Both the Milwaukee Branch of the NAACP and the Milwaukee teachers union can join Attorney General JB Van Hollen's lawsuit against the state election's agency. A Dane County judge allowed the intervention Thursday. Van Hollen is trying to force the Government Accountability Board to cross reference voter registration data with DMV records going back to 2006. The NAACP says the suit, if successful, will prevent thousands of blacks from voting as more than half of Milwaukee County's African-Americans don't have drivers' licenses.
The group also recently criticized Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm for creating a voter fraud task force with the Attorney General. Chisholm defends the multi jurisdiction force as standard law enforcement is not trained to fully deal with the issue. The task force is trained to determine which are considered flagrant cases of fraud and which are not. The DA also notes that although nearly 40 persons have been referred to his office for possible voter fraud this season, only one has been criminally charged, 21-year-old Endalyn Adams. Adams was an employee of the Community Voters Project who was given a quota to sign up a certain number of voters daily. Such benchmarks are against state law but the District Attorney says CVP may not have issued the quota but individual superiors of the woman.
Also on Thursday, the Republican National Committee accused another voter drive group in Milwaukee of engaging in,"systematic fraud." The Associated Press reported this week that ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, hired at least seven convicted felons to register new voters. Their crimes included robbery and possessing cocaine. Earlier this year, Milwaukee officials discovered 49 cases in which employees of ACORN and the CVP allegedly submitted false voter registrations. In April, the GAB said convicted felons cannot take voter registrations. But Milwaukee officials said they never got the message. They thought the ban only applied to those on probation and parole. The city also said it would change its policies to comply with the state order.
Sean Cairncross, chief lawyer for the RNC, said Milwaukee is not the only place where ACORN was investigated. But State Democratic Party chairman Joe Wineke said Republicans are quote, "fabricating stories about widespread voter fraud in attempts to scare voters." He also accused the GOP of trying to divert people's attention from the Wall Street crisis, which Wineke called quote, "the final verdict on the disastrous Bush-McCain economic policies."
