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The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now fired about a dozen canvassers and alerted the commission to most of the problematic forms. The election commission’s director, Sue Edman, said the workers lost their ability to register voters, and the commission is making sure no incomplete or fabricated forms are entered into the voter database.
Six canvassers have been referred to the district attorney’s office for potential criminal charges, she said.
The news unnerved Republican Party leaders who believe widespread fraud in the 2004 election may have handed Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry a narrow 11,000-vote victory and fear they will see a replay in 2008.
“I’m glad it was caught in this case. But it was probably the tip of the iceberg,” Republican Party executive director Mark Jefferson said.
The group, known as ACORN, describes itself as the nation’s largest grass-roots community organization of low- and moderate-income people.
ACORN’s state political director Carolyn Castore said the drive recently concluded when the group met its goal of registering 35,000 voters in Milwaukee in the biggest voter drive in Wisconsin this election cycle.
Reports of widespread problems in Milwaukee during the 2004 election sparked a federal review that identified hundreds of ineligible felons who may have voted, people who may have voted twice or used false names and widespread errors in record-keeping. Investigators found no partisan effort to sway the election, but Republicans aren’t convinced.
“There are a lot of people who feel the election may have been stolen,” Jefferson said.
ACORN’s 2004 voter registration drive in Wisconsin was marred by sloppy and fraudulent work, in part because the group paid canvassers on a per-voter basis. Lawmakers banned that practice in 2006.
To avoid similar problems this year, ACORN paid workers by the hour and employees reviewed forms turned in by canvassers before submitting them to the commission, Castore said. She said about 96 percent of the forms turned out to be legitimate.
“If there was any suspicion of either fraudulent activity or just really sloppy work, we terminated them, and we informed the elections commission,” Castore said. “We were catching it.”
Edman agreed the group uncovered most of the problems. Between 1,500 and 2,000 of the registration forms submitted were incomplete while “maybe a couple hundred” were clearly fabricated, she said.
“It was obvious to us that some of them were just making up information to complete the cards,” Edman said.
The commission is sending letters to voters with incomplete forms saying it needs more information before they can be registered. Edman said that has created an enormous amount of work for her staff.
“And more importantly, if the application is not completed and we can’t reach the person, they are not going to be registered” when they go to vote, she said.
A debate over the best way to run clean elections has raged in Wisconsin for years.
The Elections Division announced Wednesday that a long-awaited database allowing clerks to purge voter rolls of ineligible felons and dead voters by checking other state records was up and running. Government Accountability Board Director Kevin Kennedy said the database would increase the trustworthiness of state elections.
Republicans have pushed unsuccessfully for a state law requiring voters to show identification at the polls, arguing that it would eliminate fraud. Democrats, including Gov. Jim Doyle, have countered that it would disenfranchise minorities, the elderly and college students.
A package of election reforms approved by lawmakers in 2006 increased training for poll workers and those registering voters and made it easier to prosecute felons who vote. The Milwaukee police waded into the debate earlier this year with a report examining problems in 2004, recommending the state get rid of same-day registration.
That has not happened but other recommendations, primarily for additional training and more workers, are being followed, Edman said.
“I think we’ve made tremendous strides over the past three years,” she said. “We’ve addressed all of the problems they identified in the report. We’ve done everything we could to address all of the issues.”
But Jefferson said the chance for problems could be even higher this year given that Wisconsin voters are registering at a record pace. Some 135,000 new voters have signed up since January, bringing the total number of registered voters in the state to 3.4 million.
“We’re not afraid of high turnout ... We’re not interested in disenfranchising voters,” Jefferson said. “What we’re afraid of is the election laws not being followed.”
