Murphy's Law

On my driver’s license I’m Bruce T. Murphy. At the polls I always identify myself simply as Bruce Murphy. I’ve never been asked my middle initial by a poll worker.

In short, I could be among the 241,000 voters that the state’s Government Accountability Board has found could be removed from the poll lists because there is a mismatch between how they’re identified in voting records versus their driver’s license and other state data bases. Wisconsin Attorney General J. B. Van Hollen is suing the GAB, which oversees ethics and elections in Wisconsin, to force it to take this action.

Van Hollen says he simply wants the state to comply with the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002, which provided funding for states to replace punch-card voting systems and create a central data bank of voter identification. Van Hollen, a Republican, insists his only goal is to assure a better democracy.

After all, many voters in Van Hollen’s party could be disenfranchised over night. Take one example noted by Kimberly Bushey, president of the Wisconsin County Clerks Association. She says that in municipalities with a population under 5,000 people, there has been no registration of voters to comply with federal law prior to 2006, so that any voter who only votes in presidential elections would not appear on the lists. And these are rural areas that tend to vote Republican.

Or take another example: The Government Accountability Board checked the information on its six board members, who are all retired judges, and found four of them failed a cross-check of their voter registration with state driver’s license files. So it’s safe to say some well-to-do types who might lean Republican could lose their right to vote.

But which voters are most likely to have a discrepancy in their identification? I checked with John Pawasarat, director of the UW-Milwaukee Employment & Training Institute, and the most quoted expert nationally on comparing driver’s licenses to voter registration files. Pawasarat’s research frequently cross-checks the data for individuals’ wage files, welfare files, driver’s license files and school census data.

Pawasarat says the most common group to have discrepancies is Hispanics, who often have hyphenated last names that get reversed, or in some cases they drop the hyphen. Second most common is African-Americans, who often have unique first names that get misspelled in one data file. Third-most common is Hmongs, whose first and last names get transposed.

Given that about 90 percent of African-Americans and 60 percent or more of Hispanics vote Democratic, that would be a pretty good group of voters to disqualify if you are Republican.

Urban polling places are the most likely to have long lines for presidential elections. Now add to that a situation where a huge number of voters might have to fill out a provisional ballot, because of a discrepancy that has never previously stopped them from voting. This time-consuming process (there has to be a witness for each such ballot) could make some voters give up and go home. By contrast, in municipalities with less than 5,000 voters, the numbers are small and don’t vary that much; provisional ballots can be handled more easily. In short, Democratic voters are more likely to be discouraged and disenfranchised.

It was the Republican Party, not Van Hollen, that originally demanded the Government Accountability Board take action to bar all these voters. The GAB is nonpartisan and run by six retired judges. The six judges were selected from a list by Gov. Jim Doyle, with three appointments getting approved by the Republican-led state Assembly and three getting approved by the Democratic-led state Senate. Its members, and its legal counsel George Dunst, did not believe the federal law required the action demanded by the Republican Party.

The GAB went further than consult the law, however. It solicited testimony from the experts on local polling places, the Wisconsin Municipal Clerks Association and the Wisconsin County Clerks Association. Representatives of both groups predicted the Republican Party’s proposal could not be accomplished in the 10 weeks remaining until the election and would “create havoc” at the polls (and we're now down to seven weeks). Bushey says she checked with her membership in the state’s 72 counties and the members were “overwhelmingly” opposed to the GOP idea. Nancy Zastrow, head

Only after the Republican Party’s demand was shot down did Van Hollen go into action.

At this point, it’s worth noting that Van Hollen has been under suspicion as a RINO or Republican In Name Only, by such august conservatives as talk show hosts Charlie Sykes and Jeff Wagner. Their fellow conservative (and Milwaukee Magazine contributor) Jessica McBride joined in, complaining that the Wisconsin State Journal praised Van Hollen for not being a right-wing ideologue: “With all due respect, the only problem with that analysis is that he PROMISED to be a right-wing ideologue.”

Van Hollen seems intent on making amends. He is state co-chair of John McCain’s presidential campaign, which would benefit from a lower turnout of blacks and Hispanics. Even so, one senses a certain ambivalence. Van Hollen first told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel he was not demanding that the GAB remove people from the voter rolls. But his special assistant, Kevin St. John, called back to say the attorney general was indeed asking that people be removed from the voting list.

I doubt that Van Hollen’s complaint will succeed. For starters, it remains to be seen constitutionally if federal law can require a state to purge its lists of voters. The law in question merely says the state must create a uniform system, which it has. States were supposed to have this done by 2004, but Wisconsin got an extension to 2006 from a federal agency. So why couldn’t the agency extend the date to the summer of 2008, by which time Wisconsin had complied with the law. Isn’t this merely a quibble about a federal agency’s discretion in setting a deadline?

But, of course, it doesn’t matter if Van Hollen loses the case. Either way, he will have gained points with all those RINO hunters. This is a naked political ploy by an attorney general who doubtless knows better.

Why Wisconsin is Critical to McCain

Republican sources say the McCain campaign considers Wisconsin one of the most important states in the race, according to a column by talk show host Mark Belling.

The theory is that a huge turnout of black voters in border states like Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas could gain Barack Obama a state or two that President Bush carried in 2004, so McCain has to gain a state or two that Bush lost.

Perhaps no place qualifies as more of a swing state than Wisconsin when the elections for both 2000 and 2004 are taken into account, as The Economist recently declared. It argues, however, that McCain may need to make up for Virginia or Colorado, two states that Bush won in 2004.

Either way, it’s clear McCain will be targeting Wisconsin, which in turn should guarantee that Obama pays a ton of attention to us.

The Buzz

-The newly slimmed-down Journal Sentinel is running fewer syndicated stories and passed on Sunday’s juicy New York Times report on Sarah Palin’s style as governor. Probably won’t change most people’s views on Palin, but riveting stuff.

-Citizens for Responsive Government has dug through the entire budget of Milwaukee Area Technical College, analyzing over 54,000 invoices for $125 million. Given the rise in MATC’s budget over the years, a worthy undertaking.

-And the speculation that an Obama win would mean a job in D.C. for Gov. Doyle continues, with some insiders saying it would be a health-related position, and Doyle’s director of Medicaid, Jason Helgerson, would go with him.

-The JS gave short shrift to an Associated Press story that reports accusations that the McCain campaign is sending Democrats to the wrong polling places in Wisconsin. The story was buried on page 10 of the JS metro section. Ten voters complained about this problem to the Government Accountability Board. State Republican Party Executive Director Mark Jefferson denied this was part of any voter suppression effort. He chalked it up to a mistake in the voter information the party had and noted that "no list is perfect." Jefferson might want to pass that thought on to the attorney general.

And the Sports Nut marvels, nay swoons, at the firing of Ned Yost.