There's also a tool to report bad ballots for those who've already gotten them. Both can be found here. Go! Report! Sign!

Oh but the voting shenanigans don't stop there. J.B. Van Hollen still insists that his last-minute lawsuit against the GAB is totally nonpartisan, but for some reason, keeps changing the story about whether or not he or anyone in his department spoke with Republican party members prior to filing.

Here's a handy timeline of events and statements, courtesy of the (admittedly partisan) Democratic Party of Wisconsin:

September 10, 2008

Van Hollen filed suit against the Government Accountability Board, stating “The goal of this requirement is to protect the integrity of elections by ensuring that only those who are qualified and properly registered would be permitted to cast ballots.” (Source: AG Van Hollen release, 9.10.08)

September 17, 2008

During an interview with Wisconsin Public Radio, Van Hollen said, “I can’t imagine what’s partisan about asking for fair elections … this should be about as nonpartisan an issue as there is. … Once again, I don’t know who is making this a partisan issue. Our decision to sue is non-partisan as well. (Source, WPR, Joy Cardin, 9.18.08)

During an interview with the Appleton-Post Crescent, Kevin St. John said the only motive fueling the complaint less than two months before the election is compliance with rules. (Source, APC 9.18.08)

September 18, 2008

Following a court hearing, St. John wouldn't confirm or deny whether Van Hollen consulted with the Republican Party or McCain's camp before launching the lawsuit. When pressed by reporters he responded by saying Van Hollen doesn't use any consultation with any party as a basis to decide whether to sue. (Source: AP, 9.18.08)

"This is not a coordinated lawsuit. I can say that absolutely," St. John added. (Source: WSJ, 9.18.08)

Later in the day Van Hollen said "There was no discussion with anybody involved in leadership with the Republican Party (or the McCain campaign) about this lawsuit before it was brought."

Van Hollen said he did not believe any of his aides discussed the matter with the party or campaign either. "I can't say for certain what they have or haven't done with every minute of their day any more than they could speak about mine, but I have no reason to believe - none of them have reported to me - that anybody involved in the Republican Party or the McCain campaign about this lawsuit," Van Hollen said. (Source: MJS 9.18.08)

Van Hollen's attorneys defended his lawsuit as legal and appropriate, with no conflict of interest or consultation with any Republican Party official. (Source: WISC-TV, 9.18.08)

Later in the day, a GOP attorney said he complained to the state Department of Justice about two weeks before Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen sued the state's elections authority, but Van Hollen said he was unaware of that contact. He also said he had “no reason to believe” any of his aides discussed the case with the GOP or the McCain campaign.

Finally, St. John admitted, “at least one person” at the department had contact with someone from the party on the matter. (Source: MJS 9.18.08)

September 19, 2008

Contradicting earlier statements made by DOJ staff, news reports revealed that the lead Department of Justice attorney for Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen’s lawsuit against the state’s election authority met with Republican Party representatives about a week before filing the suit.

Justice attorney Steven Means said he met with Republican attorneys Chris Mohrman and Jim Troupis at their request to discuss the Government Accountability Board’s policy on checking voter information. Other Republicans participated in the meeting via conference call, but Means said he could not recall who they were. (MJS, 9.19.08)

“The elections board is violating the law, so of course we went to the attorney general,” Mohrman said. “There may have been multiple contacts, different people to different people.” (MJS, 9.19.08)

September 21, 2008

In an interview with the Green Bay Press Gazette, Van Hollen said, “Anything I do anything related to a campaign, that's on our own time and it's on our own dime.”

“Once again, we're just flat out enforcing the law,” Van Hollen added. “Whether that hurts McCain or helps McCain, I frankly don't know. The reality is the law says that we do this to make elections fairer, and no matter whom I support, I'm enforcing the law, so I don't see what the McCain campaign has to do with it at all, frankly. (Source: GBPG, 9.21.08)

September 23, 2008

RPW Chair, Reince Preibus, admitted to the Wisconsin State Journal that he discussed his frustration with the Government Accountability Board’s decision to not commence the voter checks demanded by the RPW several times at the Republican National Convention, including at a delegation breakfast attended by Van Hollen and in a small group setting also attended by Van Hollen.

