On Election Day, no news was good news to Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm. When the phones were relatively quiet in his office on Nov. 4, despite reports of heavy voting at polling places around Milwaukee, Chisholm said he knew that the efforts of election officials and law enforcement had paid off. The Milwaukee County Elections Fraud Task Force-comprised of members of the district attorney's office, the Milwaukee Police Department and the Wisconsin
Department of Justice-is investigating only a handful of cases that cropped up before or on Election Day, a sign that Milwaukee's election officials ran a clean election.
"Comparing 2004 to 2008, we have made substantial progress," Chisholm said. Over at City Hall, the post-election analyses are going well, said Neil Albrecht, assistant director of the city of Milwaukee Election Commission.
"Things look very good," Albrecht said. Chisholm said that working with election officials and members of the political parties before voting commenced helped to alleviate trouble at the polls.
"My goal was to be able to put to rest the notion that elections in Milwaukee are tainted in any way, shape or form," Chisholm said. The district attorney was referring to the fallout from the 2004 presidential election, which Democratic candidate John Kerry won by 11,384 votes in a heavily contested race. State Republicans- echoing complaints from the Bush administration-cried "widespread voter fraud" as a way to explain Bush's loss in the state.
The Republican-generated "voter fraud" myth resulted in dubious allegations about double voters and felons voting in the city, as well as dubious solutions, including ending Election Day voter registration and requiring that voters show a photo ID at the polls.
Multiple investigations found that the vast majority of allegations could be chalked up to clerical errors or confusion
about who is eligible to vote. The Republican-backed solutions would not have addressed clerical errors or confusion about eligibility, but would have suppressed the vote in Milwaukee, particularly among the city's African- American and Latino residents, students, the elderly and the poor.
"A Corrosive Acid on Democracy"
Republicans started complaining about "voter fraud" before this year's presidential election, a complaint intended to sow doubt about the integrity of the voting process in the state.
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Even the top law-enforcement official in Wisconsin-state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, who also served as Republican presidential nominee John McCain's campaign co-chair in Wisconsin-got in on the act. Van Hollen attempted to sue the state Government
Accountability Board over identity checks in the state voter database, basically alleging that the voter rolls were not accurate. A judge tossed out the lawsuit days before the election.
Van Hollen's suit-widely criticized for its partisan overtones and his discussion of it with Republican Party lawyers and with delegates at the Republican National Convention-could have created trouble at the polls for many voters or poll workers.
Van Hollen's suit cost state taxpayers $43,049 in legal fees, even though he initially said it would only cost $155. In the end, though, Chisholm said the "widespread voter fraud" myth can be put to rest. "The ultimate goal [of the task force] was to stop the falsehoods, stop the spin," Chisholm said. "It's almost like a corrosive acid on democracy if you keep trying to insinuate that the process is corrupt and you have nothing to back that up with. Nothing at all." Even Kevin St. John, a Van Hollen appointee at the Department of Justice, said that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
"There is no evidence to suggest that the election results with regard to the presidential election were tainted or manipulated by fraudulent activity," St. John said. Chisholm said he hoped the task force would put together a report on its activities to make the process as transparent as possible.
"We still have to make a critical selfassessment," Chisholm said. "There are things we can improve on. But it has to be looked at in the context of whether we learned from past mistakes. We tried very hard to correct mistakes and to improve on the system."
Albrecht said that he didn't think the city Election Commission would produce a formal report, but that it may make suggestions for future elections. St. John at the Department of Justice said that he wasn't sure if his office would produce a report or analysis, but that documents relating to Election Day would be released through open-records requests.
Voter Intimidation
Although there is little evidence of voter fraud at the polls, a few questions remain about whether voters faced interference or intimidation.
Henry Hamilton III of the Milwaukee branch of the NAACP is calling for an investigation of the county's task force so that its activities will be accountable to the public.
Hamilton said that he has brought instances of voter intimidation to the attention of Assistant District Attorney Bruce Landgraf, who headed up the task force, but that Landgraf hasn't pursued these allegations as thoroughly as Hamilton would like. (Landgraf did not return calls seeking comment for this article.) "They totally concentrated on voter fraud almost to the entire exclusion of voter intimidation and voter harassment and voter suppression," Hamilton said. Hamilton said he has received complaints that members of the task force "flashed their badges" at polling sites or refused to sign in as observers at polling sites; that a mailing was sent out claiming that "only n-lovers will support Obama"; and that "666" was painted on Obama signs in Whitefish Bay. In addition, task force members threatened to arrest an election observer on the South Side who had offered to give a voter a ride to a different polling place.
Outside of the task force, the MPD is investigating the origins of an Obama poster found on Nov. 3 in the District Five station "altered to depict a bullet traveling in the direction of Senator Obama," according to a memo written by MPD Chief Edward Flynn. The Secret Service has also been notified.
In yet another curious Election Day incident, MPD detective Michael Sandvick-after giving an interview to The Wall Street Journal about the existence of "voter fraud" in Milwaukee-apparently worked with Landgraf "as a private citizen" to challenge seven absentee ballots that had been cast. Three of those ballots have been voluntarily withdrawn, while the others appear to still be under investigation. Sandvick did not return calls seeking comment for this article.
According to Anne E. Schwartz, spokeswoman for the MPD, Sandvick handed in his request to retire last week.
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