Three Way News: Inside the Echo Chamber: Wisconsin Voter Fraud!

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

Inside the Echo Chamber: Wisconsin Voter Fraud!

Michelle Malkin, who vehemently defends the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, is now hot on the case of voter fraud in Wisconsin.

Yup. Go figure!

That is about all of Malkin's original contributions to the discussion. For some reason, she has readers. She quotes one:

Rep. [Jeff] Stone finally received an answer Monday of [last] week. He was told that there were 8,300 same day votes and approximately 900 were unable to be delivered. Assuming about one third of the same day votes will not be verified because there is no such address, etc., that would mean approximately 2400 illegal votes were cast. Sounds bad! Well.....

Rep. Stone today received a call from the Election Commission. They were a little bit off. They actually had 73,000 same day votes cast. 10,000 voter registration cards could not be sent because they have no addresses or incomplete or inadequate information. Using the same one third return rate that means in Milwaukee alone more than 25,000 illegal votes were cast. You can expect that the cities of Racine, Kenosha and Madison to have similar results.

Wow. Assuming one-third of all people read 3WN daily, I've got the most popular blog in history! Assuming Ms. Hammer doesn't care and there are no bad consequences, I'm going on a three-day hooker and coke binge! Assuming Willie Davis, Henry Jordan, Willie Wood, Herb Adderly, and Ray Nistchke reappear in Packer uniforms next year, the defense will be much better!

My point, obviously, is this: the Packer defense was really bad this year. Also, you can't just make up bizarre assumptions and pretend they have a basis in fact. Well, you can, but you look ridiculous. The only thing worse would be if you were trying to make a cogent argument and you couldn't get your basic facts right.

Somehow, Malkin has readers. She quotes another one:

Milwaukee's population is around 600,000. Of voting age: 430,000. According to election officials 83,000 people same-day-registered to vote. That's 20% of eligible voters. I can't find statistics to compare that number to prior elections but it sounds high. (If someone has the numbers, please forward.)

In 2000 Al Gore won Milwaukee by 22 points. Kerry won by 35! That contradicts a lot of trends -- even Wisconsin ones. But bottom line, 6500 votes counted in Milwaukee for Kerry cannot be verified. This whittles his state-wide lead down to 5,000, and makes one wonder what happened in other state Democrat strongholds like Madison and Racine...

So, either 73,000 or 83,000 registered on the same day they voted. (The actual number appears to be 84,000.) Either 25,000 illegal votes were cast or 6,500 votes can't be verified. (The real "issue" is that only 73,000 confirmation cards were sent out to the 84,000 same-day registrants.) And Gore won Milwaukee by 22 points (actually, it was 39 points: we're talking about the city of Milwaukee here) while Kerry won by 35"!" (except that Kerry won by 44 points; Feingold won by 50.5. Go Russ!)

So, your two reader submissions are contradictory. The numbers not internally contradicted bear little relationship to the facts. What else you got Ms. Malkin? Lots and lots of links! Captain's Quarters weighs in:

Two more interesting statistics show up as well. In 2000, the US Census Bureau showed that Milwaukee County had 425,990 residents 18 years of age and older (incorrect -- see below), yet the 2000 election had 433,537 voters casting ballots. In order for that to be correct, the census had to miss 2% of Milwaukee's 18+ population -- and no felons had to live in Milwaukee County, nor any resident aliens, illegal aliens, or any other adult ineligible to vote. And that's just 2000. In 2004, again, the voters increased by 11% on top of what was already a 102% turnout for the previous presidential election.

But hey, let's be fair about this. Maybe those statistics are in error and Milwaukee has always turned out big in elections, although 113% does seem a bit high, even for civic-minded Wisconsin. Take a look at 1996, when Bill Clinton coasted to re-election over Bob Dole. Milwaukee was no exception either; Clinton topped Dole by a shade over 97,000 votes. The difference is that Milwaukee only cast 365,387 votes for president that year (page 52), or about an 86% turnout. That's 68,000 less than 2000 and a whopping 117,000 less than 2004.

...I misread the data from Stranded On Blue Islands. The correct number for Milwaukee County adults in 2000 was significantly higher -- 692,339. SOBI referenced data for Milwaukee City, while I compared that to county returns. That moves the 1996 turnout to 57% of all adults (not registered voters!), 2000 to 62.5%, and 2004 to 69.7%, although the raw voter totals remain correct in my post above. My apologies; I should have confirmed that data first as it does materially affect the analysis.

(Correction is CQ's. Good on him for making it.) Here are the raw numbers. 245,670 votes were cast in Milwaukee in 2000. 277,535 votes were cast in 2004. That's a substantial increase which I suspect is due to GOTV efforts. Milwaukee has plenty of room to grow. Only 70% of registered voters cast ballots in 2004.

And, of course, CQ knows when to spot media bias:

Why? Why does the Silence Of The Cheese continue to deafen our national media? If they have their way, Clarice Starling wouldn't come within 500 miles of Milwaukee but instead would chase down red herrings in Cleveland, Ohio. It almost convinces me that political bias plays a role in mainstream media coverage. Good think Dick Thornburgh told me otherwise.

