GOP votes to kill Free Election Recounts confirming Election Integrity; don't care about Election Hacking at all.

Anyone think the following seems a bit odd for a party obsessed with voter fraud and clean elections?

1. If Republicans care so much about voter confidence in the integrity of our elections, then why are they trying to block free voter recounts paid for by losing candidates. It's backs up their claims, doesn't it? 

AP: The state Assembly is set to vote on a bill that would make it far more difficult to request election recounts in Wisconsin ... amid anger from some Republicans that Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein was able to request a recount in Wisconsin last year even though she finished a distant fourth ... only candidates who trail the winner by 1 percentage point or less in statewide elections could petition for a recount. Gov. Scott Walker has signaled his support for the measure.

2. If Republicans care so much about voter confidence in the integrity of our elections, then why aren't they worried about having a hacked voting machine system? Seriously, they've never mentioned it, not once. Could there be another reason for their voter ID laws?

Even if most voting machines aren't connected to the Internet, says cybersecurity expert Jeremy Epstein, "they are connected to something that's connected to something that's connected to the Internet."

A recently leaked National Security Agency report on Russian hacking attempts has heightened concerns. According to the report, Russian intelligence services broke into an election software vendor's computer system and used the information it gained to send 122 election officials fake emails infected with malicious software. Bloomberg News reported Tuesday that Russia might have attempted to hack into election systems in up to 39 states.

University of Michigan computer scientist Alex Halderman says it's just the kind of phishing campaign someone would launch if they wanted to manipulate votes. "That's because before every election, the voting machines have to be programmed with the design of the ballots — what are the races, who are the candidates. So as a remote attacker, I can target an election management system, one of these ballot programming computers. If I can infect it with malicious software, I can have that malicious software spread to the individual machines on the memory cards, and then change votes on Election Day.”

Anti-Government Lunacy: The biggest reason for letting the hacking continue, maybe even get worse?

FBI Director James Comey has warned that Russia will try once again to influence U.S. elections, possibly as early as next year. To prepare, the federal government has declared elections to be a part of the nation's critical infrastructure that demands special attention.

But the federal government's focus has state and local election officials, who are very protective of how they do things now, extremely nervous. They're mainly concerned that the federal government will tell them how to run their elections — even down to where polling sites should be located — in the name of security.

While two states — Arizona and Illinois — had their voter registration systems infiltrated last year by Russian hackers, no records were deleted or changed. And no actual votes were affected, despite signs that Russia had scanned election systems in at least 20 states. "The voting process itself was not hacked, manipulated or rigged in any way."

Trump seeking phony VoteStand proof 3 to 5 million votes were illegal.

I'm beginning to realize that there isn't enough time in the day to cover a days worth of Trump's growing disaster. The following story speaks for itself, and should scare even Trumpian losers...oh wait, I should be nice to them so I can convince them their voting whim to dismantle the country is an understandable error in judgement:

Trump Embraces Conspiracy Theorist to Promote Illegal Vote Claim: Trump latches on to ‘VoteStand,’ which may not exist.

Mr. Trump is just not going to give up his claim that 3 million to 5 million illegal immigrants voted for Hillary Clinton, and he’s grasping for evidence.Continue reading the main story

On Friday morning, he looked to VoteStand, which calls itself “America’s first online fraud reporting app” for the smartphone but does not appear to actually exist beyond the Twitter account of its founder, Gregg Phillips.

Mr. Phillips at once said 3 million illegal immigrants voted and said he is still working to prove that.

As the debunking site Snopes.com wrote: “We scoured at least a dozen such articles for evidence to support the claim, but found none. All of them pointed back to the same source: a pair of tweets by someone named Gregg Phillips,

Courts catching on to Voter Suppression Laws!

No really, Republicans are definitely trying to suppress voting.

Here's the amazing facts behind the decision:

A federal appeals court on Friday struck down a North Carolina voting law finding that Republican lawmakers intentionally discriminated against African-Americans when they passed it. (The) 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the measure's provisions "target African-Americans with almost surgical precision."

The voting law imposed a voter ID requirement, cut early voting opportunities, eliminated same-day voter registration and banned out-of-precinct voting, among other provisions.

