MacIver News Service | January 11, 2012 | [Milwaukee, Wisc] A shocking new report by a Wisconsin Tea Party group raises serious questions about the diligence of poll workers in Milwaukee County.

The group, Wisconsin Grandsons of Liberty, found errors on more than one third of all Election Day Registration forms completed for the April 5, 2011 election in Milwaukee County.

“We discovered 3,739 forms with errors,” said Larry Gamble, the groups’ spokesperson. “That 33.7% error rate is high enough to question the entire election process and raises doubts about having the accuracy and accountability required to properly manage elections.”

The study was performed by members of the self-described  pro-Constitution group between May and December, 2011.

The group did not examine existing registrations, early absentee and in-person, early absentee voting documents.

The report was released more than nine months after the election due to the volume of forms and the cost associated with properly redacting identifiable personal information.

The report indicates that f the 11,107 forms examined, 3,739 or 33.7% contained errors of some type. In 1,425 cases the election Registrar failed to annotate Proof of Residency of the voter.

Only 1 voter completing an Election Day Registration was required to cast a provisional ballot, the report notes.

“We were told this is the first time anyone has done this kind of post-election analysis in the County,” Gamble told MacIver News Service. “it just floored me to discover they don’t conduct routine quality control checks like this after the election.”

Some of the examples highlighted in the report include:

• In the City of Milwaukee, Dist 1, a voter used only a magazine subscription invoice as proof of residence, then vouched for someone else’s residency.
• 1,021 Election Day Registration forms in City of Milwaukee had the proof of residency left blank.
• In Greenfield, a voter used their Ohio driver’s license and a passport as proof that they lived in Wisconsin. That same person then corroborated for someone else with the same last name and at the same address, who also only a had passport. READ MORE>>

On January 3, Media Matters for America (MMfA) linked, among others, a Big Government item by J. Christian Adams to support its mischaracterization of a Fox News segment on South Carolina’s contested voter ID law.

MMfA cherry-picked a small portion of Adams’s post, while ignoring the bulk of Adams’s argument solidly refuting MMfA’s own weak defense of Attorney General Eric Holder, thereby obscuring his criticism from their readers.

Emphasis via MMfA:

In a January 3 segment on Fox News’ Fox & Friends, correspondent Jim Angle promoted a number of falsehoods and misleading claims about voter ID laws and the Department of Justice’s action preventing one such law from being implemented in South Carolina.

Even Vote Fraudster J. Christian Adams Calls The Analogy “Silly And Constitutionally Incorrect”

Adams: Arguments “Flimsy” Since “The 15^th Amendment Is In Play When It Comes To Voting.”In a BigGovernment.com piece attacking the DOJ’s letter, J. Christian Adams wrote:

What Adams did was provide several solid arguments as to why Holder’s DOJ appears to be contesting the South Carolina law based largely upon misperceptions and fuzzy math for political reasons. Media Matters neglects to point out that Holder’s DOJ used out-dated data, grossly inflating any potential problem in South Carolina. They also repeatedly highlighted a 20% number already exposed as a math gimmick aimed at making the issue appear to be far more significant than it may actually be.

Likewise, the DOJ also turned its nose up at the late breaking development that the data were wrong. The state of South Carolina discovered that the election commission had provided data that probably included tens of thousands of people on the voter rolls who moved out of state. That explains why they had no driver’s licenses but were still on the voter rolls. Instead of waiting to review the new data, DOJ rushed its objection out the door. A credible operation, not interested in scoring political points, would have waited to review the correct data.

More on that issue here:

Apparently South Carolina thought that the numbers seemed off, too. According to this eye-opening interview with South Carolina’s Attorney General Wilson, the state did an audit and found that that group of 239,000 included 37,000 people who were deceased, 96,000 who had moved to other states, and other discrepancies.

Wilson claims that the actual number of people without DMV-issued ID is actually about 27,000.  (It should be mentioned here as an aside that South Carolina has made extensive provisions for those people who don’t have ID, including being able to obtain the ID free and even offering free rides to the offices issuing ID).

Even with exaggerated, out-dated data, the reported differences between minority (10%) and non-minority (8.6%) voters without photo ID are miniscule: a 1.4% difference. (Another way of putting it would have been to say that 90% of minority voters have the required ID, and 91.4% of non-minority voters do.) By manipulating these proportions, DOJ, with the help of the media and MMfA, spun that into a 20% difference.

DOJ: South Carolina’s Data Indicate Minority Registered Voters “Nearly 20% More Likely To Lack DMV-Issued ID Than White Registered Voters.”