Hmm. Is there any reason why more attention would be focused on Ohio than Wisconsin? Sure, Ohio was considered one of the 3 key battleground states. Sure, there were those television images of people standing on line for hours to vote. Sure, there were weeks when only the Greens and Libertarians (and maybe Keith Olbermann) paid any attention to the issue. But, dammit, why would the MSM media pay attention to Ohio, where a U.S. Senator challenged the validity of the vote for the 2nd time in our nation's history, and not to Wisconsin? Why are we focusing so much attention on 150,000 dead from a Tsunami and inaugural proceedings and what we hope will be the first free, fair, and safe elections in the history of Iraq when there are unfounded, contradictory allegations of small-scale voter fraud in Wisconsin! It boggles the f-bomb-in' mind!

The local paper (circulation 250,000) has run two articles on the issue. On January 14, the paper reported Republican Jeff Stone's inquiry. On January 18, the paper reported the election commission's response. The response goes like this:

In 2000, there were 81,000 same-day registrants. 73,847 registrations were eventually processed. In 2004, there were 84,000 same-day registrants. 73,097 registrations were eventually processed. Registrations are not processed because they are illegible, missing a signature, missing a date of birth, or were duplicates of existing registrations (ie., someone registered with the same address). Of the 73,097 registrations that were sent out, "a few hundred" (not 1/3, as was previously assumed; Hammer's got a coke binge and Super Bowl tickets to cancel) were undeliverable. Registrations could be undeliverable because of data entry error, missing apartment numbers, or voters moving after the election.

Voting should be transparent, verifiable, and fair. We shouldn't have a problem where 20,000 registrations aren't processed before the election. We shouldn't be unable to track 10,000 registrations because of poor penmanship, or any reason. Clearly, there's room to improve the system, but I see no evidence of the fraud claimed within the echo chamber:

"Of the remaining 65,000 registrations for which confirmation cards have finally been sent, the Elections Commission says to expect that a full third of them, or about 22,000, will be returned undeliverable. This means that the address was incorrectly written or outright fictitious. Considering that most people know how to write their own address and the poll worker should have confirmed the address from identification produced at the polls, I would say that the majority of these addresses are just outright fictitious.
We are up to about 32,000 people who voted on election day who should not have." -- Political State Report
"Was there massive Democratic vote fraud in Milwaukee?" -- Little Green Footballs
"Go read the excellent work done by “Dirty Harry” on the question of whether or not Bush actually won Wisconsin. I am sure that when Democrats see all the voting irregularities in a state that went for Kerry by a much smaller margin than Ohio went for Bush that they will start protesting the Wisconsin electoral vote as well. Well, why wouldn’t they?" -- PoliPundit (Hm. Send me your blog entries demanding an investigation of spoilage, felon scrub lists, and the rest of Greg Palast's unverified claims. Until then, leave the clever to the Hammer.)
"Since there was not a word in the local media after the single JSOnline story, I have made a compilation of my posts in the issue, starting with Mark Belling’s interview with Jeff Stone breaking the story of the massive voter irregularities in the last election." -- My View of the World. (Hm. No coverage other than the coverage, which wasn't enough coverage, even including the radio and newspaper coverage you mention right after explaining the media blackout.)
"Vicki McKenna, WIBA, 1310AM to host Rep. Jeff Stone Today at 4pm!
THE LATEST ON THE MILWAUKEE VOTER FRAUD SITUATION! (Hm. Dead link :))
Listen to Rep. Jeff Stone's interview with WTMJ
- Courtesy of My View of the World
Read Rep. Jeff Stone's Press Release here
MSM still silent on Milwaukee election fraud." -- Brainpost. (Hm. Help me help you. You'll be more credible complaining about the MSM media's "silence" if you don't mention the coverage on WIBA and WTMJ. Also, major Wisconsin newspapers count as MSM when discussing Wisconsin stories.)
"We're all completely familiar by now with the pretty rock-solid indications that the Democrats stole the Washington governors race - and now that we're getting proof of the rather large Democratic efforts at voter fraud, I think it is high time we started to look everywhere - and some people have started to take a look at Wisconsin." --Blogs for Bush. (Hm. At 3WN we're all completely familiar with the rock-solid indication that everyone who voted for Bush was an ignorant pederast. Does that make it true?)
"So, in Wisconsin it's possible to register to vote on Election Day WITHOUT showing a poll worker a photo ID. For decades Wisconsin was considered a "good government" state with little corruption. In recent years that reputation has changed--the latest involves the Menomonee Falls village president. The state's voter registration laws must change too." -- The American Mind. (Hm. What happens in Menomonee Falls stays in Menomonee Falls. No, seriously, this dude violated some campaign finance laws. Why does that mean Wisconsin needs to change its voter registration procedures?)

3 Comments:

As a cozy resident of the DC Beltway and card-carrying suckler of the Government teet, I have to raise the question: but will anybody care? The statistic missing in any of these blogs is: Of the Right, how many fascists failed Basic Statistics.

They get their little homecoming dance on Thursday - then another four years to stamp "Cowboy" all over everything. Let it be the catylst that brings an end to the razor thin margins that cause us cycles weeks after the fact. Then we can stop paying any mind to the cat calls from the right, alleging statistically insignificant irregularities to what is a massively complex demonstration of a simple, honorable truth: one person, one vote.

A second, equally honorable truth: the Packers defense is indeed quite shoddy.

By Anonymous, at 4:35 PM

You all have way too much time on your hands. Work harder or start a business to help drive the economy. Can't do a thing about what is already a done deal. Move on.

By Anonymous, at 12:38 PM

Good idea! I'll get those Google ads up ASAP. Then I'll be contributing to the economy.

By Hammer, at 12:56 PM

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Tuesday, January 18, 2005

Inside the Echo Chamber: Wisconsin Voter Fraud!

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