The charitable Koch Brothers, out and about, helping the community, like they do:
mailers have now turned up from Americans For Prosperity Wisconsin, addressed to voters in two of the Republican-held recall districts, where the elections will be held on August 9. The mailers ask recipients to fill out an absentee ballot application, and send it in — by August 11, after Election Day for the majority of these races. “These are people who are our 1’s [solid Democrats] in the voterfile who we already knew,” a Democratic source told Politico. “They ain’t AFP members, that’s for damn sure.”
The mailing address for the applications is listed as “Absentee Ballot Application Processing Center, P.O. Box 1327, Madison WI 53701-1327.” A Google search shows that this address is not any sort of government office, but has been used by the conservative group Wisconsin Family Action.
In addition, Wisconsin Right To Life previously used the same address for absentee ballot application letters and phone calls that were sent out shortly before the July 12 Democratic primaries, but after the official deadlines for the applications. The group responded to criticism, saying the phone calls were intended to be for the general elections in August.
A Democrat on the ground in Wisconsin said the fliers were discovered to be hitting doors in District 2 and District 10 over the weekend.
Politico has a pdf of an actual letter and envelope.
Americans For Prosperity, Wisconsin claims it was a typo. Democrats have already filed a complaint.
I love the “Absentee Ballot Application Processing Center” they invented. Sounds official and vaguely governmental, doesn’t it? Nice touch.
Amir_Khalid
Does that have the makings of a prosecutable case of election fraud?
Butch
Don’t know if it was reported on the blogs but one of the We Are Wisconsin offices in LaCrosse burned Saturday morning, a total loss. Officials haven’t ruled on a cause of the blaze.
Lolis
pure evil
Zagloba
That was my question too. If not, the new Democratic majority in Wisconsin needs to put that on the books post-haste.
Warren Terra
A single typo does this:
and this:
and this:
That’s some typo!
kdaug
Reminds me of the mysterious warehouse fire in Houston that destroyed all of their voting machines just before the last election.
Houston. Who had just elected the first openly gay mayor to a major (1m+) city in the US.
Had to bring in some spares from across the state.
Rick Perry won.
Warren Terra
Oh, and: were these hand-delivered, or were they mailed? Because if the latter, I wonder if various federal laws on mail fraud might apply …
NoPublic
Unfortunately it’s perfectly legal to distribute absentee ballot applications as a third party. All they have to say is “Oops, we got the date wrong. Ah well, we forwarded the ones we got in time along and if they didn’t get processed that’s just the way things go”. It’s scummy but there’s little chance of a legal challenge getting anywhere.
kay
@Amir_Khalid:
I don’t know. AFP is identified as the sender, and they may simply claim the wrong date was a typo.
This is going to be an ugly, ugly election. Lawyer up!
Stillwater
Has anyone checked Nixon’s grave lately? Are we sure about that?
Zagloba
@Butch: I think we’re resisting jumping to conclusions there, since it was one of eight buildings that burned, and there had been reports of vagrants living around the buildings.
Though, it’s certainly possible that someone paid the vagrants to set the fire.
RalfW
“Filed a complaint”?!?
Fucking hell. Is this sort of election fraud not investigatable for prosecution?
ETA: I’m a hot head, went direct to comment box w/o reading comment 1 and beyond. Still wanna say it.
kdaug
Post-ETA: Here’s a link. More where that came from.
Steve
So basically, by the logic of certain commentors, if I contact a bunch of voters of the opposing party and tell them Election Day is next Wednesday, all I have to do is say “oops, I meant to say Tuesday” and I’m legally untouchable. Uh huh.
gwangung
Then they should be fined for sloppiness. Surely they have enough money for proofreaders.
bkny
holee shit … how the fuck can this not be criminal? goddamn, i’m really gobsmacked by this.
oopsie, a typo? seriously? that’s the best he can do?
Stillwater
@Amir_Khalid: Does that have the makings of a prosecutable case of election fraud?
No. It would clearly be a partisan witch-hunt designed to suppress free speech and restrict economic liberties.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
Wisconsin tea party organizer and children’s book author Kim Simac has admitted to comparing American public schools to the Nazi regime.
