Media Trackers discovered that over 20 individuals voted, some illegally, from one of Senator Lena Taylor’s (D-Milwaukee) properties during the April 5, 2011 spring election. According to a Media Trackers open records request with the City of Milwaukee Election Commission, the property at 1018 N 35th St. in Milwaukee currently has 36 active voter registrations and at least 23 individuals voted using the address.

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.”

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Milwaukee – Imitating the infamous “smokes for votes” scandal of the 2000 election, a small leftwing Wisconsin front group has been caught handing out barbecue chicken dinners to those who vote early in the Wisconsin recall elections. During the 2000 campaign a wealthy liberal activist was caught passing out cigarettes to Milwaukee’s homeless in exchange for their vote in the all-important presidential election. Over a decade later, Wisconsin Jobs Now!, a small group sponsored by the union umbrella Citizen Action of Wisconsin, hosted “block parties” in northern Milwaukee and essentially paid citizens to vote.

According to Wisconsin state law, it is illegal for anyone to pay or otherwise give someone something to induce or encourage them vote or not vote in an election. As the most recent round of Wisconsin Jobs Now! “block parties” took place on Monday, August 1, a Media Trackers source shared what happened. Voters were handed a ticket for the barbecue dinner and a raffle ticket after they signed in to the event. At some point each voter was asked to board a van with the organization’s logo emblazoned on the side. The vans ran round-trip transportation between the neighborhood party and Milwaukee City Hall, where there is an early voting location.

The shenanigans did not stop with the food and prizes give-away back at the party. Once voters were hustled upstairs in the City Hall to the election commission office, union volunteers affiliated with Wisconsin Jobs Now! carefully explained how the process would work. Because Wisconsin Jobs Now! has clearly aligned themselves on their website and in public statements with the partisan campaign of Rep. Sandy Pasch, their presence inside the polling place violated state electioneering laws. That was strike two.

As that wasn’t enough, Media Trackers unearthed last week that Rep. Sandy Pasch (D) the liberal candidate running against Sen. Alberta Darling (R) (who supported Gov. Walker’s collective bargaining reforms) sits on the board of Citizen Action of Wisconsin. Translated, that means that the front group helping the liberal candidate is sponsored by the union umbrella organization that the same liberal senate candidate and incumbent state representative sits on the board of.

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