FLASHBACK! Voter Registration Fraud: Wisconsin 2004
Project Vote supervisor Damien Donnelle Jones was sentenced to two years of probation, conditioned on Jones spending 90 days in the Racine County Jail and paying $500 to Crime Stoppers for his role in 2004 voter registration fraud scheme. Jones accepted a plea agreement reducing four felony counts of election fraud and four felony counts of misconduct in public office to one count of misdemeanor party to a crime of falsifying voter registration applications. Circuit Court Judge Dennis Barry, however, rejected the agreement and sentenced Jones to jail time, stating “the problem that the court has with this case is that it is not a situation where Jones is a supervisor in a factory where people had to make air freshener ... this job was related to the very fundamental right of America's society, the right to vote." The charges alleged that deputy registrars signed or completed registration applications for other campaign workers who were not deputy registrars at the request of Jones. Four deputy registrars told investigators that Jones had threatened to fire them if they did not meet their 25-signature-a-day quota. Jones, who was also a Green Party candidate for state assembly at the time, was also barred from engaging in any form of campaign or election activity for a period of one year. The Racine Journal Times has the more on the story here.

FLASHBACK! Irregularities in Milwaukee: Wisconsin 2004
A 67-page “Report of the Investigation into the November 2, 2004 General Election in the City of Milwaukee,” prepared by the Milwaukee Police Department Special Investigations Unit, chronicles the Election Commission’s failure to adequately ensure the eligibility of “on-site” (election day) registrants, resulting in widespread irregularities, disenfranchisement and fraud, including:

• 4,600 more votes cast and counted than voters recorded as having cast ballots, with no record pointing to the origin or eligibility of these ballots;
• 1,305 votes by “on-site” registrants who provided registration forms lacking sufficient information to be entered into permanent database, including
  • 48 voters who provided no name; and
  • 854 voters who provided no address;
• Countless instances of ballots cast by ineligible “not in city” registrants;
• At least 16 cases of campaign workers from out-of-state who voted while employed by a group or campaign attempting to influence the election;
• Four deceased persons recorded as having voted; and
• At least three instances of votes cast by ineligible felons.

Investigators also pointed out that 18 felons had been sworn in as deputy registrars prior to the 2004 election, including eight who listed ACORN as their sponsoring organization. Investigators found that ineligible absentee ballots were counted, while the ballots of “numerous” eligible voters were not counted. The report also focuses on systemic irregularities arising from colleges and homeless shelters within the city, concluding “vote portability and the abject poverty that defines homelessness, makes these unfortunate individuals vulnerable to become the tools of voter fraud by those that would exploit the homeless.” Investigators, however, cited their inability to prosecute most offenses due to the “unreliability of the Milwaukee election records and the lack of confidence that both prosecutors and juries had in those records.”

The report concludes that the widespread voting irregularities, fraud and disenfranchisement in the 2004 election could be addressed by repealing election day registration and instituting a photo identification requirement. For the complete report, click here.