Simac, also Republican candidate for the Aug. 9 recall election of Democratic state Sen. Jim Holperin, wrote a controversial post on tea party social network Patriot Action Network last October. The post recently disappeared from the site going into the general election, Talking Points Memo report
Shinobi
@bkny: I don’t care if it WAS a fucking typo. Publishing inaccurate information about election procedures/dates/etc should be a crime.
Typos that may affect a citizen’s ability to exercise their right to vote should be against the fucking law. Proofreading is not that hard.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
anybody know of a good source for on-the-ground reports from WI? Is stuff like this pissing people off, or is it just background noise to most people?
BalJu Commenter #2401
@Warren Terra: Impersonating someone to a government agency or hiring another to carry out this ruse could result in a criminal prosecution.
http://pibuzz.com/2008/05/25/impersonation-to-obtain-personal-information-snares-researchers-and-private-investigators/
Butch
Zabloga (sorry I couldn’t get the back link to work) I completely agree about jumping to conclusions. I was just pointing out the really bad timing of the fire.
Also, Jim (same apology), I live within the Green Bay (Wisconsin) TV viewing area but not in Wisconsin itself (in the Upper Peninsula). I’d have to say from voting turnout and media coverage it’s definitely not background noise; the GOP machine is putting out some of the most dishonest (I’m being nice) ads I’ve ever seen.
Spaghetti Lee
Wisconsin tea party organizer and children’s book author Kim Simac
Oh, that must be a barrel of laughs. Anybody up for a bedtime reading of Scruffles the Dog Fights the Islamo-Communist Traitors?
David Hunt
@Steve:
I don’t think it’s quite that cut and dried. You have to pass another criteria before you’re scott free: are you a Republican?
Put more seriously, it just seems that the system makes it much easier to get away with vote suppression of the poor/minorities because they don’t have access to the legal resources to fight it. Whether that favors Republicans by design or “happy” coincidence, I don’t know.
SKI
They may indeed be ultimately able to prove it was a typo but discovery would be pretty sweet…
The Moar You Know
So, when are we going to start using their own tactics against them?
Oh, that’s right, never. We like taking the high road, because being righteous is so much more satisfying than winning.
kay
@gwangung:
Right. It’s a failure of the free market, really.
Nethead Jay
@kdaug: Yep, that one was more than a little suspicious.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Amir_Khalid: Republicans don’t do election fraud, only the poor. And anyway, they are not our enemy, Obama is? (FSM how cynical these last two weeks have made me.)
kdaug
@The Moar You Know:
Then what do you win?
cmorenc
One problem with potential prosecution of this incident is that the incumbent Wisconsin state Attorney General is a Republican. What are the chances any “investigation” will go anywhere but a slow-walk into a file box in a state warehouse somewhere?
danimal
It may or may not be illegal, but this should definitely be prosecuted in the court of public opinion. Publicize and politicize the hell out of their dirty tricks. Americans don’t like this kind of manipulation. At all.
ppcli
I understand the fundamental Rove principle: if something is a weakness of yours, attack your opponent for purportedly having it. And the corollary that if you are planning to do something despicable, inoculate yourself by attacking your opponent for purportedly doing it. But sometimes, like in this case, it is still dizzying to confront the purely fact-free character of this tactic.
Does anyone have any doubt that if some left-leaning organization did something like this, it would be the leading item on Fox news, 24/7 for the next month?
Zifnab
@The Moar You Know:
You mean the ones where we spend 30 years building a media empire and systematically selling out to every corporate interest willing to cut us a check, while lying to our constituencies about our intentions and leveraging the inflexibility of the two party system to seize advantage as “the only other viable party” every time the economy hits the shitter?
Other than the media empire thing, I think we’ve been following that road map exactly. The only problem is that when you follow the same road map as the Republicans, you end up in the same place.