Most damming, The appeals court — citing a lower court’s findings — noted that North Carolina legislators not only sought data breaking down voting practices by race, but then crated the law’s new provisions to single out practices disproportionately popular among African Americans, like early voting and provisional ballots. 

Race and Politics: Know now that they just aren't lying, they're also rigging elections because they can't win with their dystopian policies:

The state's history of racial discrimination in voting, the appeals court said, "highlight[s] the manner in which race and party are inexorably linked in North Carolina. This fact constitutes a critical — perhaps the most critical — piece of historical evidence here. The district court failed to recognize this linkage, leading it to accept "politics as usual; as a justification for many of the changes in [the voting law]. But that cannot be accepted where politics as usual translates into race-based discrimination."

The ruling is just the latest court win for voting rights advocates. A different federal appeals court ruled this month that Texas's voter ID law is racially discriminatory and must be softened. And a district court softened Wisconsin's ID law, too, though that decision is being appealed.

Walker takes credit for "same day registration," meaning that old "voter fraud" excuse isn't making sense anymore.

Thanks to Wisconsin's primary action, the national media is picking up on, and featuring, the mess Scott Walker has made of our elections process. For his rabid fans, jumping through hoops, unreasonable exemptions to the list of acceptable forms of ID, and inconvenient times to vote are okay as long as Republicans can say "we win" on election day. They do know suppression experts aren't done yet, right, and that they're next?

All In host Chris Hayes dissected Scott Walker’s claim voting is not just easier in Wisconsin, but it's also much harder to cheat at.

When Walker hauled out same day registration as a bragging point...I'm not kidding, you know he's grasping at straws. Note: In other Republican states, same day registration has a big target on it. Is it on Walker's list of future reforms?

Walker: "We make it easy to vote, you can vote, same day voter registration, you just have got to have that voter ID along with, but we also make it hard to cheap and that's the difference. He should look at the facts."

The facts??? Since when did they matter? The Nation's Ari Berman explains:

Voter impersonation is virtually nonexistent in Wisconsin. “The defendants could not point to a single instance of known voter impersonation occurring in Wisconsin at any time in the recent past,” wrote Judge Lynn Adelman of the US District Court in Wisconsin. “It is absolutely clear that Act 23 will prevent more legitimate votes from being cast than fraudulent votes.” (Adelman was reversed by the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, who ruled that Wisconsin’s law was “materially identical” to the Indiana voter-ID law approved by the Supreme Court in 2008, even though Wisconsin’s bill is significantly stricter and impacts many more voters. See Judge Richard Posner’s dissent for more detail.)

There's no logical explanation why voting times needed to be reduced either. Rep. Dewey Stroebel insisted small communities couldn't afford longer early voting times, so big cities had to lose theirs. Now high population areas have to squeeze everyone into the polling places within the limits imposed by small rural towns. I know, dumb right? The fact that they played stupid on that issue and got away with it still pisses me off.

Another inconvenient fact: It hurts Democrats! That spewed out of the mouth of conservative wacko Phyllis Schlafly:

In a column for right-wing clearinghouse WorldNetDaily, Schlafly acknowledged as much with a defense of North Carolina’s new voting law:

“The reduction in the number of days allowed for early voting is particularly important because early voting plays a major role in Obama’s ground game. The Democrats carried most states that allow many days of early voting, and Obama’s national field director admitted, shortly before last year’s election, that ‘early voting is giving us a solid lead in the battleground states that will decide this election ... so early voting is an essential component of the Democrats’ get-out-the-vote campaign.” She later adds that early voting “violates the spirit of the Constitution” and facilitates “illegal votes” that “cancel out the votes of honest Americans.”

It doesn't make sense but does sound scary.

But the obvious targeting of student voters and DMV generated voter ID's makes it clear they want to suppress voting. I predict someday, if Republicans stay in power long enough, voting will lose its relevance and be more trouble than its worth:

Student IDs from most public and private universities and colleges are not accepted because they don’t contain signatures or a two-year expiration date (compared to a ten-year expiration for driver’s licenses). “The standard student ID at only three of the University of Wisconsin’s 13 four-year schools and at seven of the state’s 23 private colleges can be used as a voter photo ID,” according to Common Cause Wisconsin. That means many schools, including the University of Wisconsin-Madison, are issuing separate IDs for students to vote, an expensive and time-consuming process for students and administrators. Students who use the new IDs will also have to bring proof of enrollment from their schools, an extra burden of proof that only applies to younger voters.