Preibus also admitted that he had multiple contacts with Van Hollen’s top aide, Deputy Attorney General Ray Taffora, regarding his belief that the Government Accountability Board should expand voter registration checks before Van Hollen filed the Lawsuit. (Source: WSJ, 9.23.08)

So, not exactly a smoking gun, but certainly more than enough to raise some serious alarms. Who talked to who and when? Is that at all common in a case like this (and if so, should it be)? As more and more interested parties pile onto the lawsuit and new details about the case emerge practically every day, I can't help but wonder: who's policing our top cop?

h/t Whalla!

Disenfranchising voters with J.B. Van Hollen

Van Hollen sure has started himself a good old-fashioned shit storm, hasn't he? Not that the issue of alleged voter fraud and disenfranchisement hasn't been around since time immemorium, but recently it's blown up here in Wisconsin thanks to several strange incidents involving misleading absentee ballot mailers sent by the McCain campaign and our AG's last-minute lawsuit.

Now the Democratic Party of Wisconsin wants in on the action, filing to be added as a party to Van Hollen's voter registration suit. Their goal, according to State Democratic Party Chairman Joe Wineke, is either to pressure Van Hollen into recusing himself from the suit or, failing that, to represent the estimated 1 million Wisconsin voters who might be wrongly purged from the voter rolls if it goes through.

All this, and Common Cause just put out a report that casts Wisconsin's voting process in glowing terms--best in the nation, even. Van Hollen and the McCain campaign seem hell-bent on making that report as irrelevent as possible, as quickly as possible.

I came to Wisconsin as a student, and the same-day, motor-voter registration was a huge boon to me and my fellow classmates. Most of us moved to a new apartment or dorm every year, making it difficult to keep our DOT records up-to-date at all times. And since many of us were coming from out-of-state, it was especially nice to be able to cast our votes from here, and not through the often difficult and unpredictable process of absentee voting.

I had this fact hammered home just recently when, at the behest of Lee Rayburn, I headed over to vpi.wi.gov to look up my own voter registration status and discovered that there was no record of me having voted in the 2004 presidential elections. That's curious, because I did vote that year, and by absentee ballot, having been told that I could cast my vote early by doing so and thus avoid long lines at the polls. Turns out, it was likely never counted.

I've heard in the past that absentee and provisional ballots are sometimes not counted until well after election day, and then only if the results are very close. This strikes me as incredibly stupid--all legitimate votes cast should be counted! But not only that, the election for which my vote was apparently not counted was damn close in Wisconsin, where Kerry won by a razor-thin margin. So what gives? And how can you expect me to trust that absentee ballots, especially those with incorrect city clerk information on them a la the McCain campaign, will be counted at all?

That's why Wisconsin's current voter registration methods are so important--and why, as Common Cause's report points out--they work so well. Less hassle at the polls means shorter lines, and fewer people turning away in frustration or for lack of time. And, despite mostly Republican claims to the contrary, there has been very little evidence of wide-spread voter fraud. Where it does crop up, it's in very small numbers and gets dealt with quickly and appropriately. Certainly, we should be sure that there are no dead people registered, no felons, and no duplicate applications. This is a worthwhile effort. But we need to balance that rather carefully with the need to make sure that everyone who is eligible and wants to vote can do so without impediment.

For another good, insightful and well-researched take on why Van Hollen's move is dangerous and ridiculous, please read Bruce Murphy's piece over at Milwaukee Magazine. Here's a choice excerpt:

It was the Republican Party, not Van Hollen, that originally demanded the Government Accountability Board take action to bar all these voters. The GAB is nonpartisan and run by six retired judges. The six judges were selected from a list by Gov. Jim Doyle, with three appointments getting approved by the Republican-led state Assembly and three getting approved by the Democratic-led state Senate. Its members, and its legal counsel George Dunst, did not believe the federal law required the action demanded by the Republican Party.