In other words, according to the state’s data, which compare the available data in the state’s voter registration database with the available data in the state’s DMV database, minority registered voters were nearly 20% more likely to lack DMV-issued ID than white registered voters, and thus to be effectively disenfranchised by Act R54’s new requirements.

The Media Matters attack on Fox is based upon little more than data manipulation, selective quotation, and incomplete facts deployed in defense of the hapless Eric Holder and his politicized DOJ.

This entire scam – there’s no better word for it – is based an interesting but totally irrelevant math quirk; when numbers are small, the difference between them is larger.

An Easy Math Trick

To understand the math behind this, let’s start simply and look at two very small numbers – 1 and 2.

If you had one dollar and I had two dollars, I have one dollar more than you. However, if I wanted to try to impress someone, just telling them that I was a dollar wealthier probably wouldn’t work. In an effort to sound more impressive, I could find a way to pump myself up by claiming that I had twice as much money as you. It’s true, of course – 2 is twice as much as 1 — but just knowing that I had twice as much money as someone else doesn’t really paint the whole picture.

If I want to get extra-fancy, I could also say “I have 100% more money than that person.” This is saying the same (misleading) thing as “I have twice as much” in a slightly different way. There’s a simple equation for determining this percentage difference for any two numbers.

(X / Y) – 1

So in this case, ( 2 / 1 ) – 1 = 1.

To get the ‘percent’ we just move the decimal point to the right two times and we get 100%.

Here’s the quirky part — as numbers get bigger, this difference decreases. Now imagine that you have $100 and I have $101. I still only have one dollar more than you but because the numbers are larger, I can’t pull my ‘twice as much money’ claim trick. In fact, I only have 1% more money than you.

(101 / 100 ) – 1 = .01.

Move the decimal and you’ll see that 101 is 1% more than 100. And of course, saying ‘I have 1% more money‘ doesn’t sound that impressive.

In both cases, I only had one more dollar but the lower the numbers, the more impressive I can make the difference sound.

Now, in both of these examples, the simpler way to express our financial differences is to say “I have a dollar more than you” or by spelling it all out, such as “I have two dollars and you have one dollar.” The whole bit about ‘twice as much money’ or ‘100% more’ is just a way to obfuscate the truth that I only have one more dollar and it works only when the numbers are low.

Thus ends the math lesson.

This intentional obfuscation is exactly what the Federal Government and the Holder Justice Department did to the people of South Carolina. They used this same mathematical quirk to hide the truth about the actual statistics and the media dutifully repeated the ‘Holder Math’.  Unfortunately, the state of South Carolina was also bamboozeled by this simple math game and failed to expose what the Obama DOJ was up to.

Now that you’re armed with the knowledge that the difference between low numbers is exaggerated, let’s set the record straight.

The 20% Pufferfish

For a wider overview of the problems with the Department of Justice’s objection, you’ll want to read J. Christian Adams’ summary piece published on the tail of the DOJ’s pre-Christmas announcement.  Adams says…

In the objection letter, DOJ said that South Carolina did not meet its burden to prove that photo identification laws did not have any discriminatory effect.  Notice the word “any,” more on that later.  The data show, according to DOJ, that 1.6 percentage points more voting blacks don’t have a driver’s license than whites.  Roughly 10 percent of blacks registered to vote don’t have a photo ID, and 8.4 percent of whites don’t.  That represents a “discriminatory effect” under the statute.

And later in the same article…

The letter (from the DOJ) says “minority registered voters were nearly 20% more likely to . . .  be effectively disenfranchised.”  A difference of 1.6 percent between black and white is now 20%.  This statistical sleight of hand was necessary because the actual difference of 1.6 percent (10% vs 8.4%) was laughable to the public.  Like a puffer fish that bloats its size to scare predators, the DOJ did the same thing with a 1.6% point difference to scare off critics.

Looking at the letter sent by the DOJ to South Carolina, you’ll see that they brought this 20% figure out twice. First they claim…

When disaggregated by race, the state’s data show that 8.4% of white registered voters lack any form of DMV-issued ID, as compared to 10.0% of non-white registered voters. In other words, according to the state’s data, which compare the available data in the state’s voter registration database with the available data in the states DMV database, minority registered voters were nearly 20% more likely to lack DMV issued ID than white registered voters, and thus to be effectively disenfranchised by act R 54’s new requirements.

Later, the Department of Justice reemphasizes the 20% figure…

Moreover, the state did not provide any data whatsoever refuting the fact, demonstrated by the states earlier data, that minority registered voters are about 20% more likely than white registered voters to lack DMV issued identification.