Right now, the dirty little open secret of Wisconsin is that just 31 of our 92 DMVs maintain normal Monday through Friday business hours. Forty-nine of them operate only two days a week. One, in Sauk City, is open for just a few days a year. Only two are open at 5 p.m., and just three are open on weekends. For the whole state.

Voter Fraud more a Republican Problem!!!

It's one of those typically ironic Republican moments, when another self-righteous diehard Scott Walker supporter thought it was okay to vote a whole bunch of extra times to protect his leader. Desperate times call for desperate actions, right? JS:

Robert D. Monroe, an insurance professional from Shorewood, may face a real challenge in convincing a judge that his mental condition was to blame for him voting illegally in five elections over the course of two years. Monroe, 51, was originally charged in 2014 with 13 felony counts and pleaded no contest Monday to six of them. Each is punishable by up to 18 months in prison.

Monroe cast two ballots in the April 2011 Supreme Court election, two in the August 2011 recall election of state Sen. Alberta Darling, five in the recall election of Gov. Scott Walker, one illegal ballot in an August 2012 primary and two ballots in the November 2012 presidential election. In the presidential election, Monroe cast an in-person absentee ballot in Shorewood on Nov. 1 and drove a rental car to Lebanon, Ind., where he showed his Indiana driver's license to vote in person on election day, Nov. 6.

You have to be a little bit mentally impaired to vote Republican anyway, but this is off the charts. Note too that voter ID wouldn't have prevented his fraudulent votes. Monroe's emotional plea proves what Democrats have been saying for years; fraudulent voting isn't worth the severe penalty. 

Mental Condition? Isn't just like a Republican to blame everybody else for their behavior?

Monroe blamed the double, and once quintuple, votes in 2011 and 2012 on fugue states, or periods of disassociative disorder. He blamed his disorder on a long series of life events, from watching his father have a heart attack at age 8 and surviving a serious car crash in high school, to witnessing sexual misconduct by a priest in college and the fallout of his brother's murder in 2000 ... he has tried to figure out what may have triggered some of the illegal voting. He said in the 2011 Supreme Court election, it may have been a radio ad he says tried to blame Justice David Prosser for a ruling he made ... Asked why he voted five times in the Walker recall election, Monroe replied, "We're still working on that one."

Which resulted in an elaborate scheme to commit fraud?

The investigation started in Waukesha County as an inquiry into possible double voting by Monroe's son, who lives in Waukesha. But the son denied any knowledge of requesting an absentee ballot from his father's Shorewood address, and the investigation shifted back to Milwaukee County ... text messages between Monroe and his ex-wife, sons and brother, strongly urging them to vote. One text May 23, 2012, to a son reads, "You must go to city hall and register to vote. Every vote will be needed!... Please please please."

UPDATE: Convicted!!!

A Shorewood man's insanity defense to charges he voted illegally in five elections over two years was soundly rejected. As a result, Monroe was convicted of six counts of election fraud. Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Dennis Cimpl quickly reminded Monroe that as a felon he cannot vote until his sentence is completed. 

The evidence showed Monroe contacting offices of Republican candidates, donating to some, contacting talk show hosts, bashing unions, urging friends and family to vote, and discussing detailed news updates about political events.

Reagan had a hand in mounting voter fraud and lack of confidence in elections....

Remember when Reagan undermined the confidence we all had in our elections?

Reagan worshiper Scott Walker must have forgotten the Gipper's many faults and missteps that prompted so much voter fraud.

Republican AG candidate Schimel pronounces Waukesha County clean, not "Ground Zero" for Voter Fraud?

Wow, Brad Schimel's partisan aw shucks cluelessness is getting even more unsettling by the day.

It was a jaw dropping moment, and of course ignored by the media, even the Journal Sentinel who got the scoop. Schimel spouted what was clearly a race based, partisan centric comment about voter fraud.

Schimel: "As it turns out, we're not ground zero for voter fraud in Waukesha County."

After going on a rant about how hard it is to find fraud, and then prove it, this was said:

JS Reporter: "So you said Waukesha wasn't ground zero for voter ID and voter fraud, is there a ground zero for voter fraud?"

