Cop In Charge Of Investigating Vote Fraud In Milwaukee Has His Unit Disbanded
Right before a national election. Gee, nothing suspicious about that.
Last week Mike Sandvick, head of the Milwaukee Police Department’s five-man Special Investigative Unit, was told by superiors not to send anyone to polling places on Election Day. He was also told his unit—which wrote the book on how fraud could subvert the vote in his hometown—would be disbanded.
“We know what to look for,” he told me, “and that scares some people.” In disgust, Mr. Sandvick plans to retire.
Sandvick apparently got booted from his job because he was too good at it:
In February, Mr. Sandvick’s unit released a 67-page report on what it called an “illegal organized attempt to influence the outcome of (the 2004) election in the state of Wisconsin”—a swing state whose last two presidential races were decided by less than 12,000 votes.
The report found that between 4,600 and 5,300 more votes were counted in Milwaukee than the number of voters recorded as having cast ballots. Absentee ballots were cast by people living elsewhere; ineligible felons not only voted but worked at the polls; transient college students cast improper votes; and homeless voters possibly voted more than once.
Much of the problem resulted from Wisconsin’s same-day voter law, which allows anyone to show up at the polls, register and then cast a ballot. ID requirements are minimal. If someone lacks any ID, he can vote so long as someone who lives in the same city vouches for him. The report found that in 2004 a total of 1,305 “same day” voters gave information that was declared “un-enterable” or invalid by election officials. . . .
The investigative unit believed at least 16 workers from the Kerry campaign, and two allied get-out-the-vote groups, “committed felony crimes.” But local prosecutors didn’t pursue them in part because of a “lack of confidence” in the abysmal record-keeping of the city’s Election Commission.
Well how do you like that. Record keeping is so poor they can’t even prosecute election fraud.
And now the guy in charge of investigating vote fraud doesn’t have a job any more.
Shouldn’t we, you know, care about the sanctity of our elections? Can we even call ourselves a democracy any more if citizens go to the ballot box with no idea if they’re vote will be canceled out by someone else’s illegal vote? Or maybe not even counted at all?