Once the DOJ had decided on this Holder Math ruse, they simply counted on the media to not even question the 20% number but to repeat it. Here are just a few examples of the media playing up the 20% figure…

Here’s Charles Savage in the New York Times – the article makes no mention of the actual numbers of 10% versus 8.4%, just the 20% difference…

In a letter to the South Carolina government, Thomas E. Perez, the assistant attorney for civil rights, said that allowing the new requirement to go into effect would have “significant racial disparities.”

He cited data supplied by the state as showing that there were “81,938 minority citizens who are already registered to vote and who lack” such identification, and that these voters are nearly 20 percent more likely be “disenfranchised” by the change than white voters.

Here’s ABC News….

“Minority registered voters were nearly 20 percent more likely to lack DMV-issued ID than white registered voters, and thus to be effectively disenfranchised,” Perez wrote, noting that the numbers could be even higher since the data submitted by the state doesn’t include inactive voter.

Here’s Ryan Reilly at Talking Points Memo…again, no mention of actual 1.6 percentage difference but instead playing up the intentionally misleading ‘20%’ figure.

Officials in DOJ’s Civil Rights Division found a significant racial disparity in the data provided by South Carolina, which must have changes to its election laws precleared under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, because of past history of discrimination. The data demonstrated that registered non-white voters were 20 percent more likely than white voters to lack the specific type of photo identification required to exercise their constitutional rights, according to a letter sent to South Carolina and obtained by TPM.

So, since the raw data shows only a 1.6% difference between black and white voters where did Department of Justice poll their 20% figure from?

They relied on the fact that the number 10 is 20% larger than the number 8.4. This is that quirk about small numbers that we discussed at the very beginning of the article. It’s true mathematically that 10 is 20% larger than 8.4 ( 10 / 8.4 – 1) but it’s completely irrelevant

(Actually, the correct amount is 19% but rounding the number up is the least scammy thing here)

In order to really understand just how misleading this is, let’s take the exact same data from South Carolina and express it in a slightly different way. Rather than look at the (low numbers of) people who don’t have ID, let’s look at the larger numbers of people who do . If it’s true that 10% of black voters do not have DMV-issued photo ID, then it’s true that 90% of them do. With white voters, it’s 91.4% who have the ID.

So we have the exact same data represented here but because the numbers are higher, look at the difference. 90 is only 1.8% LOWER than 91.4 because (91.4/90) – 1 = about 1.8%. This is crucial to grasp; it’s equally true to say that 10 is 20% higher than 8.4 OR to say that that 90 is 1.8% lower than 91.4. BOTH are true mathematically but neither one matters.

The difference between the two numbers is completely misleading. Why didn’t the Holder DOJ say that the number of black voters with ID is only 1.8% lower than the number of whites with ID? Obviously, because it didn’t suit their purpose.

The number that matters is that there’s a 1.6% real difference, based on the data used – or to spell it out, 10% of black voters without DMV-ID versus 8.4% of white voters. The 20% figure had to be manufactured for some reason and the obvious assumption is that the DOJ is trying to hide the fact that the real difference is so small. They know public opinion is against them so they used a semi-clever trick to fool the state of South Carolina.

This intentional gaming of the statistics by a legal branch of the Federal government should be deeply troubling.  The fact that ‘respected’ media like Charles Savage in The New York Times, ABC News and Talking Points Memo went along for the ride is very disturbing. And the fact that this ruse was done in order to protect the Obama administration is downright frightening.

Color me shocked.

GAB’s Refusal to Create Recall Database a Choice, Not Based on State Law

MADISON, WI — The Wisconsin Government Accountability Board could be doing more to make it easier to ensure the recall process is not tainted by fraud the MacIver News Service has learned.

“The statutes do not impose explicit barriers to the creation of a GAB database that contains the names and addresses of individuals who sign recall petitions or to public availability of the database,” said Katie Bender-Olson, Staff Attorney with the Wisconsin Legislative Council in a memo to Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald.

“To the contrary, the statute enumerating the powers and duties of GAB may support the agency’s authority to create a recall signature database and make it accessible to the public.”

Bender-Olson sent the memo to the Speaker in response an inquiry he made of the Legislative Council, the nonpartisan service agency that provides legal, scientific and other research services and administrative support services to lawmakers

“The A in GAB stands for accountability,” said Speaker Fitzgerald (R-Horicon). “I would hope this memo encourages them to provide the public with a nonpartisan source of important data that could help root out possible duplicate signatures and fraud.”

Read more.

As I mentioned earlier, the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board will not be on the look out for duplicate or fraudulent signatures.