The GAB went further than consult the law, however. It solicited testimony from the experts on local polling places, the Wisconsin Municipal Clerks Association and the Wisconsin County Clerks Association. Representatives of both groups predicted the Republican Party’s proposal could not be accomplished in the 10 weeks remaining until the election and would “create havoc” at the polls (and we're now down to seven weeks). Bushey says she checked with her membership in the state’s 72 counties and the members were “overwhelmingly” opposed to the GOP idea. Nancy Zastrow, head of the Municipal Clerks Association, said the feeling was the same among her 1,300 fellow clerks.

Only after the Republican Party’s demand was shot down did Van Hollen go into action.

Frankly, I don't see how you wouldn't view this as a boldly partisan move on Van Hollen's part. So while there is room for improvement in how we register and verify voters in this state (not to mention nationwide, where people mostly seem to have a tougher time of it than those of us in Wisconsin), this particular effort only seems aimed at making the situation worse. And with so much riding on this next election, we simply cannot afford to let bad partisan politics take control of our voting system.

Van Hollen's Hail Mary

Yesterday, Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen decided to file a last-minute suit against the state's elections agency in an effort to get them to force ineligible voters off the rolls. Seems straight-forward enough, right?

Yeah, maybe not.

I have several questions about this move that I'd love to see addressed: first, how many states actually have full compliance with the HAVA law? And what does full compliance mean for voter enfranchisement (let's talk about paperless ballots, shall we)? How long would it take for Wisconsin to conduct this back check of registrations, and would it interfere with the upcoming November elections (something tells me it might)? Are we setting ourselves up to be the next Ohio or Florida because of this?

One of the latest causes du jour of the GOP has been voter ID and fraud, and this move only seems to play into their push. Thing is, voter fraud has been shown, time and time again, not to be at all systemic or very problematic. In fact, the vast majority of inconsistencies found in voter rolls by the state board all seem to be minor instances of typos, variations in how names are used, and incompatibilities between state databases. Certainly, it's worth working to streamline and better the registration system so that it's easier to conduct the necessary checks. In fact, since August of this year, we've apparently achieved that ability as required under the law (more importantly, we should work to ensure that everyone who can vote is able to do so without difficulty).

But since this was later than the deadline laid out by HAVA, and since that meant some time wherein new registrations were not run through the more strict background checks, Van Hollen is irritated enough to sue.

The state's election officials are not pleased, and rightfully so, I think. Coming just two months before the presidential elections--likely to be hotly contested in this state--the suit smells a bit like a last-minute hail Mary, something that might help skew results one way or another. Maybe I'm being overly paranoid, but being that all evidence suggests little real voter fraud in Wisconsin, and being that the elections board did eventually come into compliance with the law, the move seems unnecessary.

At best, it will eliminate a small handful of dodgy registrations. At worst, it might disenfranchise a whole slew of perfectly valid voters. In theory, that's what HAVA was supposed to fix, not contribute to.

But hey, at least we're not Michigan. I hope.

UPDATED TO ADD: Well, turns out Van Hollen is the Wisconsin co-chair of John McCain's campaign. No, that doesn't smack of being a conflict of interest at all.

I'd also like to note that using mismatched address data from WisDOT and voter registrations as reason to bar people from voting is an especially terrible idea when you consider how many people move to new apartments from year to year (students and lower income folks especially). I have some personal experience with this: when you move that often, it's sometimes difficult to remember to update everything, in a timely fashion, with WisDOT. That alone should never lead to someone being prevented from voting, though.

Third party candidates and you

I have a confession to make. I voted for Nader in 2000. Having recently turned 18, it was the first presidential election for which I could vote, and to say it was a memorable way to enter the voting arena would be quite the understatement.

Thing was, I rather liked Al Gore, but at the time he wasn't presenting himself as a terribly inspiring candidate, and I was chomping at the bit for a viable third party. Plus, I didn't believe that anyone in their right mind would vote for George W. Bush. The man could barely string together a coherent sentence, had ducked out of his armed services duties, and represented what looked very much like the continuation of a dynasty--something that struck me as decidedly un-American.

Needless to say, I was terribly, terribly wrong about how the election would turn out. For some unfathomable reason, people actually did vote for George W. Bush. There were also some vote counting shenanigans, and everything combined to form the perfect storm of gross disappointment. We've been paying for that messed up election ever since.