RP
Bullshit like this is why we need strict Voter ID laws. /snark
David Hunt
@The Moar You Know:
As I noted above, in addition to any moral problems with that type of voter suppression, it just works better on the poor and powerless. A happy correlation between immoral action and ineffective action (for us) I’d say the GOTV actions are much more effective at countering this stuff. I’d hazard that’s why GOP front-groups work so hard to attack them.
Plus that has the advantage of not being part of a criminal interprise.
the fenian
You know what? If these clowns want to claim it was a typo, let’s make them claim it under oath.
I’m sure the Obama DOJ will get right on this, as sooon as it remembers where it left its copy of the Voting Rights Act.
PaulW
Best to make damn sure the Democratic voters in Wisconsin know about what the Republicans are doing to f0ck up this recall effort, and that the Democratic voters know exactly which precinct to vote from so there’s no confusion or distraction.
Also, better call the Justice Dept. and Amnesty International and have them send observers to make sure the votes are counted properly. We don’t want a situation where some Elections official stored election data on his or her personal computer and misread the Save function…
Spaghetti Lee
If I’m telling this story to a more centrist acquaintance of mine, and they respond with, “The Democrats do it too”, I want to be able to honestly say no. Anything otherwise would completely undermine my point. Hypocrisy is a deal-breaker for a lot of people out there .
Steve
That is why God made county prosecutors. She even made some of them Democrats.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Spaghetti Lee: The best answer I can think for that is that you hate it when Democrats do it, too. No one should be disenfanchised due to these kinds of tricks.
Anarcho-Syndicalist Commune Now!
The date could be a typo. The sketchy address to mail your late ballots to tips it over to enemy action as opposed to coincidence.
cleek
@The Moar You Know:
like this ?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@PaulW: We should call the UN and ask for election monitors.
buckyblue
According to comments at TPM, this is definately a prosecutable offense (and we all know we can take everything on-line at face value). Several examples of similar situations where the perpetrators are now serving time. As far as the fire goes, we should be screaming that this is Conservatives, Republicans and Teahadists that did this. It’s our Reichstag fire; the official report will come out after the election, to little fan fare.
slag
@Spaghetti Lee:
Hahahahahaha!
“Hypocrisy is a fashionable vice, and all fashionable vices pass for virtue”
John Puma
They don’t worry: they have the vast majority of the money, no moral qualms and a seriously pathological and dangerous lust for power.
Mnemosyne
@The Moar You Know:
I don’t think we want to suppress Republican voters as a tactic. We’re better off getting as many people registered as Democrats and at the polls as humanly possible.
The work that kay is doing to get overly restrictive voting laws struck down is a much better tactic against voter suppression than simply more voter suppression would be.
NonyNony
@The Moar You Know:
No, it’s because Democrats and Republicans aren’t the same. And tactics that work for one group don’t work for the other.
Republicans don’t believe that government is legitimate except for military spending and cops. They don’t care about things that de-legitimize the government because they already hate government. So voter suppression scams like this work within their ideology.
Democrats believe in government, and believe strongly in good government, and that means that voter suppression crap is an anathema to Democrats at an ideological level. This isn’t just about being righteous – this is about one of the fundamental differences between Democrats and Republicans in the 21st century USA.
Their tactics won’t work for us – we need our own. It isn’t about righteousness – it’s about recognizing what works and what doesn’t for the people who are likely to vote Democratic.
ETA: And because Democratic VOTERS believe in good government, Democratic politicians must at least make gestures toward it or find themselves dumped out on their asses the next time an election rolls around. So Democratic judges and prosecutors can’t turn a blind eye to it if they want to keep their positions – they’ll get primaried if a whiff of scandal shows up.
Republican pols in safe Republican areas are immune to this because their voters expect politicians to be crooked and they expect them to fight dirty. So they’re safe so long as they don’t do something crazy like endorse gay marriage rights or something.
Brachiator
Damn. These are some devious bastards.
Democrats used to believe in getting things done.
Thoughtcrime
@Warren Terra:
R: …It was a pun.
D: (pause) A PUN?!?
R: No, no…not a pun…What’s that thing that spells the same backwards as forwards?
D: (Long pause) A palindrome…?
R: Yeah, that’s it!