I’ll also note, the man in this interview didn’t say he signed HIS signature or the SAME signature 80 times. Just that he signed the forms that many times.

This admission to a Milwaukee television news reporter brings added significance to the Tea Party-led efforts to independently scrutinize and verify the signatures.

Media Trackers was tipped off to Senator Taylor’s property by the Wisconsin GrandSons of Liberty, who found 11 individuals that registered on election day to vote from Taylor’s property, 7 of which were corroborated by Senator Taylor’s mother, Lena J Taylor.

“Using open records requests, we obtained copies of the 11,017 Milwaukee County Election Day Registrations and created a database to analyze the entries from all 19 municipalities in the county,” said Tim Dake of the Wisconsin GrandSons of Liberty. Dake explained further that “our volunteers ran numerous queries on the data and were surprised to see the name Lena Taylor appear on so many forms.”

The Property

According to property records obtained from the Milwaukee Department of Neighborhood Services, Senator Lena C. Taylor owns the property at 1018 N. 35th St. in Milwaukee. The property has 6 units and is zoned by the Milwaukee Zoning Code as RT3. According to the City of Milwaukee Zoning Code, properties zoned RT3 are intended to “promote, preserve and protect neighborhoods intended primarily for two-family dwellings.”

According to records from the Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions, Senator Taylor’s mother, Lena J. Taylor, ran a delinquent and now defunct non-profit on the property called “Mama Delta’s Lovehouse.” The non-profit was allegedly a “homeless/temporary shelter” from February 2007 until March 2011, less than one month before the April 5, election. The organization was found delinquent in January of 2010, given a notice of dissolution in January 2011, and officially administratively dissolved as of March 15, 2011.

Despite the prescence of the non-profit on the premises of 1018 N. 35th St., the City of Milwaukee Zoning Code reads:

H. Group Home, Group Foster Home, or Community Living Arrangement

h-2 If the use is located in an RS1 to RS6 or RT1 to RT3 district, not more than 8 clients shall reside on the premises. In all other residential districts, not more than 15 clients shall reside on the premises.

Even if Taylor’s mother’s delinquent and dissolved non-profit were an excuse for the number of voters at 1018 N. 35th St., housing 36 individuals would be a violation of the City of Milwaukee Zoning Code for the property itself.

The Voters

The issue with Senator Taylor’s property does not stop at the exorbitant number of active voters or the number of individuals who used the address to vote on April 5. When Media Trackers began to look at the individuals that voted from Taylor’s property, questions began to emerge about whether voters were ineligible to vote and whether they actually lived on the premises, let alone the state of Wisconsin. One individual was a felon voter and another may reside in Chicago.

According to court documents, there are at least 3 other questionable registrations at Taylor’s property. These individuals list different addresses in court documents from previous years but it cannot be determined when they registered to vote from Taylor’s property.

The Ineligible Felon Voter

On election day April 5, Russell Collins registered and voted from the property in question. Senator Taylor’s mother even corroborated for Collins, claiming to be the owner of the property on Collins’ voter registration form. When Media Trackers searched the Wisconsin Circuit Court Access Program, it was discovered that Collins’ was convicted of a Class G Felony (theft of moveable property from person) on November 5, 2010 and sentenced to 10 months in a “house of correction” with credit for 98 days served. According to Collins’ Criminal Court Filing with the Milwaukee County Court:

Court advised defendant his voting rights are suspended, and he may not vote in any election until his civil rights are restored.

With no indication on his Criminal Court Filing that his civil rights have been reinstated, and the fact that Collins’ could not have served out the totality of his 10 month sentence by April 5 election, it raises questions about whether Collins’ voted illegally and whether Senator Taylor and her mother were complicit in this fraud.

Chicago Voter?

Another individual, Mark E Lewis Sr., first registered to vote from Taylor’s property on November 4, 2008. Without voting at all in 2010, Lewis voted again from 1018 N. 35th St. for the April 5, election. But what is peculiar about Lewis is that just one month after the April 5, election, Lewis was cited for consuming food or beverage on a city bus. The rather benign citation aside, Lewis listed his address on May 4, 2011 as 4843 W. Jackson Blvd., Chicago, Illinois.

Leading to further questions about Lewis’ residency at Taylor’s property, on June 21, 2010, Lewis was cited for a host of charges including Disorderly Conduct and Resisting Arrest. In June of 2010, Lewis listed his address as 2933/37 W Wells St. Milwaukee, WI.

Either Lewis lived at 3 different residences and 2 states in the course of 11 months, the last move from Wisconsin to Illinois in less than one month, or Lewis used his active voter registration at Taylor’s property when he did not reside there.

