Republican Party, Tea Party and Americans for Prosperity officials have been caught in a series of lies to the news media about their plans to coordinate a voter caging and suppression plan in Wisconsin'a general election.
The groups claimed it was all just talk at a meeting last June, and nothing came of it.
But One Wisconsin Now (OWN), the group which uncovered the plot in the first place, has released an email from a Tea Party leader to participants in the June meeting with more information and documents that was sent last Thursday.
Wisconsin's news media, despite being lied to repeatedly, does not seem very interested in pursuing the story.
There were some great contradictions in the Journal Sentinel's underwritten story, which it buried inside the paper.
In the recording [of the June meeting released by OWN, Tea Party leader Tim] Dake said the state Republican Party chairman Reince Priebus and Americans for Prosperity and its state head, Mark Block, were involved in talks about how to go after voter fraud.
Block, whose conservative group has helped organize tea party rallies, said initially Monday that he was "absolutely unequivocally" not involved in the planning of what Ross and One Wisconsin alleged. But Dake said he knew that Block had attended more than one meeting to talk about targeting voter fraud.
After that, Block acknowledged that he had had discussions with Dake and others about targeting voter fraud. He said Americans for Prosperity had obtained voter names and sent 500 letters to voters asking them to join the organization. Block said he believed the voter names were purchased from the City of Milwaukee and said the purpose of the letters was to see whether they could be delivered or not.
"About 10 letters were returned, which indicated to me there wasn't a problem," Block said.
Block said that Americans for Prosperity had not taken any further action on the issue and said that he had never had any intention of challenging voters at the polls based on the letters. He said instead any problems would have likely been taken to a district attorney.
Next up, the state Republican Party:
State Republican Party executive director Mark Jefferson said Priebus had had only general discussions with Dake about the issue of voter fraud and that the GOP had never actually went ahead with any of the plans Dake had outlined in the recording.
"We had discussion with everyone about this, but as far as sending out letters like this, I haven't had any discussions like that," Jefferson said.
But Dake said Republican Party officials had been involved in meetings about voter fraud and pointed to a confidentiality agreement that the GOP had put together for using along with the release of information about voters. One Wisconsin Now first made that agreement public Monday and Dake confirmed it was authentic.
From a report at Madison's Wisconsin State Journal:
"I've never had a conversation of that sort with anybody," Block said.
But he told Milwaukee Journal Sentinel he had discussions with Dake and others about targeting voter fraud. He reportedly told that newspaper his group had sent 500 letters to voters asking them to join the organization, with the purpose of seeing whether or not the letters could be delivered.
The State GOP, Tea Party and Americans for Prosperity have not yet learned the lesson that the more lies you tell, the worse it gets, at least if you keep getting caught.
After giving everyone involved a day and enough rope to tie their own nooses, One Wisconsin Now dropped the second shoe: Not only did it have a recording of the June meeting, but it also had an email sent last Thursday from Dake to participants in the meeting, sending along some documents.
The documents included in Dake's email, which is available here:
--A non-disclosure agreement for voter suppression participants from the state GOP.
-- An affidavit and instruction process for voter suppression activities, which includes direction about photographing the homes of people targeted for voter suppression activities.
-- A strategic planning memo that includes the first part of the plan was a voter caging mailing to the 16th Assembly District, which has the third-highest number of African-American voters of any Assembly District in the state.
This is serious stuff, but the Wisconsin news media have lt it die after a few feeble one-day stories, apparently in the belief these groups were just trying to prevent "voter fraud," which is waved like a bloody shirt every election time to frighten law-abiding citizens. There is virtually no voter fraud in Wisconsin, although the Journal Sentinel headlines it every time some right-winger claims there is.
Brew City Brawler comments:
Despite the claims of a leading Wisconsin teabagger -- seconded by the haplessly clueless Patrick McIlerhan -- an effort to suppress the African American vote in Milwaukee in the upcoming election is alive and well. We know this thanks to the hardworking folks at One Wisconsin Now, not the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Hey JS -- if people tell you that they're not planning on doing something -- and then it turns out they actually are -- that just might be a story!
Ryan Witt of examiner.com also writes about the media ignoring the story when it's the Tea Party, after being all over a story about some Black Panthers at a polling place.
One Wisconsin Now has called for investigations, but don't hang by your thumbs while you wait for that to happen. Even when you have the goods -- which OWN certainly seems to have -- it is amazingly difficult to get anyone's attention, let alone action.