And I've taken a lot of shit for voting Nader. That's fine, I can take it. Truth be told, I'm not a big fan of the man anymore, as he appears to be going increasingly off the deep end. Still, I will defend my decision. If there's any blame to be handed out for "splitting the vote" in 2000, it should be placed firmly on the shoulders of the "Jews for Buchanan" phenomenon in Florida, and more importantly, on a Supreme Court that decided to favor expediency over accuracy.

But back to third parties and their candidates. I was just reading about the Green Party's nomination of former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney to be their presidential candidate. McKinney strikes me as a fairly solid individual, with views and goals that line up fairly well with my own. Between that and me being a strong proponent of the importance of third parties in any political system, you'd think I'd be ready to vote Green come this November. You'd be wrong.

It's no secret that I'm an Obama supporter. I also don't make it a secret that I've disagreed with some of the positions he's taken. Still, I like him and the team he brings along infinitely more than McCain. And if the 2000 elections taught me anything, it's that you should never underestimate your opponents. Thanks to the disastrous policies of the Bush administration (and, to be fair, the policies of past presidencies as well), I believe our country has little wiggle room when it comes to these next few years. Several crucial decisions and actions need to be made regarding incredibly important issues like climate change, health care, the economy and global security.

We can't take any chances this time.

That doesn't mean I plan to go out of my way to ridicule people who may choose to vote for a third party candidate. This is my choice to make, as it is theirs.

Honestly, though, I wish the third parties would focus more on local and regional elections first, working to build their bases from the ground up before attempting to tackle national office. Still, there is merit in running a presidential candidate, in that they help bring up crucial issues that the major candidates might not otherwise address. This only works, of course, if the media decide to give them coverage, and allow them into debates. Ultimately, that seems to be the biggest sticking point, and it makes the viability of third party candidates into a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure. It's hard to convince people to vote for you when they don't know who you are or what you stand for, and it's hard to convince the media to give you face time when people don't typically vote for you. That's got to change.

For now, though, I'm choosing to support Obama not simply because I want to hedge my bets and avoid helping to "split the vote" - but because, after all the research I've done, he still strikes me as the best current candidate for the job. And really, instead of basing our decisions on perceived party viability, isn't that what we should all be doing?

Disappointment.

I take voting seriously. I've voted in every election since I turned 18, from major presidential contests right on down to local races. I do this because I was raised to believe that voting is a right (not a privilege, as some would have you believe) afforded to me by the great struggles of the men and women who came before me. It's important. I don't get to whine about the state of things if I don't, at the very least, vote.

That said, it has been a very difficult near decade of voting for me. I realize I haven't been around the block quite so many times as some, and I have no intention to stop being involved in the political process, but damn it can be disappointing.

Take the first election I ever voted in: 2000. That pretty much sums up my voting experience up to the present day. Twice I've voted for presidential candidates that didn't win (granted, neither were particularly compelling, but I firmly believe either would have been a thousand times better than what we ended up with). I voted against the state constitutional amendment to ban gay marriages. Disappointment with how that turned out would be an understatement. There have been several other disappointing votes, too. And yesterday, I added one more when I voted for Louis Butler.

I am disappointed in the people who voted for Gableman, an ill-qualified candidate whose campaign preyed on people's fears and misunderstandings about what the title of Supreme Court Justice actually entails. But I'm angry, physically angry, at the Gableman campaign, and those shady special interests that ran dirty, wildly inaccurate and downright fallacious advertisements.

And now Gableman has the audacity to claim he ran a "positive campaign"? You've got to be fucking kidding me. Not only is this guy unqualified for the job he just bought, but he's apparently also completely delusional.

At this point, I'm not even sure what should happen next. We seem to be slowly but surely giving away our system of checks and balances in this state, allowing businesses to shape the laws in their favor, and limiting the ability of wronged parties to seek justice and redress. We've acted against our own self-interests, and when the time comes (and it will) that we need to seek legal recourse to right the wrongs committed against us, we'll hit a wall of our own making.

This isn't just because of this one vote, or any one vote. I won't give Gableman that much credit. It is, however, symptomatic of a much larger trend and problem--one we've been fighting since the beginning of time: money makes the rules. And if you don't got money, you're screwed.