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Brachiator:
Dude, go start your own party. If you’ve gone so far off the deep end that thinking doing the right thing is different than believing in getting things done, then your tactics are not really welcome. Voter supression is not a valid tactic, period.
Thoughtcrime
This calls for a strongly worded letter.
Judas Escargot
@Zagloba:
…wonder if any of the vagrants had $450 shoes on their feet?
Thoughtcrime
For some reason nuance just doesn’t get through to the American voter:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Bfe6CgYbH8
Better to just keep the message simple:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD3vFGoIfyw&feature=related
FormerSwingVoter
Just how many times must the Republican party show that they are in a state of open warfare against democracy before people stop acting like they’re “patriotic”?
NonyNony
@Brachiator:
At all costs? To the point where you’re talking voter suppression? When?
You’re probably going to find yourself reaching back to Lyndon Johnson and JFK. And there’s been a realignment since then. The folks who are comfortable with vote suppression as a tactic migrated over into the Republican camp shortly after JFK and LBJ. And there’s a reason for that if you think about it for a while…
ETA: And to follow up – the change in the Democratic Party that came around post-LBJ is one of the fundamental reasons why Democratic voters are averse to voter suppression as a tactic.
PeakVT
@Zagloba: If not, the new Democratic majority in Wisconsin needs to put that on the books post-haste.
These elections are about control of the Senate only. Unfortunately, even if the Dems retake control, they’re not going to actually be able to do anything because of Walker and the other chamber. They’ll just get veto power until November of 2012.
bemused
I’ve never experienced getting fliers deliberately designed to trick voters from liberal groups nor have I read about it happening anywhere else. Are there any examples of “Democrats do it too”?
RossInDetroit
If it was a mistake, I think an appropriate punishment would be for the group to be banned from all voter communication until they get their shit together. A couple of years should do it.
Redshift
@bemused: There are not examples of “Democrats do it too”, but Republicans do it in lots of places. Nearly every election, somewhere in Virginia, there are reports of flyers being distributed in minority neighborhoods with the “wrong” date for Election Day, or saying that Republicans vote on the real day, and Democrats vote on the following day, and those are just the ones that get reported on local news. (Google “deceptive flyers election date” and you’ll get plenty of results.)
GOP operatives in Maryland actually went to jail for robocalls to Democrats on Election Day 2008 that told them they didn’t need to vote because Democrats’ “goals had already been met.”
This stuff is not subtle (and fortunately, frequently relies on racist assumptions about how smart the recipients are) and it shows really damn clearly which side considers elections an expression of the will of the people and which considers them a contest to be won, no matter what the people want.
kuvasz
Can we all agree that Republicans do not believe in democracy, and use its mechanisms, akin to the Russian Bolsheviks, as a path to achieve power.
Stooleo
If only someone would put a donkey head in one of the Koch brothers bed.
pseudonymous in nc
There are a few cases of voter suppression operatives getting jail time (MD stuff, NH phone-jammers) but prosecutions are rare, and convictions are even rarer. And voter suppression really does have the potential to change election results.
Not really. Changing precincts and polling places, flyers telling people that they need to pay parking tickets before they can vote, inconsistent standards on a county-by-county and precinct-by-precinct level, etc. International election monitors would probably make a fuss if they used the standards by which foreign elections are judged, which is why they’ll never be invited.
JPL
@Stooleo: Would the ass do?
The Worst Person In the World
What pigs.
I ALMOST wish Democratic advocates were this ruthless.
kdaug
@John Puma:
Differs from Puritans how again?
NobodySpecial
The irritating thing for me is that this sort of shit is winked at. Fuck complaints with an election board, this is mail fraud intended to fuck with someone’s Constitutional rights. Throw their asses in jail and charge them with mail fraud in Federal court.
Very Serious Person
Both sides do it!
Thoughtcrime
@NobodySpecial:
You would understand if you’d seen this:
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/07/colbert_on_voter_id_laws_why_not_only_let_gop_lawm.php
Gus diZerega
Jail for a very very long time should be the penalty for this kind of thing.