Schimel: "I don't know the answer to that, but I do know what happens in my county...we typically have a very large voter turnout in the big elections, and I think that helps."

But if you can't check and there's no real way to know...my head is hurting.

Lilly white Republican Waukesha County is clean. Why even look for fraud, when according to Schimel, so many other unspecified places are so questionable. He couldn't name them, but...well, you know where they are, right?

It wasn't so long ago ballot bags were found open in Waukesha County, late reported votes were counted, a private record keeping system based on "trust" was put in place by the areas star of incompetence, County Clerk Kathy Nicholaus. Click here for an entire history of stories Nicholaus generated over her botched handling of votes and elections in "clean" Waukesha County.  She even came back when she was reappointed temporarily to her old job as clerk last spring, even while running for board supervisor. You can't make this stuff up.

The Journal Sentinel editorial board didn't appear stunned by Schimel's over the top statement. Breathtaking:

Sen. Fitzgerald cites fellow Republican accused of 13 counts of Voter Fraud as reason why we need ID.

Remember 50-year-old health insurance executive and Republican Robert Monroe, who was caught and charged with 13 counts of voter fraud? Voter photo ID at the polls would not have stopped this guy, and more importantly, current safe guards led to his arrest. He did register to vote in Milwaukee using his mothers address and a false Social Security number to vote there, leaving open the question as to whether a photo ID might have stopped him. But nobody is saying fraud doesn't exist, it's just rare.

Yet to hear Sen. Scott Fitzgerald version of the story, you'd think voter photo ID would have solved the problem. Fitzgerald was even eager to throw this fellow Republican under the bus to make his phony argument. I put together this Upfront with Mike Gousha audio only slide show:

WisPolitics: The Senate majority leader told "UpFront with Mike Gousha" he believes the upcoming election will yield examples of voter fraud. Fitzgerald pointed to news accounts that revealed a Republican advocate voted multiple times in a previous election as evidence of the need for the changes enacted by the blocked law.

But this kind of fraud is already as rare as Sasquatch sightings.

Just as interesting, in August, Monroe admitted what we already knew about conservative voters in general:

A Shorewood man charged with illegally casting multiple votes in various elections, including five in the 2012 Wisconsin gubernatorial recall, has entered an insanity plea.

Great punchline, right? But I thought the following down-the-rabbit-hole example proving Monroe's insanity was also worth a mention:

Monroe's girlfriend, Nicole Mueller, had recalled several "brief amnesic episodes," including one occasion in which Monroe ordered a large pajama suit for her and had no memory of it later.

How insane is that?

Anyone else worried about that copy of your voter ID?

I'm wondering if "freedom and liberty" loving small government conservatives ever thought about what happens to those picture ID copies sent along with their absentee ballot?

Those seeking to vote absentee this fall will have to provide local clerks a copy of their photo ID before their ballots will be counted, GAB Director Kevin Kennedy said today.

Gee, I would hate to see a partisan election worker accidentally leave with a few copies in their pocket. Or maybe a quick smart phone pic when nobodies looking, so someone could print one out later just in time for another important election.

Spreading your ID around in the mail and left to the devices of a corrupt election official in a back room somewhere sounds like an even bigger problem than the mythical identity theft known as voter fraud.

Warm up the scanner folks, someone wants your ID...

Voter ID Shredded by New Study.

Count on Voxdotcom's Ezra Klein to bring us the bottom line on voter fraud, and the new study that shreds the voter ID argument. But will this new research be used in our courts? We can only hope:

Justin Levitt, a professor at the Loyola University Law School and an expert in constitutional law and the law of democracy:

Voter ID laws are back in the news once again, with two new opinions from the Wisconsin Supreme Court late last week dealing with the state's ID requirement, which would allow people to vote only if they provide certain forms of government-issued ID. The Court made some minor changes to the law but otherwise upheld it ... the Wisconsin Supreme Court blew it.  Twice.

First, the court cited the idea that ID laws could enhance public confidence--that is, in theory, the laws might make us feel better about elections in that they might provide some security theater. It turns out, though, that this effect is hard to spot. People in states with more restrictive ID laws don’t generally feel better about their elections than people in more permissive states. People who think elections are being stolen, and people who think they’re not, each hold on to that opinion no matter what the governing ID rules in their area. The factor that really influences whether people think the elections are fair? Whether their preferred candidates win.

