Republican AG Van Hollen Message In Wisconsin: Scary Fraud Myth Will Waste Your Vote

Here’s the issue, as presented in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
Officials and interest groups clashed Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen's lawsuit against the state's election authority (for not correcting voter registration errors.)

An election official said the lawsuit could force clerks to check data on about 1 million voters. And critics accused Van Hollen — a Republican serving as the state co-chair of John McCain’s presidential campaign — of filing the suit for partisan gain. One Wisconsin Now, a group that has been criticizing McCain and other Republicans, said Van Hollen should step aside in the case because of his role with the McCain campaign.

Only a Republican would try to get away with being a state co-chair of the Republican presidential candidate and still be absolutely impartial.

But to demonstrate how nonpartisan Van Hollen is, the article presented this: Van Hollen has frustrated Republicans in the past on some issues, such as clearing (Gov.) Doyle of wrongdoing in a review of how the state handled the sale of a nuclear power plant.

That’s right, clearing the Governor of something he didn’t do rubbed Republican Party leaders the wrong way. Are we down the rabbit hole yet? Of course.

What can the AG and state co-chair of the McCain campaign do with his lawsuit to swing the vote in Wisconsin? He could purge nearly 1 million voters from the rolls, creating another hoop for citizens to go through to re-register, and peal away those who don’t take the time to correct their information. Keep this in mind; an August voter check found one in five voters initially failed the test, often because of typos or missing initials.

Is Van Hollen trying to prevent voter fraud? Of course not.

Gordon Myse, a member of the Government Accountability Board, said it best with this simple statement: “Because two bureaucratic databases don’t match is no indication of any fraudulent voting.”

Here’s the rub. This simple statement of logic from Myse doesn’t get at the point Republicans are making. They want to create doubt in voter’s minds that their vote won’t count, and that they will become the victim of liberal groups who want to make it easier for more people to vote illegally. But then what would explain the next story from the Wisconsin State Journal?

When longtime Madison resident Anna Larson showed up to vote at her usual spot Tuesday, the 82-year-old East Sider was told she was no longer on the rolls. "I was kind of upset," Larson said. "After all these years of voting, I don't think I ever missed a year." Larson said she was told another, younger person with her name was registered in Waukesha and that she was off the Madison rolls. After a call to the city clerk's office, the problem was solved. (This) illustrates how the federal Help America Vote Act can make it harder for eligible voters to cast their ballots.

Madison's city clerk, said poll workers called her office Tuesday with voting-related questions, including many involving eligible voters not on the rolls. The office didn't keep count of the calls. But she said in some cases, elderly voters weren't on the rolls Tuesday because they had registered decades earlier, when a birth date was not required, and the voter database didn't include their accurate birth date.

Another problem has been the issue of provisional ballots. Dan Tokaji, an associate law professor at Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law, said Van Hollen's lawsuit could cause a flurry of provisional voting. That would lead to disputes among lawyers and political parties over which provisional ballots should be counted if the presidential election is extremely close in Wisconsin, as it was in 2000 and 2004 when Democrats carried the state.

Doug Chapin, director of the non-partisan group Electionline.org, said "If you cast an actual ballot, it will be counted. If you cast a provisional ballot, it might be counted."