Voter Suppression, Under the Guise of Voter Fraud, Advances In Wisconsin with Help of AG Van Hollen

Here are the latest developments over another Republican attempt at voter suppression through it's McCain co-campaign chairman, Wisconsin Attorney Gereral, J.B. Van Hollen. In this story by the Wisconsin State Journal, the situation is starting to get ugly, as it becomes more obvious the Republicans are trying everything they can make-up, to game the system.

(A) lawsuit by Van Hollen seeks to force the Accountability Board to run checks of voters registering since January 2006 to purge ineligible voters from the rolls. The Accountability Board wants to run the checks on voters registering since Aug. 6, but Van Hollen argues that federal law requires the earlier date.

State Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen should be disqualified from a controversial lawsuit against state election officials because he ignored lawyers' ethics rules, according to a filing expected to be made in the case. Van Hollen, a Republican, cannot continue in the lawsuit because he and state Department of Justice attorneys also are representing the elections officials in two separate lawsuits. Wisconsin's ethics rules for lawyers prohibit a lawyer from both representing a client and suing that client at the same time without the client's consent.
Lester Pines, an attorney representing the Government Accountability Board, said that lawyers at the Department of Justice were aware of the need to seek a go-ahead from the Accountability Board before filing the lawsuit but that Van Hollen ignored it. "For the attorney general, the chief law enforcement officer in this state, to blithely ignore these rules is behavior that is stunning in its audacity."

Pines alleged that DOJ assistant attorney general Alan Lee asked Kevin Kennedy, the head of the Accountability Board, to sign a waiver that would allow Van Hollen to sue the board. Kennedy never agreed to such a waiver but Van Hollen filed the lawsuit anyway. St. John wouldn't comment on whether a DOJ lawyer asked Kennedy for a waiver. If Van Hollen were disqualified, the attorney general might be able to seek outside lawyers to undertake the lawsuit for him. But to do so he would need the approval of Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat.

Here’s more on the McCain campaigns attempt to mislead Wisconsin voters with faulty applications for absentee ballots, from The Capital Times online.

When it comes to the right to vote, it is not enough after a dramatically inappropriate move to say, "Oops."

The campaign of Republican presidential candidate John McCain has dispatched a mass mailing to Wisconsin voters that encourages eligible voters to send their applications for absentee ballots to clerks in communities where they do not reside. Following the instructions of the McCain mailing could lead voters to run afoul of election rules and regulations -- and that might lead to the disqualification or even the prosecution of an innocent citizen for supposed wrongdoing.

That has caused consternation of the part of voters around the state. "They're trying to knock me off the rolls," says Beverly Jambois, of Middleton, who complained after she got one of the McCain mailings. "I can't tell you how upsetting it is to me. This is how (McCain tries to) win elections? By disenfranchising voters?" The McCain campaign claims mistaken addresses
and other information in the mailings were "certainly not intentional." But
campaign staffers are refusing to answer questions about how this mess was created.