Second, the court said that ID laws can help stop fraud. It then cited an example of recent fraud … that ID laws aren’t designed to stop. Specifically, it mentioned a case in which a supporter of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was charged with 13 counts of election fraud, including "registering to vote in more than one place, voting where he didn't live, voting more than once in the same election, and providing false information to election officials," according to an account by Talking Points Memo. Wisconsin's ID law would not likely have prevented any of the alleged violations.

I’ve been tracking allegations of fraud for years now ... So far, I've found about 31 different incidents (some of which involve multiple ballots) since 2000, anywhere in the country. To put this in perspective, the 31 incidents below come in the context of general, primary, special, and municipal elections from 2000 through 2014. In general and primary elections alone, more than 1 billion ballotswere cast in that period.

Some of these 31 incidents have been thoroughly investigated (including some prosecutions). But many have not. Based on how other claims have turned out, I’d bet that some of the 31 will end up debunked. In just four states that have held just a few elections under the harshest ID laws, more than 3,000 votes (in general elections alone) have reportedly been affirmatively rejected for lack of ID. (That doesn't include voters without ID who didn't show up, or record keeping mistakes by officials.)  Some of those 3,000 may have been fraudulent ballots.  But how many legitimate voters have already been turned away.

The Incredible Republican Voter Fraud Guy!

From Shorewood Now's Jeff Rumage, this nicely researched report on the most outrageous case of voter fraud yet. Again, a photo ID would have done little to stop this “Stand with Walker” foot soldier. I’ll bet he was a big Voter ID supporter too:

According to a criminal complaint, 50-year-old health insurance executive Robert Monroe cast two ballots in the April 2011 Supreme Court election between David Prosser and Joann Kloppenburg, two ballots in the August 2011 recall election between Alberta Darling and Sandy Pasch, five ballots in the Gov. Scott Walker recall election in June 2012, one illegal ballot in the August 2012 partisan primary election and two ballots in the 2012 presidential election. 

He is accused of registering at his address in Shorewood, as well as in Milwaukee, using his mother's former Lake Drive address and a fake social security number. He is also accused of taking his son to vote in Shorewood, even though he was registered in Waukesha but was living in a college dormitory in Milwaukee at the time.

During the Pasch-Darling recall election in August 2011, he cast an early absentee ballot using his Shorewood address and in Milwaukee using his mother's former Lake Drive address.

Monroe allegedly voted five times during the Walker recall election in June 2012. He cast an early absentee ballot in Shorewood, and on Election Day, he cast ballots in both Shorewood and Milwaukee. He sent multiple messages to his two sons asking them to vote.

Posing as his girlfriend's son, Monroe requested Shorewood Village Hall send an absentee ballot to his address in Shorewood, even though his girlfriend's son actually lives in Milwaukee. Monroe voted and signed the absentee ballot with a false name without the knowledge of his girlfriend's son.

Monroe allegedly pulled a similar trick using the name of his own son, who lives in Waukesha. After receiving multiple text messages pleas from his father on Election Day, Monroe's son voted on Election Day in Waukesha, which caught the attention of the Waukesha Clerk's Office.

Monroe allegedly gave up false names and chose to go to another state in the 2012 presidential election. According to the complaint, he cast an in-person absentee ballot in Shorewood on Nov. 1, and then several days later, voted in person in Lebanon, Ind., where he owns a second house. He used his Indiana photo identification card at the polls in Indiana. 

Maybe we need Voter ID to Stop Republicans From Voting Illegally 13 times?

Voter ID wouldn't have made a huge difference, but hey, this guy did steal my vote.

Thank you Joan Walsh. The media is starting to pickup on "projection." It will explain everything:

Salon: It’s always seemed strange that Wisconsin Republicans like Reince Priebus and Scott Walker would insult their own state by claiming that it has a problem with voter fraud and needs tougher laws to prevent it. Wisconsin has traditionally been known for an uncommonly clean political culture (until recently, anyway), and I’ve never quite understood why conservatives would want to impugn it.

Can you say “projection”?