Question: When is a Wisconsin Republican in favor of leaving no stone unturned in pursuit of electoral fraud?
Answer: When such fraud is the stuff of fiction. In the much ballyhooed 2004 Milwaukee fraud fable, a total of 18 improper votes were found out of over 277,000 cast in Milwaukee. (See pp31-32 for summary) The Wisconsin GOP is using fables such as these to justify the nation's most onerous voter ID law. (It has not yet come up for a vote but it is on the horizon.)
Question: When is a Wisconsin Republican against turning a single stone in pursuit of electoral fraud?
Answer: When such fraud consists of improperly collected signatures on a recall petition filed against Democratic Senator Robert Wirch of Wisconsin.
Details lie below this squiggly thing...
Dan Hunt is a man recently arrived from Illinois and is the former owner of a failed land-development business (his story not mine). He is also the leader (cough figurehead cough) of the effort to recall Senator Wirch. Today's Kenosha News carries a front-page story headlined, Calls to petition signers anger leader of Wirch recall.
Dan Hunt, the head of the Taxpayers to Recall Robert Wirch Committee, said the phone calls, paid for by the Democratic Party, were an attempt to trick constituents.
“The Democratic Party is clearly attempting to intimidate those who signed the petitions,” Hunt said in a prepared statement. “This harassment should be halted immediately, and Sen. Wirch should denounce the tactics employed by the Democrats in their attempt to disenfranchise recall petitioners.”
Dan Hunt clearly believes that a phone call seeking verification of a signature, can somehow magically cause that signature to be "intimidated" right off the page. Abra-cadabra and poof! It's gone.
But no one in District 22 should be surprised. Here's what Dan Hunt calls "thuggery". It's just a simple pro-union handout passed out at a local school. To Dan Hunt, it is thuggery for pro-union people to excercise their First Amendment rights of speech and assembly. He's a charmer, our Dan.
Wisconsin Democrats reply to Mr. Hunt.
Morris said the party was inclined to do so in the Kenosha-area 22nd District, as well as in Green Bay Democrat Sen. Dave Hansen’s district, because of widespread reports of recall petition gatherers providing misinformation to would-be signers.
“We’ve just had so many people tell us that they felt like they were misled and didn’t know what they were signing,” Morris said.
Being as the vetting process is a standard part of any petition effort, and being as I personally witnessed some of these paid canvassers collect signatures fraudulently, I sort of feel the effort to verify the petition is sort of, you know, ethical. (Once the legal phase is over I will post some photos and videos for your perusal.)
So the final question is multiple choice:
(Edit - Dumb poll ... Choice 4 should read "Being Republican means never having to say, "I'm consistent".)
UPDATE: The Recall Coles effort filed their petitions today. This makes 6 GOP Senators now up for recall elections. Aa per The Milwakee Journal about 2:15 Central Time
The Committee to Recall Cowles announced on its facebook page -- and the state Democratic Party confirmed in a news release -- that it had filed 26,000 signatures against Cowles (R-Green Bay), 10,000 more than the 15,960 valid signatures needed to force a recall election.
Back of my brain calculation puts this recall drive in at over 150% of the minimum! And unlike the Recall Wirch petition, these were not collected by mercenaries. Way to go Wisconsin!
UPDATE 2: Final Verdict - there will be no recall against Minority Leader Miller.
There was some possibility that the Utah-led recall group might combine with the Wisconsin group and still try to file at a later deadline date. This concept has been abandoned.
There had been a possibility that the group would consolidate with another recall effort against Miller, launched by the Utah-based American Patriot Recall Coalition, and use a May 4 deadline that group had to collect enough signatures. But Horn wrote in an email this morning that volunteers decided not to consolidate with the coalition.
"We did this because we feel that the APRC is a front group for either wrecking conservative causes or for simple money making," he said in the email.
How about the second paragraph? Common sense is to be found among Wisconsin GOP voters ..if perhaps not in the people they elect to office.
Way to go Wisconsin!