Conclusion

Senator Lena Taylor wants to recall Gov. Scott Walker for what she believes is his misuse of power, but in this case she appears to have been an accessory to illegal voting activities. Furthermore, Senator Lena Taylor was an outspoken critic of the Photo ID bill, but if that bill had been in place it could stopped some of the potential voter fraud that took place from her property.

Just last week, Sen. Lena Taylor re-introduced legislation to extend the right to vote to felons and other convicts the moment they leave jail. But instead of waiting to change the law, Senator Taylor appears to have been an accessory to at least one voter breaking current election law as it relates to felon voting.

Just after the August recall elections, Senator Taylor wrote “when you assault the values and history of the Badger State, you will be held accountable.”

The scope of this scheme indicates that Senator Lena Taylor and her mother need to be asked very serious questions about how the property was used, and how it came to be that 36 voters, some felons still on extended supervision, and others who appear to possibly be from out of state, were registered to vote at the address. At best this is gross negligence that undermines the integrity of the election process, at worst it is an offense against the state of Wisconsin.

Using one of Senator Taylor’s favorite lines, is this really what democracy looks like?

This report by Collin Roth.

After being swept out of every statewide office, and losing the Ohio House last November, Ohio Democrats don’t think that that election has any consequences.

Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Chris Redfern

First, of course, they and their union allies spent over a million dollars to pay people to collect signatures and force a referendum to repeal Senate Bill 5, which contains reasonable reforms to government employee collective bargaining laws. That is now Issue 2 on the November 2011 ballot.

Next, they started a drive to collect signatures to repeal House Bill 194, which enacts common sense election reforms. It would eliminate the current loophole allowing someone to register to vote, and actually cast their vote on the same day, thus reducing the propensity for fraud. It also reduces the early voting period to 21 days. Somehow wanting you to believe that three weeks is not enough time to cast a ballot, Ohio Democrats call the bill “voter supression” and have again enlisted labor unions to finance and organize a petition drive. They have until September 30 to submit the required number of signatures.

Now, they are threatening another petition drive. This time, they are unhappy with the new Congressional districts drawn up by Republicans. It hasn’t even been voted on yet, let alone signed, but Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Chris Redfern is already weighing legal action or even another referendum drive. They are shocked and appalled that Republicans drew districts favorable to Republicans.

You may remember Redfern from when he referred to the majority of Ohioans who oppose Obamacare as “these f***ers”. Here are some things to remember when you consider Redfern’s newest source of outrage.

As a result of almost zero population growth over the past decade, Ohio loses 2 seats in Congress. The proposed bill eliminates one current Democrat district, and one current Republican district. The lost seats were split between the two parties.

The results of that split means that Ohio’s Congressional delegation would be 12 Republicans to 4 Democrats, because we currently have 13 Republicans to 5 Democrats. That current 13-5 ratio isn’t the result of an evil Republican plot. It was the will of the voters from last November’s elections.

Last year, when Ohio’s governor and secretary of state were both Democrats, they would have had the majority on the Ohio Apportionment Board. Maybe thats why they were completely uninterested when bipartisan groups and then-Senator Jon Husted, a Republican, were urging a change to Ohio law to create a more non-partisan redistricting process. The Democrats also controlled the Ohio House at the time, and could have introduced legislation to do so. Husted would have provided the GOP vote the Democrats would’ve needed to pass the reform in the Ohio Senate. But Democrats thought they were going to keep control of the governorship and the secretary of state’s office, and thus have control of drawing the new districts. So they declined to act on the proposal. Husted reminded Democrats of this yesterday.

Finally, even Ohio Democrats admit that if they were in control, they would have done the same thing. On whether Democrats would have drawn districts favorable to their own party, Democrat Rep. Ron Gerberry replied “We would too if we were in control.”

Very revealing. They would have done the same thing, had they had control. But when their opponents do it, they hold press conferences, threaten legal action and throw an all out hissy fit. Incredible.

And therein lies the problem with Ohio Democrats. They aren’t in control. Ohians were unhappy with them, and voted them out of office in large numbers last year. But they refuse to accept the results of the election. Voted out of office and not liking the results, they now just go to their union pals to get huge sums of out of state money to finance hundreds of paid circulators to go around and get signatures to repeal laws they don’t like.

That’s an abuse of Ohio’s referendum system. But Ohio Democrats don’t seem to care. They demand to have things their way, even when the voters have demanded otherwise.

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Note: cross posted on Ohio conservative blog Third Base Politics