News & Views

Will the November Election Be a Fair Election? Questions surround involvement of law enforcement and party politics

“WHEN THERE ARE INCIDENTS OF DATA ERRORS HERE, THEY ARE LOOKED AT AS CRIMINAL,” SAID HENRY HAMILTON III OF THE MILWAUKEE BRANCH OF THE NAACP. “ELSEWHERE, THEY ARE EXPLAINED AWAY AS HUMAN ERROR.”

Wisconsin voters are expected to turn out in unprecedented numbers for the Nov. 4 election.

And that has created some concern about the integrity of such a high-stakes election in a state that has had razor-thin winning margins in recent presidential elections.

To allay those fears, the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office has set up an Election Fraud Task Force to investigate and potentially charge criminal acts that relate to the election. Assistant District Attorney Bruce Landgraf, who has taken the lead on the task force, said that most complaints likely would include false voter registrations, political activity at polling places, or perhaps some glitches in the processing of voters at election sites. The task force must also deal with voter intimidation that tries to prevent legal voters from exercising their rights.

“We expect we’re going to get complaints like what we’ve gotten in the past, and we’re going to be prepared to respond to those,” Landgraf said. The task force will set up a hotline—935- 1234—to take complaints just prior to or on Election Day, and investigators from either the district attorney’s office or the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) will determine whether they should be pursued.

Before that date, complaints can be filed by calling the district attorney’s public integrity unit at 278-4645. Landgraf said that the task force is a natural extension of the district attorney’s office’s response to election irregularities since 2005. One critical difference this year, however, is the inclusion of the state Department of Justice (DOJ) in the task force. Landgraf said the DOJ’s role is supplemen-

 

tary and necessary because of the expected record turnout on Nov. 4. In addition, Landgraf said he’s been training other Milwaukee County municipalities’ law enforcement officials to handle election-related allegations, even though the MPD is the only local police department officially included in the task force.

On Tuesday, Wisconsin’s two federal districts announced that they would have federal prosecutors oversee elections violations in the state.

How Serious Are the Potential Violations?

This heavy emphasis on law enforcement in the upcoming election has drawn criticism from those who believe that Wisconsin—and Milwaukee in particular— generally run crime-free, if sometimes messy, elections.

Indeed, after the close 2004 presidential election, investigations were launched to look into allegations of fraud in polling places—a story line that the daily paper and the state Republican Party were happy to push, encouraged by the Bush administration’s focus on supposed “voter fraud” in heavily Democratic areas of the country.

Republicans contended that restrictive voting registration rules and voter ID would combat “voter fraud,” while Democrats argued that those measures would lead to voter suppression in Democratic-leaning areas.

Resulting investigations—including the one conducted by Republican U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic—found that there was no “widespread voter fraud” in Milwaukee. There were clerical errors and a handful of isolated incidents involving felons who illegally voted.

Those incidents were also reported outside of the city, proving that Milwaukee isn’t a hotbed of so-called voter fraud.

Even the specific allegations of “voter fraud” don’t always appear to be as serious when they’re investigated. “We occasionally will get complaints regarding stolen votes, when someone will say their name [at the polling place] and the poll worker will say, ‘You already voted,’” Landgraf said. “That happens. Our experience has been that we are best advised to look into that. We would contact people who might be one or two names above or below that name. They frequently will confirm that they have voted, but their name does not have a number after it in the poll book.” To many observers, the task force’s focus on Milwaukee reinforces the perception that when voting irregularities occur in

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