I’d pick 20 years.
priscianusjr
@NoPublic:
Mike in NC
Ratfucking bastards!
NoPublic
@priscianusjr:
It may be fraud in your book but it’s apparently perfectly legal by WI statute (According to the local Democratic party folks)
(Yes, I actually live in WI)
LanceThruster
@Mike in NC: Got-danged right!
Their excuse is always “Our bad!” [snicker].
debbie
There needs to be more than a slap on the wrist from factcheck.org for this kind of stuff. A new ad from Americans for Prosperity is claiming that unemployment has risen 18% since Obama was elected. Most of his audience here in central Ohio isn’t math-capable enough to see through that word trick.
bemused
@Redshift:
Just as I remember too.
If Republicans in our lives do say Dems do it too, it should be easy to say prove it. However, I think far too many would rather take the rightwing world’s word for it.
quannlace
Oy. She of the authoring of ‘With My Gun By My Side,” a kid’s book extolling the 2nd amendment to the little ones. (And of course, the damn thing rhymes. Note to all would-be children’s authors: if you’re not Dr. Seuss, step back from the rhyme.)
Let’s have a contest of what’s the worst conservative kid’s book. “Mommy, there’s a liberal under my bed.”
Another note; Why are all these books so hideously illustrated?
priscianusjr
@NoPublic:
Nic
I guess it’s my turn to be a bit of a troll. I’d really love it for AFP to have been pulling shenanigans (as I pretty much hate them, and want them to hang themselves with this Wisconsin recall), but the scan clearly shows a different font used for the date (compare the s in ‘August’ with the s on ‘must’ just above). I dunno if this is how it was originally printed, or if someone manipulated the document. I hope no one changed it to make a fake scandal, and it can be corroborated with other similar mailings. Perhaps AFP took the original date out themselves, and put the bogus one in.
Brachiator
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): re: Democrats used to believe in getting things done.
What I wrote is historically true, is it not?
But no, I do not favor voter suppression. But most of the early comments I read here were more concerned with admiring the supposed purity of Democrats than in countering these dirty tricks.
And it gets doubly frustrating when people imply that there is nothing that can be done, because the WI misdirection is technically legal.
Gustopher
I grow weary of these traitors.
gene108
The return envelope isn’t even postage-paid. You have to pony up the money for the stamp!
It’s one thing to be devious bastards, who want to win at all costs, but cheap devious bastards? That’s just taking things too far.
kwAwk
@Steve:
My thoughts on this are that this should be easy to prove or disprove. If the mailers only went out to registered Democrats or even to a group that was a majority registered Democrats then you should be able to prove election fraud.
If, however, AFP really did mail these to all of their own members, thus screwing themselves, voter fraud would be hard to prove.
William Hurley
Conservatives may or may not be scared.
Relying on conservatives’ “dirty” campaign tricks as evidence of their level of concern leads to faulty conclusions.
Conservatives always use “dirty” tricks in every campaign. Part of the reason recall actions are so energized is because the Nov elections were so thoroughly beset by GOP sleazy illegalities.
pseudonymous in nc
I’ll go with “PDF form field”. The recall elections are spread out, and Dumbfucks For Kochs probably templated it.
Paul in KY
@kuvasz: I will agree with that.
Paul in KY
@Stooleo: How about an elephant head?
Paul in KY
@NoPublic: How about Federal statutes?
Recall Luther Olsen
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Jim, the WI recall Facebook pages are on top of things. Check them out!
Recall Luther Olsen
While what they’ve done may not technically be criminal, I think that, if we can find a voter who missed his/her opportunity to vote because of the negligent misinformation he/she received from AFP, we would have a strong civil case.
Come join our active, online recall community @ http://www.facebook.com/recalllutherolsen
Larry
You know, I simply cannot think of a more BLATANT attempt at voter fraud.
Not only THAT, they data mine with the information they put on these “ballots”. Get all that together and they have exactly what they need to get, amongst other things, their Social Security numbers. And directly from the (Democrat) voters themselves. A ready made enemies list for the Koch brothers.
And from this point. I am just fucking speechless.